July 31, 2025 • 41 mins
In this special live episode of The Jimmy Rex Show, recorded during one of our Expert Networking Nights, Jimmy sits down with Chandler Smith to talk about his journey from top door-to-door salesman to building a multimillion-dollar real estate portfolio, and the deeply personal experiences that shaped his life along the way. Chandler opens up about the heartbreak of losing his wife at a young age and how that tragedy changed his perspective on success, relationships, and what really matters.
He shares the raw story of navigating grief, rebuilding his life, and eventually finding love again with his new wife. Chandler also dives into how he used the discipline from door-to-door sales to start buying properties at 18, growing that first deal into over 400 rental units, and creating lasting financial freedom.
This conversation is about more than business – it’s about resilience, love, and designing a life that honors your values. Whether you’re in sales, real estate, or just searching for purpose after loss, this live episode is packed with powerful lessons on turning pain into growth and creating a life worth living.
He shares the raw story of navigating grief, rebuilding his life, and eventually finding love again with his new wife. Chandler also dives into how he used the discipline from door-to-door sales to start buying properties at 18, growing that first deal into over 400 rental units, and creating lasting financial freedom.
This conversation is about more than business – it’s about resilience, love, and designing a life that honors your values. Whether you’re in sales, real estate, or just searching for purpose after loss, this live episode is packed with powerful lessons on turning pain into growth and creating a life worth living.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Jimmy Rex Show.
And this is another one of our live podcasts that
we did just a couple of days ago. This was
with Chandler Smith. He's one of my closest good friends.
Has hundreds of real estate properties and doors, gyms, all
sorts of things. Really just one of the most amazing
humans I think I've ever come across. His wife passed
(00:23):
away a couple of years back, and we talk about
that on the podcast. We talk about how real estate
investing helped him have the time and resources to spend
all the money and time that he could both trying
to keep his wife alive, but also being able to
cherish and honor the time they had together. So just
a really special podcast. Really enjoyed doing this again. We
did this with a live audience. We do this every
(00:44):
single month in Lehigh, Utah. So if you ever want
to come to one of these live podcasts, you get
to be a part of it. It's a networking night.
Just follow me on my Instagram, mister Jimmy Rex and
our next live podcast coming up again every single month
here couple of weeks. Now with that, I will talk
about today's sponsor, which is Bucked Up Protein. I've got
(01:05):
here the Orange Cream. This is their lightly carbonated protein drink.
It's one hundred calories, no sugar, no fat, just an
amazing beverage, caffeine free. So I have one of these
every morning. It's got one hundred calories, twenty five grams
of protein, and it's a huge part of my diet
in my day. So with that, let's get to the
podcast with Chandler Smith. Chandler, thanks for being here, my friend.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Hey, thanks for having me. This is different with the
crowd and everything.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
It's a little bit more intense. Right, you can't just
call a pause in the middle of the podcast and go,
you know, time out, use the bathroom, whatever you need to. So, dude,
let's get right into the real estate stuff. I think
right now, the more I talk to people in their
twenties and their thirties, you know, Tucker Carlson talked about
this a little bit the other day at the Turning
Point event, but he said, you know, there's really a
(02:00):
lack of hope for this younger generation and their ability
to buy real estate, both for themselves and to invest in.
And I remember when I was in my early twenties.
It was a pretty easy path. Homes were around one
hundred thousand dollars, a lot of them. You just knew
you were going to be able to buy investment properties.
And I see now like I feel for the younger generation.
You know, the average house in Utahs six hundred thousand dollars.
(02:21):
Now there's basically nothing under you know, four or five
hundred thousand. Where does one start that wants to get
into real estate investing? Where would you start if you
were starting over again today? You know?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I think the first thing I would tell people, and
it's the same thing I would tell door to door
sales reps after they knocked the whole morning and nobody
was even slightly interested. Four other companies had been through,
and they're so depressed, and I would remind them that
another couple of doors might be that guy that was
waiting by his door to weigh overpay for past control
because he just wanted it done right then. And I
(02:53):
think that there are lots of different things that you
can do and still tons of opportunities. So the first
thing I would tell him is, hey, don't stress, there's
still opportunities there.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
You might have to work harder.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
But that's a big reason a lot of people aren't
out there finding them is because they feel like there's
just not a shot, and there really are still.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And so okay, so there's and I have always said,
there's opportunity in every market, right it's your job to
kind of figure out what that looks like. If you were, though,
in your early twenties right now, where would you start.
Are you knocking doors to find deals, are you, you know,
looking for distressed properties, are you talking to reltors? What
angle would you take?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I think, first off, if I'm in a situation where
I get house hack, there's still opportunities there, especially if
you find the right seller. And if you don't have
enough money to get into real estate, most likely you
can find time and you can use that to your advantage.
And so yeah, I'd be knocking doors, I'd be polling lists,
I'd be sending out millers, I'd be doing anything and
everything I could in my location to go and find
(03:46):
those deals. I think the other thing I would say
is there's still lots of markets, and I've started to
move into these markets in the Midwest where you can
find deals for very reasonable prices. That have very strong
cash flow, and I think a lot of people are
going there because there's a massive demand for places to rent,
and people are ending up there because it is cheaper,
and in turn, I think a lot of these properties
(04:08):
are very easy to purchase and get into. I had
a property this week with my community that was one
hundred and twenty thousand dollars had a potential tenant at
sixteen hundred dollars, and those are phenomenal numbers. This is
a clean, turnkey property, and those are still out there.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
How do you get over the fear of buying something
that's unown. I think a lot of people hear you
talk about going to the Midwest or something, you know.
I remember I didn't buy my first property out of
Utah that I couldn't go physically visit until I've been
investing in real estate for probably fifteen years. I own
fourteen homes in Florida now that I've never seen, right,
it doesn't bother me at all, But I remember being
a little bit terrified to just buy something in this
(04:42):
place I know nothing about, you know, and I mean
we live in an area. Now you can get a
lot of information, you can see a lot of things.
But how do you help somebody that wants to invest,
but you know there aren't great opportunities maybe where they live,
but like you said, you know we're selling a lot
of hobs right now in Arkansas, in Oklahoma, some of
these others where you can still get cash flow. How
do you help somebody get over the fear of just
(05:03):
taking that plunge as a real estate investor?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
You know, I think first off is just education. We
have more opportunities right now for education than anywhere else.
I'll plug in questions on chat GPT and I'm like, man,
why would anyone invest in a course or school or
anything when it really plugs out what you need to
look into? All the information, the steps, the due diligence,
all of that.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
It's so accessible.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
And so if you can just over educate yourself, get
the right books, get in there, ask questions, you can
get ninety ninety five percent of that confidence. And then
I would say, once you're there where you're like, hey,
I'm mostly there, there's always going to be that little
bit of risk you're taking.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
It's always going to be scary.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And I've seen so many people that have made the
leap on a terrible investment proper Like I look at
it and I say, what are you thinking? But that
was the leap they needed to take to learn that
lesson and to get the confidence to say, hey, my
worst case scenario happened and it wasn't that bad, so
let's try it again.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
That's funny that you say that. I always ask the question,
this is my number one question when I'm investing in anything,
or you know, can I live with the worst case scenario?
And you have to know the worst case scenario, and
they have to say, what would my life look like
if worst case scenario hits? And I'll be damned if
forst case scenario didn't happen a couple of times, but
as you can deal with because I remember in two
thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, you know, my
income was real estate. I'd invested in the brokerage, the
(06:16):
Keller Williams brokerage that just opened the norm, so my
investments were all in real estate. And then also I
was buying pure real estate as investments. So when the
market turned and I didn't have cash flow on a
lot of these things, I got in really deep trouble.
And I just remember feeling so stressed, and I worked
so hard, and by the time I turned thirty years old,
I finally had gotten rid of all the bad properties.
(06:39):
I had no assets but no debt. And I think
that's one of the things that has helped me so
much is I got to live in that place where
so many people are afraid of of like whoa what
if everything goes wrong? Which it did everything. I mean,
if every day you're watching new realtors walk out of
the office with their stuff and it wasn't that bad,
you kind of I think it's a gift that we
give ourselves to go to rock bottom. You get there
(07:00):
and you go life's still okay. And I think as
long as you can you know, tell yourself or kind
of convince yourself of like what do I truly value,
then all of a sudden it's not so scary to
invest in a house or invest in apartment complex or
whatever that might be. But for you, what do you
look for? Then? What are the things that you're looking
for when you're looking for a real estate investment property?
(07:21):
Like what are your non negotiables or what are the
things that really stand out to you to make you
know it's a good deal.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, I think for me, I've always been someone that
I wanted to find something with extremely strong cash flow,
because again, when I looked at my worst case scenario,
I could say, hey, like I could cut my rents
way down and still be at break even. And I
know we live in a world now where people are justifying, hey,
it's okay to buy something you're losing one two hundred
dollars a month watching.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
The same movie that I've already watched. Why they're doing
it again? What are they doing here?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And so I would just say when people say, look,
I hop on the MLS and I'm not finding stuff
that meets your criteria, there's.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
A reason for that.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And I think it's because a lot of people are
buying properties that they may or may not end up
in trouble if things do turn where Alternatively, the deals
that matter, the deals that are good, just like anything
in life, they're gonna take extra work, they're gonna take
a lot of back and forth, they're gonna take you know,
doing what's required to find off market deals. And so yeah,
I think that's what I would say.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
So you started buying a lot of residential real estate,
but then you've kind of pivoted into other things. You
buy gyms now, and you buy a lot of storage units.
