Linda McKissack’s Real Estate Comeback: Lessons in Overcoming Debt and Building Wealth

Seasoned real estate investor Linda McKissack recently spoke with Sharad Mehta in a REsimpli podcast episode about her amazing journey’s start in the late 80s, after a major financial loss. When a business endeavor failed, Linda and her husband discovered they owed $600,000; this spurred them into real estate. They started buying real estate despite their financial problems, and eventually this became a long-term wealth building plan. Their portfolio now consists of 65 single-family houses, holiday rentals, and commercial properties—including recent sales to Hilton of vacation homes.

Linda stressed throughout the interview the need to learn from mistakes and how reading books like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” changed her perspective on financial success. Her success comes from mentoring, audacity, and lifetime learning. About her profession, she regrets not diversifying early and raising her capital earlier. Today Linda goes beyond the narrow viewpoint that prevented her from stressing the need to select the appropriate partners to grow her company.

Linda stresses the significance of overcoming challenges and learning from past mistakes as she thinks that sometimes limiting ideas constitute the main hindrance. Linda says the tipping moment occurs when one’s misery of remaining the same overcomes their fear of change. Surrounded by motivated people enables her to keep on target to reach increasingly demanding objectives.

Linda also spoke about the two different kinds of entrepreneurs—those motivated by lifestyle and those by success. While achievers are continually looking for fresh challenges, those with a lifestyle orientation choose a certain degree of living and concentrate on enjoying life. Success, to Linda, is about discovering delight in pursuits she likes and enabling others to grow.

First Linda questions under tough conditions what saps her energy—a person or a project? Should it be something she finds uncomfortable, she assigns or seeks assistance from another individual. Her “who, not how” approach guides her in selecting the appropriate team members to support goal attainment. Success for Linda is in action; fast reaction when anything goes wrong; and continual feedback loop minimizing.

Apart from her work, Linda loves pickleball, biohacking study of novel health cures, and family get-togethers.

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Transcript:

Linda McKissack  1:02  

Good afternoon. Can you hear me?

Sharad Mehta  1:07  

Hey, Linda, how are you I’m good. How are you good? Good, good, cool. How you doing today?

Linda McKissack  1:14  

I am doing great. I’m about to head to Greece in two days. So two more podcasts, and I’m

Sharad Mehta  1:21  

off. Oh, nice, yeah, yeah, this is pretty much my last call for the day. So yeah, I’m looking forward to just having a nice, relaxing rest of the week. Any questions about the podcast? Nope. Okay, perfect. And you can hear me, good, yep. No echo on my side. No echo. Perfect, perfect. Okay, cool. Alright, we can, and just to make sure, Linda, make it sack,

Linda McKissack  1:54  

that’s correct,

Sharad Mehta  1:55  

perfect. Alright, let’s go. It’s recording. And then, just generally, when we, like do the podcast, I don’t have any preset question, so I ask question based on kind of, you know, your experience and whatnot. And then we’ll go in the direction, unless there’s something particular that you want to talk about. Okay,

Linda McKissack  2:17  

and are you primarily commercial, investing or all of it, all

Sharad Mehta  2:21  

of it, primarily our listeners are residential investors, perfect, okay, perfect, cool. All right, we can start. Hey guys. This is Sharad with REsimpli, host of the REsimpli podcast, bringing you another super special guest, Linda mesack on this podcast. Linda, welcome to REsimpli podcast. How are you?

Linda McKissack  2:47  

Thank you. I am super happy to be here. Thanks for asking me. Absolutely my

Sharad Mehta  2:51  

pleasure. Linda, tell us a little bit about yourself. Where do you live and how are you related to real estate investing or real estate business.

Linda McKissack  3:01  

Okay, so I actually live in Texas, although I’m not here all the time. I’m all over the place, between Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, Missouri and California. Travel quite a bit for businesses and investments that we have in other locations. But I live, and have always lived in Texas, and I got in the real estate business in the late 80s, early 90s, because I needed to make some money. And actually got in on the real estate sales side because my husband was running restaurants and nightclubs, and we actually had to sell one for $600,000 less than we owed against it. So it did an immediate have to which always say, the worst thing that happens to you winds up being the greatest blessing that happens to you, if you give it long enough and you learn what you need to learn from it. So that got me into real estate sales, and Robert Kiyosaki book Cash Flow Quadrant gave us the answers of how to be prepared in the future, so that we didn’t have a gradually and suddenly that disrupted our life, like that one. Did that economy crash in Texas? Did in the late 80s, early 90s? Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  4:12  

that’s 600,000 that’s a lot of money more than Yeah, sorry. I mean yeah, you’re but you’re absolutely right. Our greatest blessings come from the greatest failures that we have, if we’re willing to take them as a learning opportunity. So what is it that you’re doing now in real estate? What kind of investing are you doing now?