What are the advantages and disadvantage of single family homes
versus some of those assets.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
You know, so I bought.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
What happened is there is a gym that went in
their phenomenal business that's Fit one in Idaho, and they
were in a place where they wanted to grow, and
so they had purchased their building and they owned the business.
So I have nothing to do with the business, but
they said, hey, we want to scale, we want more
money in this, and so I got into that building
at a phenomenal cap rate, great returns. The biggest difference,
(08:54):
I would say is that is no stress. Now I
know what will be stress if that ever goes vac
at some point, it'll be a lot of stress because it's,
you know, five million dollar building, but you do nothing
with management. And with a triple net lease, they're taking
care of the taxes, expenses, all of it, and so
you just watch the check show up. So I would
say that's the biggest advantage of that kind of investment
(09:16):
is it takes zero mind power as soon as you've
made it, where the rentals you still have evictions that
you hear about. You still have people that are coming
and going, You have different renovations, and there are ways
to get on top of those stresses. But I know
that for a lot of people is a little too much.
Same with the storage units, but they're even easier because
there's always someone new to put in there and it
comes with its own unique problems.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
But for me, they're kind of all the same thing.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
If you get a good investment and you have management
set up properly for whatever it is, it all is
pretty similar and pretty easy.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Makes sense. What's your thoughts on partnering with people in
real estate deals. I've done it probably twenty different times.
Eighteen times it went amazing, and two of them ruined
a relationship right, and it bothers me so much because
I did everything right you put it and writing. But
some people they want to get into real estate, but
they're a little bit afraid and they're not very savvy,
(10:05):
and then like they don't really understand certain things about it,
and so they end up getting mad at you over
things that were very clear and writing and things like that.
How do you deal or what's your thoughts? I guess
in general with partnering with people on real estate.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I historically have stayed away from it, not because I
don't think it can be a good thing.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
The only two.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Partnerships I've done are with my brother and my best
friend Garrett Myers, and with both of those relationships it
was something where from the beginning we got extremely clear
where we felt like both of us were bringing way
more to the table. For with my brother, for instance,
he had more loans. I didn't have any more. Reddy
Fanny learn.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
That's why I started partnering with everything.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, And so that made it very beneficial because we
could use incredible financing and he just turned it over
to me and I said, hey, let's just plan on
the worst worst case scenario ends up down the road.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
It worked out great.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I was able to buy him out of it after
cash flow really well, and it was phenomenal. But my
buddy Garrett, he had found the deal, but he didn't
have the confidence to jump into storage unions yet. He
knew nothing about it. He knew the risks of real estate,
but it was this perfect deal of Hey, Chandler, I'll
bring the deal. I want you to manage run everything,
and we'll be happy with whatever comes, and that again
has just been so much fun and very easy. And
(11:19):
so I think making sure you're both bringing more than
expected to the table to where it's hard to go
wrong with it, and then getting very clear, even if
you're doing with friends or family, get crystal clear on
what that arrangement is and what it will be if
things do go wrong.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So one of the first times I ever met you,
we went up to Park City. I just bought a
couple of condos that are skiing ski out. We were
going to make a video for your YouTube. By the way,
this is hilarious. Those still aren't finished. Oh no, four
years later. I'm not terribly mad about it, because I'm
just kind of like, Okay, there's markets still kind of
going up and I don't have to put the rest
of money out. But yeah, I was supposed to be
(11:57):
done like two years ago. But one thing I noticed
is it's just the effort that you were putting into
building a real YouTube channel. And I think a lot
of people want to have success on YouTube. It's a
number one thing that you know, the younger generation wants
is either want a job in social media marketing or
they want to be an influencer. Give us a little
bit of background about just exactly how much effort and
(12:18):
time you put into building the channel that you have now,
and then maybe some of the benefits that it gives
you as a real estate investor.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, it has been a ton of work, and it's
one of those things that I think, no matter what
it brings, even though there's a lot, I'll always remember
those early years where it's like, man, I am putting
in so many hours at such a minimal return.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
I mean, it is just a grind totaing to have
anything fought. I don't even know.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I mean I've been at it six or seven years,
and the first I mean it's embarrassing. At the time,
my salesforce was doing, you know, thirty million in sales
a year. I had tons of rental year teams. Yeah, yeah,
I had tons of I think it was over one
hundred units already at that point. And I'm posting these
videos like a professional and I'm getting ninety views, and
it was embarrassing. I had my sales reps being like, dude,
(13:05):
what are you doing? And so just the courage it
takes to push through that uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I've been pushing that courage for like seven.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Years, I think too.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
The thing I've realized is there are two pain points
with YouTube or social media.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
You have people that are very successful.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
In their business, they want to do a social media
and the problem is they want to hire someone, they
want to turn it off, they want to let them
do it. And I totally understand that thought process, but
it's very tricky to get that to stick, to get
someone to care the way you do, and to do
it on that level to get it to perform.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
The other person is the person that doesn't.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Have anything that they've done, and so they can put
all their time and their attention and all of it
into it, but they don't have a lot to bring
to the table and value. And so if you're willing
to get to the point where you've done things that
you can talk about and then get obsessed with what
are people going to click?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
What are people going to view?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
And for me as a salesman, it was so fun
to look at the data and say where are people
dropping off? And why what am I doing to connect?
And what am I doing that's losing people?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And we said something really important, like the people I
like to follow, Tom Bill and Andy Frisella, Gary Vee
at my leg. They all built really successful lives first
and then went into social media. Right. Everything that I've
put out on social media that's done well was because
of my experience and my actual things that I've done.
And I tell people, you see some of the young
people that just want to blow up on social media,
(14:27):
It's like, dude, why would anyone listen to you. It's
like when I was a realter, when I was in
my mid twenties. You know, you have to find the
thing that makes you stand out versus everybody else. At
the time, I had no experience, and so my entire
pitch was I'm going to work eighty hours a week.
You can call me at midnight. I don't have a
family that other agents got to go home to their kids.
I'm going to be looking for homes all night. And
(14:47):
I think, especially for younger people, if you're going to
build a social media channel, it's not there's this like
fault idea that you should fake it till you make it,
and I think it's the opposite. I think you just
have to find the thing that you actually do well well.
And if you don't put down the phone and go
do something until you do it. Well. I remember I
had this like twenty five year old kid hit me
up and I happened to be near his house, so
(15:09):
we went to lunch and he was dead set on
being a men's coach and he's twenty five, and I
just asked him to point brank, why would anybody listen
to you? What have you done? And and he goes, well,
you know, I sold like ninety door to door and
I said ninety Like what? And it was pested. I
was like, bro, I was like, go climb everest or something.
At least do something so somebody wants to listen to you.
(15:31):
You know. I was like, you just haven't done anything yet.
And so I think with social media, I think what
helped you. I think the reason why your content blew
it up so fast is you really were doing it
like you already had the success. That was the part
that stood out to me is you were already way
well beyond in your real estate investing career and you
were just sharing real life examples of the things you've done.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Well, and I think the thing I'd add to that
is there are lots of people that maybe haven't done
something and they're discouraged from doing social media.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
And the one example I would give you just because
I don't want you to throw up your hands.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
And I had a videographer that worked with me for
well over a year and he just had an obsession
with video and very much wanted this, but was willing
to just grind it out making videos for me, making
videos for other people, just all in on videos while
having his own social media that he was building.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
And he got better and better at making these videos.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And now to the point he's blown up on social media.
And I think people see that and they say, oh, like,
I can do that too, I can make it. And
it's like, no, you don't know how many hours he's
got into editing videos to create this, how many hours
he's helped other YouTubers, and how many hours he's seen
what's worked for them and what doesn't and listen to
what they had to say. And so shout out to Kay.
(16:41):
And he was one of the videographers. Now he's too
expensive for me to afford him because he's crushing it.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So yeah, it's funny you say that because I had
a guy that did photo and video for me early on,
and we are the day and he started putting out
his own content and his videos were awesome. I was like, oh,
I'm going to have him do some of these for me.
But he did like three, and you could tell they
took a lot of time, Like each one of these
had to take a dozen hours, if not more twenty hours.
I mean, it was really well put together. And then
he just stopped doing them. And they were getting forty
(17:06):
fifty thousand views early on because they were so good.
But that's the thing that you know, every successful person,
whether it's social media, at real estate, investing, water else,
it's the consistency. It's not giving up when you have
something go wrong. Because you know so many people I
know they did one real estate deal and it didn't
go well, and they just they're like, that's definitely not
for me, and I did. I made the stay mistake
(17:27):
in the stock market. When I was twenty one years
or nineteen years old, I had like five thousand dollars.
I'm going on my Mormon mission, so I give to
my parents stockbroker dude who didn't know shit. And I
came back the dot com bubble burst and I had
like twelve hundred bucks left and I had to pay
him a fee to get my money out, and I
was like, this is the dumbest shit I've ever seen,
and I'm never doing the stock market again. And I
(17:49):
just it's one of my big regrets in life that
I didn't put money away every month in the stock market.
But the point of it is, you know, I think
sometimes we have one failure and we think, oh, I
guess this isn't for me. And I can't tell you
how many real estate deals I bought that I wrote
a check to sell. I mean a dozen't maybe you know,
And I mean flips where I lost two hundred thousand
dollars houses that I had two homes in seven when
(18:10):
the market crashed it I had to sell the home
for what I could get, but the bank made me
keep the loan at a zero percent interest, right, and
I had to just pay it off. You guys want
to be depressed. Have a mortgage on a house that
you no longer own. That's a fun one. So the
point what I'm getting at is is like, with the failures,
what advice do you have for people? If or maybe
you could talk about one of your failures and how
(18:32):
you worked through that. An early failure you had in
real estate and maybe how you push through that.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah, I think, and I'm all over the place so
that you say, because there's a lot I want to say,
But I think so often people want to find their
passion or they want to find get to that point,
and there are lots of people that drop out early
before getting successful. But I don't think we talk as
much about the people that are really close or even hit.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Their ten thousand hours.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
They have the skill set, they have to know how,
but they're not getting paid in accordance with what they're
now worth, and then they jump ship. I think so
often we have this problem of the grass is greener
before we just stick with it.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
And I think for me.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
You know, I've had lots of failures with bad deals
and other stuff, but the one that I've held onto
the most was starting out with order do or sales
because that every time things get hard, I think about
that situation because I'd gone two full weeks without a
cell after going first year, my very first year. Two weeks,
everyone's whispering behind my back. They're saying, dude, you should
(19:30):
just go home, like you're losing money. It doesn't make sense.
All my friends we had a team of forty people.
Everyone else out there had to sale, and so I'm
just the dud. And I think getting to the point
where I said, I don't care. I'm not going home
until I get a sale, until I can learn how
to sell. And after two weeks of selling nothing being
the lowest, once I got that cell, I had put
(19:51):
in so much time figuring out sales that I took
off and so I ended up breaking the rookie record
that year active, going from nothing to proving to myself,
hey I can do this and I can be the
best at it. And I think the more situations where
you just fail so hard and you get back up.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
And then you see the success.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Then when things get hard again, it's so much easier
to say, hey, I've been here before, I got this.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah. I think we you know, one of my sayings
in life is move on from everything quickly, whether good
or bad. But sometimes we have to. You know, we
have like a vision board. A lot of people put
a vision board to what they want, but I also
have one of the stuff I've accomplished I call my
badass board, and just all these cool things I've done,
and when I need a little boost, in my own confidence.
I'll just look at it and I'm like, oh, I've
done some pretty cool things, you know. I think I
(20:33):
can pull this off. And I think that we forget
that sometimes we don't give ourselves enough credit. We're so willing.
I call it the out of town expert with the briefcase, like,
we won't give ourselves credit, but the most random person
will come up and start talking about something, we'll just
assume they know more than us. It's got me in
a lot of trouble investing is I've given my money
to all these people that I thought were smarter than me,
and turns out they weren't. And like, I actually knew
(20:53):
a lot more than them about investing. I just needed
to stay in my lane. But I think that's an
important piece is And if you don't have that confidence,
if you haven't had the successes, it's time to go grind.
It's like I tell everybody, if you can just grind
your twenties and just give everything you have, then you're
ahead for the rest of your life. But if you
kind of screw off for kind of just half asset
in your twenties, you're playing catch up your whole life
(21:14):
and that is the decade to decide it really, and
if you're already past that, I mean, it's like, you know,
the next best day is today to get started. But
you do have to eventually get some success under your
belt so you can prove to yourself when the things
do get hard you're like, you know what, I'm the asset.
I got this.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
And I think, you know, I see so many people
where they're so close to getting that big success after failure,
and I don't think we realize how massive it is.
It's something I talk with my kids about all the
time of like, I just want to make sure when
the failure comes, you've got the gumption to get to
the wind because otherwise that's when people really get lost.
(21:51):
And it's like, just push through to the success because
then you can hold on to that forever, where if
you don't get there, then you've got to hold on
to this crap forever and that's not going to help
you in future at all.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah. Well, and that kind of leads into the next
thing I wanted to talk about with you. But I mean,
life has a weird way of just teaching us whatever
lesson we didn't sign up for sometimes, and you got
to this point where you were financially secure, you had
had all the success you wanted, you had, your family
was exactly where you wanted it, and all of a sudden,
your wife gets super sick. Maybe if you would take
(22:24):
us back to those moments. I know, I was kind
of following your journey when your wife passed away, and
kind of just if you could take us through a
little bit of the emotion of that and how you
dealt with that, how you deal with your kids during that,
and then maybe the next part of your life after that.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, at that point in my life, everything was And
how long is that? By the way, I mean right
when she got her diagnosis, we're probably pushing five years. Okay,
the last five years is like a crazy blur, but
we were crushing it.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
In every way.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
We had two kids, my salesforce had had their biggest year.
I had landed the biggest real estate deal. I purached
a thirty two unit apartment complex with just crazy numbers
on it. We had over one hundred units, and we
were growing like crazy. The YouTube channel was picking up.
And then I got a call from my brother and
(23:20):
my brother told me that he had been diagnosed with
cancer and everything fell apart.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
You know, I was a wreck.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Every I'd had hard things, but like everything worked out.
Your brother doesn't get cancer, that doesn't it doesn't happen
at least that's what I thought.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
And so I was just a real mess, like in
a really bad place. And my wife had been having
some issues with her stomach and she had already gone
into an appointment and we kind of kicked it down
the road and they said she should do a colonoscopy.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And so I'm just kind of in.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
A fait a far with my brother and just a
couple of weeks after his diagnosis and we're putting all
of our time attention into finding doctors everything. My wife
went in for this colonoscopy and she had colon cancer.
And so literally in a two or three week period,
my brother's got cancer, my wife's got cancer, both in
(24:19):
their twenties. And yeah, I don't know that part is
so it just still doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
It's hard to comprehend.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
And how did you prioritize life in that moment? Did
you know it was going to be terminal at that point?
Did you know you had a short amount of time
or did you were you hopeful that you were going
to be able to work through it?
Speaker 3 (24:39):
No, we were hopeful.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
With her, we had to do surgery and then chemo
for six months. With him, we had to do chemo
for six months, and we crashed and burned for sure.
But then I was just all hands on deck. I
stopped making YouTube videos, I lot everything with my salesforce
kind of followed the side, and I was just one
hundred percent focused on how do we get her in.
I got her into surgery as fast as possible, twisted arms,
(25:03):
anything to just push it through.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
We got her into chemo.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Same with my brother, and through chemo, we were just
feeling super hopeful. We're like, hey, if we can suffer
through this for six months, we're gonna get out of
the other side.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
And we did.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I mean, it was absolute hell through the winter, dealing
with both of them on chemo, with some super hard
times with us and our kids and making sense of it.
And then we got out of it. We were told
that both of them were cancer free, and you know,
we just felt like we got life again. We had
started our dream homes house and we finished it.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
I was working not at all. I was going boating,
spending time.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
With my wife and kids, just put everything on the
back burner. And six months after we were told she was
cancer free, something popped up on our blood word and
so we went back in and they couldn't figure out
what it was.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
So we had to go on regular.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Scans because we knew cancer was coming back, we just
didn't know where or how bad. And then we went
into one of the scans and met with the doctor
and he told us that she had Parrot's neil carsnomatosis,
which is a terminal diagnosis. He gave her six months
to a year to live, and so movent out to
(26:21):
the car and screamed, cried, super pissed off, confused, frustrated,
and then we looked at each other and we just said, Hey,
we're going to figure out how to beat this, like
we're going to call everyone, We're going to connect with everyone,
We're going to do anything in our power to find
a way through this.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
And as crazy as it sounds, I.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Look back and it's kind of hard how both of
us fell in this mindset. But my wife, Mattie was
just so optimistic. It got to the point where people
would come and ask how we were doing and we
were not doing good, and she would say, look, I
just want to tell people were doing good. We're gonna
make it happen. I want to lean into that. I
want to be optimistic, I want to be positive. And
(27:06):
so if I ever was showing it.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
She's like, hey, we got this, Like we're good.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
We found a treatment that we thought would give her
a chance. We leaned all into it, and for the treatment,
it was undergoing tests here, but we didn't get into
the exact program. And again I twisted arms and was
able to get the doctor to set up a team
in Mexico so that we could do it because the
(27:32):
test that was past here for testing we couldn't get into. Wow,
and so we were flying down to Mexico to work
with him to get this treatment, and we just were
doing everything, and honestly, we were so hopeful right up
until she had crazy pain. And during this process there's
(27:54):
so much stuff that I mean, I won't dive into,
but the cancer kept closing down on different parts of
our body, and then we'd have to go and do
a different surgery or this or that, and it just
felt like we were at war every day, just trying
to keep her alive in hopes that the treatment would
kick in and start working. And again she was so hopeful.
(28:14):
I have a text from her. She was in and
I was out with the kids, and she said, Chan,
I just think we're going to beat this.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
And it was one of the last techs she sent me.