Linda McKissack  4:35  

Okay, so yes, we have, we’re we have 65 single family homes. We’ve had as many as 200 before we actually wrote the book hold how to find, buy and rent houses to build wealth. So our strategy has always been to hold properties because we wanted money in the future, so that we were working because we had to, not, I mean, because we wanted to, not because we had to. So we started. Buying. Actually, we started buying before we even got out of that $600,000 in debt. We eventually got that $600 $1,000 paid back, because back then the banks would actually work with you and discount the notes if you could figure out how to scrape up the cash. So we did eventually come out of that, that debt without filing bankruptcy, which helped us be able to, you know, then go ahead and eventually borrow money and things like that. But we started buying even before we got out of that debt. I found I always say, you’re either you have the money, you’re either living in it, driving it, eating it, wearing it, or somebody else has it. And in this case, a builder that I worked with, I asked him to partner because we couldn’t get financing and we didn’t have the money, and he did on the first three transactions. So one of them we flipped out of, and the other two we held. And then when we split up our partnership with him, we let him pick which house he wanted to keep, and we have that original second property that we bought, and it pays us more than my husband’s Social Security does for over 40 years of working. So that’s the power of investing. And we’ve had in the 2008 2009 we bought lots of properties on this foreclosure steps, but we’re down to 65 single families, and we have. We had 31 vacation rentals. We just closed this week selling some 25 of those properties to Hilton vacation property. So we are now down to actually five, but we have four lots, and so we’re going to go back and build that portfolio back up again and another buyer eventually. So we have single families. We have seven commercial buildings. All of our commercial buildings have one of our businesses in them as a tenant. It’s a tenant or a portion of the tenants. And then we have bought some land and made great money on that. And then we have other businesses that are cash flow businesses, but investing in single family, short term rentals and commercial

Sharad Mehta  7:09  

No, this is great, Linda, you know, I want to go back and you said, so you started buying houses, even when you had that 600 $600,000 debt that you owed, Right? That must have been, and this is like, where the $600,000 debt was about 2025, years ago, right? Or 2030, years,

Linda McKissack  7:28  

maybe a little bit more, it was actually in the late 80s. Okay, we’re still paying it off in the early 90s. So adjusted

Sharad Mehta  7:35  

for inflation, that would be like 1.2 $1.5 billion so that’s, that’s a lot of money that you owed. What was it about real estate where you felt like, Okay, I’m in the hole for in if you’re talking today’s dollars, I just say million dollars. I’m in the hole for a million dollars. But I still believe in this asset class so much, I still believe in this business so much that I’m going to not get demotivated by that million dollar, you know, debt that I have, and I’m just going to keep moving forward buying more real estate. What was that thought process like?

Linda McKissack  8:16  

Well, I think, you know, I think it gives you a have to when you start having to downsize, you have two options when something like that happens to you, it is a kick in the gut, and you do need a minute to catch your breath. But I also think it kind of gives you a bigger have to real quick, because that was not a fun place to be. We went from driving nice cars to crappy cars and you know, just, you know, so many things change that you’re like, Okay, this, this didn’t work. How do we never be in this position again? So I think you go either find people who have come out of a situation like that and let them tell you their story so that you see what’s possible. Or for us, we found books. We went and started reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Cash Flow Quadrant. And when we read Cash Flow Quadrant, we realized our problem was all of our money came from the left side of the quadrant, which was being self employed. My husband was self employed in the restaurant and nightclub business and wealthy people that don’t have stuff happened to them quite like that. They’re more prepared. They have money coming in from the other side, which is businesses or which are people making you money or assets. And we had no assets. So the good news is we had nothing to lose. We didn’t lose all of our assets. We didn’t have any we just lost all cash flow, so we really just needed to go find a way to build cash flow. And you know, some I don’t I’d never made more than minimum wage, other than waitressing and bartending at that time, so I honestly didn’t know what skills I had or what I could do. And it was my husband who suggested that I sell real estate and. It was because a mentor of his told him a long time ago, the way you get wealthy is real estate. Now my husband misunderstood him. I’m sure the man meant buy some Bill some, invest in some. He didn’t mean get a wife and get her to sell some, although he either misunderstood or misled me one or the other, I think he misunderstood. But it was a perfect fit, because in real estate sales, there, you get to decide how much your value is and how much you make, right? And so it was a perfect opportunity. I didn’t do well in the very beginning, I only made like $3,000 gross. Jimmy said, This is gross. I paid 17 for you to make three. This is not helping, but it’s because back then there was no training, no education. Once, I went out and found trainers and other people who were producing at a higher level. You know, anything in the world you want to do, somebody else has already done it. Yeah, all you have to do is go find those people, or listen to podcasts, like you have here, listen to the stories. And if those people can do it, you can do it too. And that’s what we did. We started reading books and finding people and trying to put together, what did we need to do differently moving forward so that we would never be in that kind of position again, if at all possible. So I think that’s, you know. I think that’s why, because I read books that gave me hope, or I talked to people who had lost everything and came back even stronger. So I think you have to connect to something that gives you some kind of hope or inspiration and just learn that anything that happens, it’s just, it’s just a lesson that you needed to get to make you be better and stronger and everything moving forward. And it’s not, it’s not the end all to everything. It actually can be the thing that catapults you into a different kind of success in the future. Absolutely.