She was in super pain.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
The next day we took her in and the cancer
had just exploded. It was closing down on everything, and
they told us she only had a couple of days
and that we put her on hospice and she.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Passed away a couple of days after being home.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And so, yeah, again, you just never think you're going
to be in that situation. It doesn't make sense. It's
hard to comprehend. But it was me and my two
kids to try and figure out what was next.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
So one thing that obviously we're a men's group. One
of the reasons we have this is so we can
show up for each other and be there for each other.
Were you able to open up to people at that time?
Were you able to reach out for help and kind
of just did you have? You know, I know you
have good friends and everything. What did you do to
get the support you need? Because you've got to hold
that space for your kids at the same time you're
(29:22):
trying not to fall apart yourself.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah, my brother Peyton that had gotten your cancer was phenomenal.
My parents, my best friend Garrett Courtland, and then I
shouldn't have started listing, but so many other people that
reached out. But I mean those were the core people.
They have different personalities where depending on my mood, whether
(29:45):
it was screaming or crying or like I need you
to lift me up, I got to figure out how
to do this. And yeah, they were just incredible. And
I think too, I was very lucky because me and Maddi,
I have the opportunity to have lots of conversations and
for her to set expectations for.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Me of.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
You know, how I needed to process it and how
I needed to come to terms and how I needed
to live my life. And one of the things she
told me before she passed away is living for the kids,
and before you know it, you'll be living it for
you again. And the amount of times I leaned into that,
and she had talked to her sister, my friends and
family and just she was the kind of person that
(30:30):
was thinking about me and my future and you guys
got to lift him up. You got to keep him
going for him, for the kids, and so leaning on
that and what she had told friends and family was
big too.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
You Thanks for sharing, man. One of the things I
love about your story because of real estate, because of
your hard work knocking doors like when your wife got sick,
like and it makes me emotional because I think people
know so few people do this, man, But because of
your hard work, you were able to be there, like
(31:06):
you were able to spend all that time, you were
able to try everything, leave nothing regreted, like you gave
everything you had, And so I'm guessing that probably helped
a lot, just knowing, but it was because of what
you'd done when you didn't know you needed to do it.
And I try to tell people like when I was younger,
when I was hustling and working so hard, it was
like I had a quote on my wall that just said,
(31:26):
show up today for your future self. You never know
who's going to need you, because in the moment it's
not fun to pay bills, pay debts, bad investments, losing
your money. And I just knew I was at college
this one day I might be able to help some people.
I have to keep pushing, like I have to keep
I have to do this. I have to get myself
in a position financially where I can make a difference
(31:47):
in the world. And I love that part of your story.
You kind of mentioned how you got to spend all
that time and talk and everything, and I think it's
just a cool part that brings everything you've been doing
full circle. Yeah, no, it.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
I think that's the thing is, like I've always felt
this reckless abandon of like we've got to set ourselves up,
and Maddie was so supportive of that too, and that
time is sacred and even I think the one thing
I would add is that treatment. I mean, we've been
told she was gonna die in six months to a year,
and I know it sounds crazy, but we just didn't
(32:22):
believe it. And I think the power of hope, the
power of like experiencing failure and even if someone tells
you there's not a chance, living in hope is so
much better than living in fear and the opportunity I
had to go out multiple times to Mexico to doctors
because we wouldn't have taken the time away from our kids,
(32:42):
like I know us and had we just thrown our
hands up.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
We would have stayed home.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
And I have so many precious moments that I got
with just her and that we got with our kids.
But those moments that I wouldn't have taken and she
wouldn't have taken that. I'm so grateful we leaned into
hope for that window rather than just QUITNI.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
That's a beautiful man. Well, and I always you know,
this funny part about life is there's no right way
to do it. It's a beautiful mess. And in your case,
is luck would have it, is love would have it,
as God would have it. I don't know whatever, But like,
how long after your wife passes away you find this
new person in your life that you were not planning
on that you happened to you know? And I love
(33:26):
it because you had a lot of people that probably
were judging you dating too soon again or getting married
too soon again. Maybe give us some background. How quickly
after your wife's death did this all start happening? Yeah?
I think with.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Those friends that lifted me up, one of the big
things was put yourself with other people in your situation, Like,
let's get you with other people that have experienced this
and gone through this, and so I had met with
different widows, one widow especially that he just man really
like helped me process things.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
That was really good.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And then I reached out to Jessica dinner. She's here tonight,
and you know, she came over in our first conversation
was just so crazy because her answer was kind of
like it sucks and it doesn't get better and it
doesn't go away.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
That's so beautiful though, right Like Mason Sawyer is another
guy that I've had come to speak to my group,
and he said the same thing. Somebody said, how long
it take you to get over your wife's death? I'm
not over it. He's like I was hitting the bottle
two days ago. I still have really bad days.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
It's like just the honesty of like, we don't have
to make things better. Sometimes they don't have to. It's
going to just suck somebody. I mean, you know you
can very quickly get emotional about this today.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yeah, well, and I think too. Jessica's story and I'll
just tell it briefly, but she was her and her
husband were at dental school.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
They had two kids, they had.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Their third on the way, and and they went home
for Thanksgiving and why they were there. The men went
on a hunting trip and there was a horrible accident,
and in that accident, she lost her husband, tyson, her dad,
her brothers, her uncle, cousins, brother in law, grandpa, pretty
(35:21):
much all of the men in their family. And here
she is pregnant. Her sister was pregnant too, who'd lost
her husband and just left with this. I mean, abyss of,
I don't understand how you process that. I don't understand
how she's at, where she's at, any of that. And
(35:44):
so to be able to sit down with her and
see her raising these three kids, see the way that
she'd continue to show up every day, the person that
she was to come and try and help me in
this spot that I'm in, and yeah, I think I mean,
like you said, people judging dating, it's like we were
(36:04):
not dating.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
We were surviving, you know. And for her to show
up for.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Me though, and the way that she'd showed up for
her kids and all of that was just so inspiring.
And also she was the one person that was just
so real with me of like knowing what I'd been
through and knowing that when you lose your person, that
never goes away. It doesn't lighten, it doesn't lessen, but
you do learn how to carry it better. And one
(36:32):
of the things she shared in the first time that
we met was I would wish the experience on no one,
but the perspective on everyone.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
And I think I mean her family.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
I'll never be able to explain the power that these
women have and their ability to do what they did,
and just especially her story. Still I don't know how
to comprehend it. But very quickly I wanted to talk more.
I wanted to and for weeks we just talked about
Maddie and Tyson, and we talked about her dad and brothers,
(37:09):
and I think for both of us it was also
this incredible opportunity to grieve and to celebrate them. And
you know, you talk about your parenting and you talk
about those stories and your experiences and what you value
and what's important, and that was so healing and so helpful.
But also very quickly we came to realize not only
(37:29):
we're in the same situation, but so many of our
values and views and perspective and expectations of ourselfs and
what we wanted to do in the way that we
wanted to show up for our children so perfectly aligned.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
So beautiful man, And so I was so happy for
you when I found out, and because you know, I was,
you know, kind of followed your journey. I think you
called me once you guys were trying everything. You asked
me questions about ayahuasca. I think if that could help,
and I think you were just desperately trying anything you could.
And so I remember when you know your wife passed away,
(38:01):
just grieving that a little bit for you. And then
when you told me that you got remarried. You know,
it's so excited for you. And it's just a beautiful story, man.
And I just you can see how the hardships that
you went through and the things you've had to deal
with just prepares you to impact so many other people.
Like every single person here tonight is going to walk
(38:22):
away a better person. Everybody listens to this podcast is
gonna be a little bit better person. You're going to
hug their wife and kids a little bit tighter and
get to maybe try a little bit harder to build
the life that they've been wanting to have. And you're
such a good example of that, man, And so I
just appreciate you, and I know a lot of people
will probably want to continue to follow you, but we'll
do ittle Q and A here with the audience. But
(38:42):
what's the best place or the for people to reach
out to you? Where do we send them? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (38:47):
No, probably just Instagram Chandler David Smith. I've got a
website too.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
And I'm you know, sharing my story there with life
and I'm you know, now being remarried. We've got five
kids and it's a party every freaking day. Our boys
won the championship football game this last year that I coached,
and they're all I didn't talk about that much, but
I mean we've got five kids between four and eight, fun,
(39:13):
two girls that are starting kindergart garden, two boys going
into second grade, and then the oldest girl above them,
and so it is just I mean, man, it's so
hard to process the bad, but we're feeling beyond blessed
at the good and where they're at and how healthy
they are and the life we're able to provide for them,
and the life that we have and our love for
(39:35):
each other in our situation and so many things that
are that are hard. But I think that's the one
thing I would add is just it's I don't know.
It's very easy to say you should have hope, and
it's very easy to push that with the hard struggles
and it's really really hard and the really really hard
(39:55):
stuff comes. And I know there are so many people
with different struggles and everyone's going to have their hardest
thing at some point.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
And I would just tell you that, like, just.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Hold on to hope because I don't know when, I
don't know why, I don't know what's going to pan out,
but living in hope is always going to pan out
better for you than living in the fear and just
throwing up your hands and giving up.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Hey man, well, my one of my all time favorite
movies is Shawsha and Redemption and he talks about hope
and you know, being the one thing that kept him
going to that movie. Just it's that I always think
of that and appreciate you man, such a gift. Everybody
can give it up for Chandler. Thank you again for
(40:38):
listening to The Jimmy Rex Show. And if you liked
what you heard, please like and subscribe. It really helps
me to get better guests, to be able to get
the type of people on this podcast. It's going to
make it the most interesting. Also wanted everybody about my
podcast studio, The Rookery Studios, now available in Salt Lake
City and or in Utah. If you live in Utah
(40:59):
and want to produce your podcasts, we take all of
the guests, work out of it for you and make
it so simple. All you do is you come in,
you sit down, you talk, and leave. We record it,
edit it, even post it for you. If interested in
doing your own podcast, visit our Instagram and send us
a DM Rookery Studios, or go to our website, The
(41:19):
Rookery Studios dot com
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Jimmy Rex Show.
And this is another one of our live podcasts that
we did just a couple of days ago. This was
with Chandler Smith. He's one of my closest good friends.
Has hundreds of real estate properties and doors, gyms, all
sorts of things. Really just one of the most amazing
humans I think I've ever come across. His wife passed
(00:23):
away a couple of years back, and we talk about
that on the podcast. We talk about how real estate
investing helped him have the time and resources to spend
all the money and time that he could both trying
to keep his wife alive, but also being able to
cherish and honor the time they had together. So just
a really special podcast. Really enjoyed doing this again. We
did this with a live audience. We do this every
(00:44):
single month in Lehigh, Utah. So if you ever want
to come to one of these live podcasts, you get
to be a part of it. It's a networking night.
Just follow me on my Instagram, mister Jimmy Rex and
our next live podcast coming up again every single month
here couple of weeks. Now with that, I will talk
about today's sponsor, which is Bucked Up Protein. I've got
(01:05):
here the Orange Cream. This is their lightly carbonated protein drink.
It's one hundred calories, no sugar, no fat, just an
amazing beverage, caffeine free. So I have one of these
every morning. It's got one hundred calories, twenty five grams
of protein, and it's a huge part of my diet
in my day. So with that, let's get to the
podcast with Chandler Smith. Chandler, thanks for being here, my friend.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Hey, thanks for having me. This is different with the
crowd and everything.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
It's a little bit more intense. Right, you can't just
call a pause in the middle of the podcast and go,
you know, time out, use the bathroom, whatever you need to. So, dude,
let's get right into the real estate stuff. I think
right now, the more I talk to people in their
twenties and their thirties, you know, Tucker Carlson talked about
this a little bit the other day at the Turning
Point event, but he said, you know, there's really a
(02:00):
lack of hope for this younger generation and their ability
to buy real estate, both for themselves and to invest in.
And I remember when I was in my early twenties.
It was a pretty easy path. Homes were around one
hundred thousand dollars, a lot of them. You just knew
you were going to be able to buy investment properties.
And I see now like I feel for the younger generation.
You know, the average house in Utahs six hundred thousand dollars.
(02:21):
Now there's basically nothing under you know, four or five
hundred thousand. Where does one start that wants to get
into real estate investing? Where would you start if you
were starting over again today? You know?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I think the first thing I would tell people, and
it's the same thing I would tell door to door
sales reps after they knocked the whole morning and nobody
was even slightly interested. Four other companies had been through,
and they're so depressed, and I would remind them that
another couple of doors might be that guy that was
waiting by his door to weigh overpay for past control
because he just wanted it done right then. And I
(02:53):
think that there are lots of different things that you
can do and still tons of opportunities. So the first
thing I would tell him is, hey, don't stress, there's
still opportunities there.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
You might have to work harder.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
But that's a big reason a lot of people aren't
out there finding them is because they feel like there's
just not a shot, and there really are still.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And so okay, so there's and I have always said,
there's opportunity in every market, right it's your job to
kind of figure out what that looks like. If you were, though,
in your early twenties right now, where would you start.
Are you knocking doors to find deals, are you, you know,
looking for distressed properties, are you talking to reltors? What
angle would you take?
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I think, first off, if I'm in a situation where
I get house hack, there's still opportunities there, especially if
you find the right seller. And if you don't have
enough money to get into real estate, most likely you
can find time and you can use that to your advantage.
And so yeah, I'd be knocking doors, I'd be polling lists,
I'd be sending out millers, I'd be doing anything and
everything I could in my location to go and find
(03:46):
those deals. I think the other thing I would say
is there's still lots of markets, and I've started to
move into these markets in the Midwest where you can
find deals for very reasonable prices. That have very strong
cash flow, and I think a lot of people are
going there because there's a massive demand for places to rent,
and people are ending up there because it is cheaper,
and in turn, I think a lot of these properties
(04:08):
are very easy to purchase and get into. I had
a property this week with my community that was one
hundred and twenty thousand dollars had a potential tenant at
sixteen hundred dollars, and those are phenomenal numbers. This is
a clean, turnkey property, and those are still out there.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
How do you get over the fear of buying something
that's unown. I think a lot of people hear you
talk about going to the Midwest or something, you know.
I remember I didn't buy my first property out of
Utah that I couldn't go physically visit until I've been
investing in real estate for probably fifteen years. I own
fourteen homes in Florida now that I've never seen, right,
it doesn't bother me at all, But I remember being
a little bit terrified to just buy something in this
(04:42):
place I know nothing about, you know, and I mean
we live in an area. Now you can get a
lot of information, you can see a lot of things.
But how do you help somebody that wants to invest,
but you know there aren't great opportunities maybe where they live,
but like you said, you know we're selling a lot
of hobs right now in Arkansas, in Oklahoma, some of
these others where you can still get cash flow. How
do you help somebody get over the fear of just
(05:03):
taking that plunge as a real estate investor?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
You know, I think first off is just education. We
have more opportunities right now for education than anywhere else.
I'll plug in questions on chat GPT and I'm like, man,
why would anyone invest in a course or school or
anything when it really plugs out what you need to
look into? All the information, the steps, the due diligence,
all of that.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
It's so accessible.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
And so if you can just over educate yourself, get
the right books, get in there, ask questions, you can
get ninety ninety five percent of that confidence. And then
I would say, once you're there where you're like, hey,
I'm mostly there, there's always going to be that little
bit of risk you're taking.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
It's always going to be scary.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And I've seen so many people that have made the
leap on a terrible investment proper Like I look at
it and I say, what are you thinking? But that
was the leap they needed to take to learn that
lesson and to get the confidence to say, hey, my
worst case scenario happened and it wasn't that bad, so
let's try it again.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
That's funny that you say that. I always ask the question,
this is my number one question when I'm investing in anything,
or you know, can I live with the worst case scenario?
And you have to know the worst case scenario, and
they have to say, what would my life look like
if worst case scenario hits? And I'll be damned if
forst case scenario didn't happen a couple of times, but
as you can deal with because I remember in two
thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, you know, my
income was real estate. I'd invested in the brokerage, the
(06:16):
Keller Williams brokerage that just opened the norm, so my
investments were all in real estate. And then also I
was buying pure real estate as investments. So when the
market turned and I didn't have cash flow on a
lot of these things, I got in really deep trouble.
And I just remember feeling so stressed, and I worked
so hard, and by the time I turned thirty years old,
I finally had gotten rid of all the bad properties.
(06:39):
I had no assets but no debt. And I think
that's one of the things that has helped me so
much is I got to live in that place where
so many people are afraid of of like whoa what
if everything goes wrong? Which it did everything. I mean,
if every day you're watching new realtors walk out of
the office with their stuff and it wasn't that bad,
you kind of I think it's a gift that we
give ourselves to go to rock bottom. You get there
(07:00):
and you go life's still okay. And I think as
long as you can you know, tell yourself or kind
of convince yourself of like what do I truly value,
then all of a sudden it's not so scary to
invest in a house or invest in apartment complex or
whatever that might be. But for you, what do you
look for? Then? What are the things that you're looking
for when you're looking for a real estate investment property?
(07:21):
Like what are your non negotiables or what are the
things that really stand out to you to make you
know it's a good deal.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, I think for me, I've always been someone that
I wanted to find something with extremely strong cash flow,
because again, when I looked at my worst case scenario,
I could say, hey, like I could cut my rents
way down and still be at break even. And I
know we live in a world now where people are justifying, hey,
it's okay to buy something you're losing one two hundred
dollars a month watching.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
The same movie that I've already watched. Why they're doing
it again? What are they doing here?
Speaker 2 (07:49):
And so I would just say when people say, look,
I hop on the MLS and I'm not finding stuff
that meets your criteria, there's.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
A reason for that.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
And I think it's because a lot of people are
buying properties that they may or may not end up
in trouble if things do turn where Alternatively, the deals
that matter, the deals that are good, just like anything
in life, they're gonna take extra work, they're gonna take
a lot of back and forth, they're gonna take you know,
doing what's required to find off market deals. And so yeah,
I think that's what I would say.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
So you started buying a lot of residential real estate,
but then you've kind of pivoted into other things. You
buy gyms now, and you buy a lot of storage units.
What are the advantages and disadvantage of single family homes
versus some of those assets.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
You know, so I bought.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
What happened is there is a gym that went in
their phenomenal business that's Fit one in Idaho, and they
were in a place where they wanted to grow, and
so they had purchased their building and they owned the business.