Sharad Mehta  11:48  

Linda, I just want to take a moment and first of all say congratulations on all the success you’ve had, and what an inspiring story to be in that debt, and then just be have this firm belief and just know that, hey, we have to get out, rather than just look at it and be, you know, depressed about it. You said, No, we’re gonna just get up move forward. Very, very inspiring. Thank you for sharing that story. My pleasure. So you have, like, decades of experience now when you look back at everything you’ve done, you know now, what are some of the things that, as far as you know real estate investing is concerned, that you look back and say, Wow, I’m so glad I did this thing in real estate investing. The only thing I wish is if I could go back I’d done more of what would you say?

Linda McKissack  12:42  

Investing more. Investing buy more. Yeah, buy more. And, you know, maybe even try a few different things. You know, we kind of stayed in the single family homes until we branched into this to the short term rentals. And I think it’s kind of fun. I like new things. I like new challenges and new ideas. So it would have been fun to maybe diversify, you know, and do more. We did a few apartments, but we flipped the with the one set of apartments we had after we got them fixed up. But, you know, maybe just try a few more other things. But I think always, you know, the way our lives get really big is we make commitments that are scary, and because they’re scary, the reason they’re scary is because we don’t really have all the answers of how to do it.

Sharad Mehta  13:28  

Give me an example of that that you made in your life.

Linda McKissack  13:32  

Well, buying that first house when we were still in debt and we didn’t know anything about real estate investing. I’d never read a book on real estate investing, we just penciled out the numbers and prayed they were right. So I think that was scary. You know, hiring people in my real estate business and, you know, doing short term rentals that were all the way in Missouri, when we live in Texas, every single thing we never had all the answers when we started. And I think that’s what keeps a lot of people from starting is they’re afraid that they don’t know how to do it, but you will figure out the how, yeah, because you have to, mostly. But so I just always say the answer is, more I would have, you know, I would have, because so much of what you get out of the whole journey is who you become in the trying, right? And so that’s been the best part. And the only way you’re going to become who, who, all you can become is to go out there and try more and do more, you know, try to achieve more. And so I always say that that is the thing I would do. I may also, you know, think you know more about how do I? How do I, you know, scale it bigger, like we pretty much did everything on very limited number of people that worked for us. Instead of thinking bigger and saying, how do we make this like, as big as it can be, we let it be as big as we could be. Whereas. I could just let it be as big as it could be, then it, who knows how big it could have been, right? What

Sharad Mehta  15:04  

was the limiting factor with that? You know, I

Linda McKissack  15:07  

think just my own, my own vision. You know, if I could have been around other people who actually said, Oh, we not only buy single family homes here. We do it in this state, in that state. And, you know, and I could have saw a model, then I probably would, because I’m a modeler. You give me or thing, I’m going to follow it right, and I’m probably going to fail along the way, but at least I’m going to try to do what you tell me that I’m supposed to do. So I think that would be the only thing. I don’t really you know. I think that would be it. I would probably just think a little bit bigger about it, and probably, you know, hire more people to do it, because we ran it really on a few people, great people, fantastic people, but we could have actually scaled them all probably a lot more and a lot bigger, had we been thinking a little bit bigger. How

Sharad Mehta  15:58  

are you changing that now? So if you’re looking ahead, what are you doing now to change that?

Linda McKissack  16:03  

Well, the biggest difference now from what we do now that we didn’t know then, is we find the right who’s everything about scaling is the right? Who’s because you can only do so much. We all got only 24 hours. We didn’t get 48 I wish we did, but we didn’t. So how do I leverage my time, money and my resources and people are the one of the highest forms. They’re the hardest, but they’re one of the highest forms of leverage. Is talented people. So now focusing more on getting more talented people in my life, that they’re looking for their opportunity, and we go collaborate with them to do it. In other words, maybe it’s a partnership. Maybe they do the work, and we’re just, you know, kind of more of the coaches with them, and we’re not doing so much of all the things we’ve done in the past, right? We’re not looking for deals that are going to pay off in 20 years now. We’re looking for cash flow businesses and, you know, doing stuff like that. So I think the who is what matters the difference? That’s the difference between now and back then. We are looking for talented people we can do things with. Now.