So I have nothing to do with the business, but
they said, hey, we want to scale, we want more
money in this, and so I got into that building
at a phenomenal cap rate, great returns. The biggest difference,
(08:54):
I would say is that is no stress. Now I
know what will be stress if that ever goes vac
at some point, it'll be a lot of stress because it's,
you know, five million dollar building, but you do nothing
with management. And with a triple net lease, they're taking
care of the taxes, expenses, all of it, and so
you just watch the check show up. So I would
say that's the biggest advantage of that kind of investment
(09:16):
is it takes zero mind power as soon as you've
made it, where the rentals you still have evictions that
you hear about. You still have people that are coming
and going, You have different renovations, and there are ways
to get on top of those stresses. But I know
that for a lot of people is a little too much.
Same with the storage units, but they're even easier because
there's always someone new to put in there and it
comes with its own unique problems.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
But for me, they're kind of all the same thing.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
If you get a good investment and you have management
set up properly for whatever it is, it all is
pretty similar and pretty easy.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Makes sense. What's your thoughts on partnering with people in
real estate deals. I've done it probably twenty different times.
Eighteen times it went amazing, and two of them ruined
a relationship right, and it bothers me so much because
I did everything right you put it and writing. But
some people they want to get into real estate, but
they're a little bit afraid and they're not very savvy,
(10:05):
and then like they don't really understand certain things about it,
and so they end up getting mad at you over
things that were very clear and writing and things like that.
How do you deal or what's your thoughts? I guess
in general with partnering with people on real estate.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I historically have stayed away from it, not because I
don't think it can be a good thing.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
The only two.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Partnerships I've done are with my brother and my best
friend Garrett Myers, and with both of those relationships it
was something where from the beginning we got extremely clear
where we felt like both of us were bringing way
more to the table. For with my brother, for instance,
he had more loans. I didn't have any more. Reddy
Fanny learn.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
That's why I started partnering with everything.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Yeah, And so that made it very beneficial because we
could use incredible financing and he just turned it over
to me and I said, hey, let's just plan on
the worst worst case scenario ends up down the road.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
It worked out great.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I was able to buy him out of it after
cash flow really well, and it was phenomenal. But my
buddy Garrett, he had found the deal, but he didn't
have the confidence to jump into storage unions yet. He
knew nothing about it. He knew the risks of real estate,
but it was this perfect deal of Hey, Chandler, I'll
bring the deal. I want you to manage run everything,
and we'll be happy with whatever comes, and that again
has just been so much fun and very easy. And
(11:19):
so I think making sure you're both bringing more than
expected to the table to where it's hard to go
wrong with it, and then getting very clear, even if
you're doing with friends or family, get crystal clear on
what that arrangement is and what it will be if
things do go wrong.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
So one of the first times I ever met you,
we went up to Park City. I just bought a
couple of condos that are skiing ski out. We were
going to make a video for your YouTube. By the way,
this is hilarious. Those still aren't finished. Oh no, four
years later. I'm not terribly mad about it, because I'm
just kind of like, Okay, there's markets still kind of
going up and I don't have to put the rest
of money out. But yeah, I was supposed to be
(11:57):
done like two years ago. But one thing I noticed
is it's just the effort that you were putting into
building a real YouTube channel. And I think a lot
of people want to have success on YouTube. It's a
number one thing that you know, the younger generation wants
is either want a job in social media marketing or
they want to be an influencer. Give us a little
bit of background about just exactly how much effort and
(12:18):
time you put into building the channel that you have now,
and then maybe some of the benefits that it gives
you as a real estate investor.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Yeah, it has been a ton of work, and it's
one of those things that I think, no matter what
it brings, even though there's a lot, I'll always remember
those early years where it's like, man, I am putting
in so many hours at such a minimal return.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
I mean, it is just a grind totaing to have
anything fought. I don't even know.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
I mean I've been at it six or seven years,
and the first I mean it's embarrassing. At the time,
my salesforce was doing, you know, thirty million in sales
a year. I had tons of rental year teams. Yeah, yeah,
I had tons of I think it was over one
hundred units already at that point. And I'm posting these
videos like a professional and I'm getting ninety views, and
it was embarrassing. I had my sales reps being like, dude,
(13:05):
what are you doing? And so just the courage it
takes to push through that uncomfortable.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I've been pushing that courage for like seven.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Years, I think too.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
The thing I've realized is there are two pain points
with YouTube or social media.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
You have people that are very successful.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
In their business, they want to do a social media
and the problem is they want to hire someone, they
want to turn it off, they want to let them
do it. And I totally understand that thought process, but
it's very tricky to get that to stick, to get
someone to care the way you do, and to do
it on that level to get it to perform.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
The other person is the person that doesn't.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Have anything that they've done, and so they can put
all their time and their attention and all of it
into it, but they don't have a lot to bring
to the table and value. And so if you're willing
to get to the point where you've done things that
you can talk about and then get obsessed with what
are people going to click?
Speaker 3 (13:55):
What are people going to view?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
And for me as a salesman, it was so fun
to look at the data and say where are people
dropping off? And why what am I doing to connect?
And what am I doing that's losing people?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And we said something really important, like the people I
like to follow, Tom Bill and Andy Frisella, Gary Vee
at my leg. They all built really successful lives first
and then went into social media. Right. Everything that I've
put out on social media that's done well was because
of my experience and my actual things that I've done.
And I tell people, you see some of the young
people that just want to blow up on social media,
(14:27):
It's like, dude, why would anyone listen to you. It's
like when I was a realter, when I was in
my mid twenties. You know, you have to find the
thing that makes you stand out versus everybody else. At
the time, I had no experience, and so my entire
pitch was I'm going to work eighty hours a week.
You can call me at midnight. I don't have a
family that other agents got to go home to their kids.
I'm going to be looking for homes all night. And
(14:47):
I think, especially for younger people, if you're going to
build a social media channel, it's not there's this like
fault idea that you should fake it till you make it,
and I think it's the opposite. I think you just
have to find the thing that you actually do well well.
And if you don't put down the phone and go
do something until you do it. Well. I remember I
had this like twenty five year old kid hit me
up and I happened to be near his house, so
(15:09):
we went to lunch and he was dead set on
being a men's coach and he's twenty five, and I
just asked him to point brank, why would anybody listen
to you? What have you done? And and he goes, well,
you know, I sold like ninety door to door and
I said ninety Like what? And it was pested. I
was like, bro, I was like, go climb everest or something.
At least do something so somebody wants to listen to you.
(15:31):
You know. I was like, you just haven't done anything yet.
And so I think with social media, I think what
helped you. I think the reason why your content blew
it up so fast is you really were doing it
like you already had the success. That was the part
that stood out to me is you were already way
well beyond in your real estate investing career and you
were just sharing real life examples of the things you've done.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Well, and I think the thing I'd add to that
is there are lots of people that maybe haven't done
something and they're discouraged from doing social media.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
And the one example I would give you just because
I don't want you to throw up your hands.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
And I had a videographer that worked with me for
well over a year and he just had an obsession
with video and very much wanted this, but was willing
to just grind it out making videos for me, making
videos for other people, just all in on videos while
having his own social media that he was building.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
And he got better and better at making these videos.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
And now to the point he's blown up on social media.
And I think people see that and they say, oh, like,
I can do that too, I can make it. And
it's like, no, you don't know how many hours he's
got into editing videos to create this, how many hours
he's helped other YouTubers, and how many hours he's seen
what's worked for them and what doesn't and listen to
what they had to say. And so shout out to Kay.
(16:41):
And he was one of the videographers. Now he's too
expensive for me to afford him because he's crushing it.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
So yeah, it's funny you say that because I had
a guy that did photo and video for me early on,
and we are the day and he started putting out
his own content and his videos were awesome. I was like, oh,
I'm going to have him do some of these for me.
But he did like three, and you could tell they
took a lot of time, Like each one of these
had to take a dozen hours, if not more twenty hours.
I mean, it was really well put together. And then
he just stopped doing them. And they were getting forty
(17:06):
fifty thousand views early on because they were so good.
But that's the thing that you know, every successful person,
whether it's social media, at real estate, investing, water else,
it's the consistency. It's not giving up when you have
something go wrong. Because you know so many people I
know they did one real estate deal and it didn't
go well, and they just they're like, that's definitely not
for me, and I did. I made the stay mistake
(17:27):
in the stock market. When I was twenty one years
or nineteen years old, I had like five thousand dollars.
I'm going on my Mormon mission, so I give to
my parents stockbroker dude who didn't know shit. And I
came back the dot com bubble burst and I had
like twelve hundred bucks left and I had to pay
him a fee to get my money out, and I
was like, this is the dumbest shit I've ever seen,
and I'm never doing the stock market again. And I
(17:49):
just it's one of my big regrets in life that
I didn't put money away every month in the stock market.
But the point of it is, you know, I think
sometimes we have one failure and we think, oh, I
guess this isn't for me. And I can't tell you
how many real estate deals I bought that I wrote
a check to sell. I mean a dozen't maybe you know,
And I mean flips where I lost two hundred thousand
dollars houses that I had two homes in seven when
(18:10):
the market crashed it I had to sell the home
for what I could get, but the bank made me
keep the loan at a zero percent interest, right, and
I had to just pay it off. You guys want
to be depressed. Have a mortgage on a house that
you no longer own. That's a fun one. So the
point what I'm getting at is is like, with the failures,
what advice do you have for people? If or maybe
you could talk about one of your failures and how
(18:32):
you worked through that. An early failure you had in
real estate and maybe how you push through that.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah, I think, and I'm all over the place so
that you say, because there's a lot I want to say,
But I think so often people want to find their
passion or they want to find get to that point,
and there are lots of people that drop out early
before getting successful. But I don't think we talk as
much about the people that are really close or even hit.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Their ten thousand hours.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
They have the skill set, they have to know how,
but they're not getting paid in accordance with what they're
now worth, and then they jump ship. I think so
often we have this problem of the grass is greener
before we just stick with it.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
And I think for me.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
You know, I've had lots of failures with bad deals
and other stuff, but the one that I've held onto
the most was starting out with order do or sales
because that every time things get hard, I think about
that situation because I'd gone two full weeks without a
cell after going first year, my very first year. Two weeks,
everyone's whispering behind my back. They're saying, dude, you should
(19:30):
just go home, like you're losing money. It doesn't make sense.
All my friends we had a team of forty people.
Everyone else out there had to sale, and so I'm
just the dud. And I think getting to the point
where I said, I don't care. I'm not going home
until I get a sale, until I can learn how
to sell. And after two weeks of selling nothing being
the lowest, once I got that cell, I had put
(19:51):
in so much time figuring out sales that I took
off and so I ended up breaking the rookie record
that year active, going from nothing to proving to myself,
hey I can do this and I can be the
best at it. And I think the more situations where
you just fail so hard and you get back up.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
And then you see the success.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Then when things get hard again, it's so much easier
to say, hey, I've been here before, I got this.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah. I think we you know, one of my sayings
in life is move on from everything quickly, whether good
or bad. But sometimes we have to. You know, we
have like a vision board. A lot of people put
a vision board to what they want, but I also
have one of the stuff I've accomplished I call my
badass board, and just all these cool things I've done,
and when I need a little boost, in my own confidence.
I'll just look at it and I'm like, oh, I've
done some pretty cool things, you know. I think I
(20:33):
can pull this off. And I think that we forget
that sometimes we don't give ourselves enough credit. We're so willing.
I call it the out of town expert with the briefcase, like,
we won't give ourselves credit, but the most random person
will come up and start talking about something, we'll just
assume they know more than us. It's got me in
a lot of trouble investing is I've given my money
to all these people that I thought were smarter than me,
and turns out they weren't. And like, I actually knew
(20:53):
a lot more than them about investing. I just needed
to stay in my lane. But I think that's an
important piece is And if you don't have that confidence,
if you haven't had the successes, it's time to go grind.
It's like I tell everybody, if you can just grind
your twenties and just give everything you have, then you're
ahead for the rest of your life. But if you
kind of screw off for kind of just half asset
in your twenties, you're playing catch up your whole life
(21:14):
and that is the decade to decide it really, and
if you're already past that, I mean, it's like, you know,
the next best day is today to get started. But
you do have to eventually get some success under your
belt so you can prove to yourself when the things
do get hard you're like, you know what, I'm the asset.
I got this.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
And I think, you know, I see so many people
where they're so close to getting that big success after failure,
and I don't think we realize how massive it is.
It's something I talk with my kids about all the
time of like, I just want to make sure when
the failure comes, you've got the gumption to get to
the wind because otherwise that's when people really get lost.
(21:51):
And it's like, just push through to the success because
then you can hold on to that forever, where if
you don't get there, then you've got to hold on
to this crap forever and that's not going to help
you in future at all.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
Yeah. Well, and that kind of leads into the next
thing I wanted to talk about with you. But I mean,
life has a weird way of just teaching us whatever
lesson we didn't sign up for sometimes, and you got
to this point where you were financially secure, you had
had all the success you wanted, you had, your family
was exactly where you wanted it, and all of a sudden,
your wife gets super sick. Maybe if you would take
(22:24):
us back to those moments. I know, I was kind
of following your journey when your wife passed away, and
kind of just if you could take us through a
little bit of the emotion of that and how you
dealt with that, how you deal with your kids during that,
and then maybe the next part of your life after that.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, at that point in my life, everything was And
how long is that? By the way, I mean right
when she got her diagnosis, we're probably pushing five years. Okay,
the last five years is like a crazy blur, but
we were crushing it.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
In every way.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
We had two kids, my salesforce had had their biggest year.
I had landed the biggest real estate deal. I purached
a thirty two unit apartment complex with just crazy numbers
on it. We had over one hundred units, and we
were growing like crazy. The YouTube channel was picking up.
And then I got a call from my brother and
(23:20):
my brother told me that he had been diagnosed with
cancer and everything fell apart.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
You know, I was a wreck.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Every I'd had hard things, but like everything worked out.
Your brother doesn't get cancer, that doesn't it doesn't happen
at least that's what I thought.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
And so I was just a real mess, like in
a really bad place. And my wife had been having
some issues with her stomach and she had already gone
into an appointment and we kind of kicked it down
the road and they said she should do a colonoscopy.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And so I'm just kind of in.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
A fait a far with my brother and just a
couple of weeks after his diagnosis and we're putting all
of our time attention into finding doctors everything. My wife
went in for this colonoscopy and she had colon cancer.
And so literally in a two or three week period,
my brother's got cancer, my wife's got cancer, both in
(24:19):
their twenties. And yeah, I don't know that part is
so it just still doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
It's hard to comprehend.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
And how did you prioritize life in that moment? Did
you know it was going to be terminal at that point?
Did you know you had a short amount of time
or did you were you hopeful that you were going
to be able to work through it?
Speaker 3 (24:39):
No, we were hopeful.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
With her, we had to do surgery and then chemo
for six months. With him, we had to do chemo
for six months, and we crashed and burned for sure.
But then I was just all hands on deck. I
stopped making YouTube videos, I lot everything with my salesforce
kind of followed the side, and I was just one
hundred percent focused on how do we get her in.
I got her into surgery as fast as possible, twisted arms,
(25:03):
anything to just push it through.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
We got her into chemo.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Same with my brother, and through chemo, we were just
feeling super hopeful. We're like, hey, if we can suffer
through this for six months, we're gonna get out of
the other side.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
And we did.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
I mean, it was absolute hell through the winter, dealing
with both of them on chemo, with some super hard
times with us and our kids and making sense of it.
And then we got out of it. We were told
that both of them were cancer free, and you know,
we just felt like we got life again. We had
started our dream homes house and we finished it.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
I was working not at all. I was going boating,
spending time.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
With my wife and kids, just put everything on the
back burner. And six months after we were told she was
cancer free, something popped up on our blood word and
so we went back in and they couldn't figure out
what it was.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
So we had to go on regular.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
Scans because we knew cancer was coming back, we just
didn't know where or how bad. And then we went
into one of the scans and met with the doctor
and he told us that she had Parrot's neil carsnomatosis,
which is a terminal diagnosis. He gave her six months
to a year to live, and so movent out to
(26:21):
the car and screamed, cried, super pissed off, confused, frustrated,
and then we looked at each other and we just said, Hey,
we're going to figure out how to beat this, like
we're going to call everyone, We're going to connect with everyone,
We're going to do anything in our power to find
a way through this.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
And as crazy as it sounds, I.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Look back and it's kind of hard how both of
us fell in this mindset. But my wife, Mattie was
just so optimistic. It got to the point where people
would come and ask how we were doing and we
were not doing good, and she would say, look, I
just want to tell people were doing good. We're gonna
make it happen. I want to lean into that. I
want to be optimistic, I want to be positive. And
(27:06):
so if I ever was showing it.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
She's like, hey, we got this, Like we're good.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
We found a treatment that we thought would give her
a chance. We leaned all into it, and for the treatment,
it was undergoing tests here, but we didn't get into
the exact program. And again I twisted arms and was
able to get the doctor to set up a team
in Mexico so that we could do it because the
(27:32):
test that was past here for testing we couldn't get into. Wow,
and so we were flying down to Mexico to work
with him to get this treatment, and we just were
doing everything, and honestly, we were so hopeful right up
until she had crazy pain. And during this process there's
(27:54):
so much stuff that I mean, I won't dive into,
but the cancer kept closing down on different parts of
our body, and then we'd have to go and do
a different surgery or this or that, and it just
felt like we were at war every day, just trying
to keep her alive in hopes that the treatment would
kick in and start working. And again she was so hopeful.
(28:14):
I have a text from her. She was in and
I was out with the kids, and she said, Chan,
I just think we're going to beat this.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
And it was one of the last techs she sent me.
She was in super pain.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
The next day we took her in and the cancer
had just exploded. It was closing down on everything, and
they told us she only had a couple of days
and that we put her on hospice and she.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Passed away a couple of days after being home.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
And so, yeah, again, you just never think you're going
to be in that situation. It doesn't make sense. It's
hard to comprehend. But it was me and my two
kids to try and figure out what was next.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
So one thing that obviously we're a men's group. One
of the reasons we have this is so we can
show up for each other and be there for each other.
Were you able to open up to people at that time?
Were you able to reach out for help and kind
of just did you have? You know, I know you
have good friends and everything. What did you do to
get the support you need? Because you've got to hold
that space for your kids at the same time you're
(29:22):
trying not to fall apart yourself.
Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah, my brother Peyton that had gotten your cancer was phenomenal.
My parents, my best friend Garrett Courtland, and then I
shouldn't have started listing, but so many other people that
reached out. But I mean those were the core people.
They have different personalities where depending on my mood, whether
(29:45):
it was screaming or crying or like I need you
to lift me up, I got to figure out how
to do this. And yeah, they were just incredible. And
I think too, I was very lucky because me and Maddi,
I have the opportunity to have lots of conversations and
for her to set expectations for.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Me of.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
You know, how I needed to process it and how
I needed to come to terms and how I needed
to live my life. And one of the things she
told me before she passed away is living for the kids,
and before you know it, you'll be living it for
you again. And the amount of times I leaned into that,
and she had talked to her sister, my friends and
family and just she was the kind of person that
(30:30):
was thinking about me and my future and you guys
got to lift him up. You got to keep him
going for him, for the kids, and so leaning on
that and what she had told friends and family was
big too.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
You Thanks for sharing, man. One of the things I
love about your story because of real estate, because of
your hard work knocking doors like when your wife got sick,
like and it makes me emotional because I think people
know so few people do this, man, But because of
your hard work, you were able to be there, like
(31:06):
you were able to spend all that time, you were
able to try everything, leave nothing regreted, like you gave
everything you had, And so I'm guessing that probably helped
a lot, just knowing, but it was because of what
you'd done when you didn't know you needed to do it.
And I try to tell people like when I was younger,
when I was hustling and working so hard, it was
like I had a quote on my wall that just said,
(31:26):
show up today for your future self. You never know
who's going to need you, because in the moment it's
not fun to pay bills, pay debts, bad investments, losing
your money. And I just knew I was at college
this one day I might be able to help some people.
I have to keep pushing, like I have to keep
I have to do this. I have to get myself
in a position financially where I can make a difference
(31:47):
in the world. And I love that part of your story.
You kind of mentioned how you got to spend all
that time and talk and everything, and I think it's
just a cool part that brings everything you've been doing
full circle. Yeah, no, it.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
I think that's the thing is, like I've always felt
this reckless abandon of like we've got to set ourselves up,
and Maddie was so supportive of that too, and that
time is sacred and even I think the one thing
I would add is that treatment. I mean, we've been
told she was gonna die in six months to a year,
and I know it sounds crazy, but we just didn't
(32:22):
believe it. And I think the power of hope, the
power of like experiencing failure and even if someone tells
you there's not a chance, living in hope is so
much better than living in fear and the opportunity I
had to go out multiple times to Mexico to doctors
because we wouldn't have taken the time away from our kids,
(32:42):
like I know us and had we just thrown our
hands up.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
We would have stayed home.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
And I have so many precious moments that I got
with just her and that we got with our kids.
But those moments that I wouldn't have taken and she
wouldn't have taken that. I'm so grateful we leaned into
hope for that window rather than just QUITNI.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
That's a beautiful man. Well, and I always you know,
this funny part about life is there's no right way
to do it. It's a beautiful mess. And in your case,
is luck would have it, is love would have it,
as God would have it. I don't know whatever, But like,
how long after your wife passes away you find this
new person in your life that you were not planning
on that you happened to you know? And I love
(33:26):
it because you had a lot of people that probably
were judging you dating too soon again or getting married
too soon again. Maybe give us some background. How quickly
after your wife's death did this all start happening? Yeah?
I think with.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Those friends that lifted me up, one of the big
things was put yourself with other people in your situation, Like,
let's get you with other people that have experienced this
and gone through this, and so I had met with
different widows, one widow especially that he just man really
like helped me process things.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
That was really good.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
And then I reached out to Jessica dinner. She's here tonight,
and you know, she came over in our first conversation
was just so crazy because her answer was kind of
like it sucks and it doesn't get better and it
doesn't go away.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
That's so beautiful though, right Like Mason Sawyer is another
guy that I've had come to speak to my group,
and he said the same thing. Somebody said, how long
it take you to get over your wife's death? I'm
not over it. He's like I was hitting the bottle
two days ago. I still have really bad days.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
It's like just the honesty of like, we don't have
to make things better. Sometimes they don't have to. It's
going to just suck somebody. I mean, you know you
can very quickly get emotional about this today.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yeah, well, and I think too. Jessica's story and I'll
just tell it briefly, but she was her and her
husband were at dental school.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
They had two kids, they had.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Their third on the way, and and they went home
for Thanksgiving and why they were there. The men went
on a hunting trip and there was a horrible accident,
and in that accident, she lost her husband, tyson, her dad,
her brothers, her uncle, cousins, brother in law, grandpa, pretty
(35:21):
much all of the men in their family. And here
she is pregnant. Her sister was pregnant too, who'd lost
her husband and just left with this. I mean, abyss of,
I don't understand how you process that. I don't understand
how she's at, where she's at, any of that. And
(35:44):
so to be able to sit down with her and
see her raising these three kids, see the way that
she'd continue to show up every day, the person that
she was to come and try and help me in
this spot that I'm in, and yeah, I think I mean,
like you said, people judging dating, it's like we were
(36:04):
not dating.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
We were surviving, you know. And for her to show
up for.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Me though, and the way that she'd showed up for
her kids and all of that was just so inspiring.
And also she was the one person that was just
so real with me of like knowing what I'd been
through and knowing that when you lose your person, that
never goes away. It doesn't lighten, it doesn't lessen, but
you do learn how to carry it better. And one
(36:32):
of the things she shared in the first time that
we met was I would wish the experience on no one,
but the perspective on everyone.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
And I think I mean her family.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
I'll never be able to explain the power that these
women have and their ability to do what they did,
and just especially her story. Still I don't know how
to comprehend it. But very quickly I wanted to talk more.
I wanted to and for weeks we just talked about
Maddie and Tyson, and we talked about her dad and brothers,
(37:09):
and I think for both of us it was also
this incredible opportunity to grieve and to celebrate them. And
you know, you talk about your parenting and you talk
about those stories and your experiences and what you value
and what's important, and that was so healing and so helpful.
But also very quickly we came to realize not only
(37:29):
we're in the same situation, but so many of our
values and views and perspective and expectations of ourselfs and
what we wanted to do in the way that we
wanted to show up for our children so perfectly aligned.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
So beautiful man, And so I was so happy for
you when I found out, and because you know, I was,
you know, kind of followed your journey. I think you
called me once you guys were trying everything. You asked
me questions about ayahuasca. I think if that could help,
and I think you were just desperately trying anything you could.
And so I remember when you know your wife passed away,
(38:01):
just grieving that a little bit for you. And then
when you told me that you got remarried. You know,
it's so excited for you. And it's just a beautiful story, man.
And I just you can see how the hardships that
you went through and the things you've had to deal
with just prepares you to impact so many other people.
Like every single person here tonight is going to walk
(38:22):
away a better person. Everybody listens to this podcast is
gonna be a little bit better person. You're going to
hug their wife and kids a little bit tighter and
get to maybe try a little bit harder to build
the life that they've been wanting to have. And you're
such a good example of that, man, And so I
just appreciate you, and I know a lot of people
will probably want to continue to follow you, but we'll
do ittle Q and A here with the audience. But
(38:42):
what's the best place or the for people to reach
out to you? Where do we send them? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (38:47):
No, probably just Instagram Chandler David Smith. I've got a
website too.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
And I'm you know, sharing my story there with life
and I'm you know, now being remarried. We've got five
kids and it's a party every freaking day. Our boys
won the championship football game this last year that I coached,
and they're all I didn't talk about that much, but
I mean we've got five kids between four and eight, fun,
(39:13):
two girls that are starting kindergart garden, two boys going
into second grade, and then the oldest girl above them,
and so it is just I mean, man, it's so
hard to process the bad, but we're feeling beyond blessed
at the good and where they're at and how healthy
they are and the life we're able to provide for them,
and the life that we have and our love for
(39:35):
each other in our situation and so many things that
are that are hard. But I think that's the one
thing I would add is just it's I don't know.
It's very easy to say you should have hope, and
it's very easy to push that with the hard struggles
and it's really really hard and the really really hard
(39:55):
stuff comes. And I know there are so many people
with different struggles and everyone's going to have their hardest
thing at some point.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
And I would just tell you that, like, just.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Hold on to hope because I don't know when, I
don't know why, I don't know what's going to pan out,
but living in hope is always going to pan out
better for you than living in the fear and just
throwing up your hands and giving up.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Hey man, well, my one of my all time favorite
movies is Shawsha and Redemption and he talks about hope
and you know, being the one thing that kept him
going to that movie. Just it's that I always think
of that and appreciate you man, such a gift. Everybody
can give it up for Chandler. Thank you again for
(40:38):
listening to The Jimmy Rex Show. And if you liked
what you heard, please like and subscribe. It really helps
me to get better guests, to be able to get
the type of people on this podcast. It's going to
make it the most interesting. Also wanted everybody about my
podcast studio, The Rookery Studios, now available in Salt Lake
City and or in Utah. If you live in Utah
(40:59):
and want to produce your podcasts, we take all of
the guests, work out of it for you and make
it so simple. All you do is you come in,
you sit down, you talk, and leave. We record it,
edit it, even post it for you. If interested in
doing your own podcast, visit our Instagram and send us
a DM Rookery Studios, or go to our website, The
(41:19):
Rookery Studios dot com
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