Sharad Mehta  17:07  

Absolutely. Yeah, what isn’t there saying, like, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far or go with others, go with others. Do you have an example of one of the Who’s that comes to your mind that you’ve recently brought into your business, and you know, maybe recent that you haven’t, like kind of seen results from, but who that you’ve hired in your business that you’re super excited about? Yeah,

Linda McKissack  17:30  

well, there’s several, and pretty much what we’re excited about right now is we’re working on a program called made for more, and it’s for real estate agents who want to move from that left side of the quadrant of self employed to the right side, and helping them leverage through people to build their teams, and then to go on to build assets and businesses and things that actually will throw off that money, passive money in those multiple streams of income, but In the in that world my son joined, probably about, Gosh, I don’t even know how many years ago, seven, eight years ago, after he graduated from Baylor University, and it’s fun to watch talented people, he’s put an amazing team around him that knows, you know, training in the online world, and all of the things that you know the world has moved to. And that’s fun and exciting, because for the first time in my life, I have the knowledge and information, but I know how to do none of the other and used to, I would have never done anything that I couldn’t do every piece of it if I had to. So that’s been fun. And then in our real estate world of offices, and you know, someone to take over my real estate sales team, you know, just finding those key people that are more, you know, kind of an empire builder that actually, you know, want to grow something, and you can bring them along and make their life get better, either equity opportunities or something with them, so that they their life gets Big at the same time as yours. So

Sharad Mehta  19:02  

tell me a bit more about the program that you’re talking about, for the agents to bring that, to bring them from like the left side of the quadrant to the right side of the quadrant. So real estate agents, you know, they’re self employed. They go out get listings. That’s how they make their money. So what? How are you helping them to generate asset? Revenue? Generating assets?

Linda McKissack  19:24  

Yeah. Well, one of the first, if you look on the right side of the quadrant, one of the first ways to build wealth at the or that the wealthy get wealthy, is businesses. Well, it’s not a business if you have to get up every day and do it right. So that’s the kind of where we step in in the first part and help agents do that. How do you leverage through people? Number one, so you get your cash flow up and you don’t have a revolving door? And then number two, how do you then make your world big enough? Because if your world doesn’t get big. Enough talented people don’t stay in it. They go become you somewhere else. But if you can figure out a way to for them to get what they want at the same time you’re getting what you want and you want to time in and keep them with you forever, then you guys can go build other things together. So it’s really about teaching them to make their world big enough and learning how to identify the right kind of talent and then them not running that talent off. You know, how do you act in such a way? How do you go out and build your world big enough that a real talented person who might have been you 10 years ago doesn’t feel like they have to leave you to get what they want

Sharad Mehta  20:40  

absolutely, and I’m sure it applies to not only real estate agents, but just any person that wants to go from, you know, having a job to becoming, you know, financially independent. Let me ask you this like, what are some differences that you notice in the people that get to the right side of the quadrant versus the ones that stay on the left side? What we

Linda McKissack  21:01  

mean? What is the biggest difference that happens in their life? Or what is the difference?

Sharad Mehta  21:05  

So let’s say, let’s say, if you have two people that you’re coaching right, one person that you coach, that person gets to the right quadrant you know invest is investing in business and generating passive income, or income from businesses, one person you know, has the motivation, but doesn’t actually end up making the leap. What do you notice in your experience, like the differences? Is it in their attitude? Is it in their resources? What do you notice that happens? Is there limiting belief?

Linda McKissack  21:33  

It could be, and I think we all have limiting beliefs. I mean, I don’t think any of us escape that. It’s just whether we’re willing to let that cost us what it actually will cost us. But I think the biggest difference is, you know, the person that doesn’t do it either gets stuck somewhere and is unwilling to lean in and master the things they need to master to do it, learn what they need to learn to do it, or always say, when the pain of staying where you are is great enough, you’ll let go and go where you where the brighter future is. But until the pain went, until the pain is great enough. See, the pain was great for me. But how do you get the pain to be there when everything’s great? You know, to be honest with you, when I was at the top of my sales game, I had to decide to turn that over to someone else that I just knew in my mind would tear it apart. I think no way they could keep it going for 20 plus years so that I could go build bigger investments and opportunities. Right? That was scary, but the pain of not getting to have that challenge was great enough that that I even in the fear, I was willing to let go. And I think a lot of people don’t want to let go of comfort to get uncomfortable. And you have to get uncomfortable to go build big lives and and have big experiences. But you know, one of the things that drives me is, I’ve learned that the joy is in who you become, learning how to do all this stuff and the people you meet and the new people that you get to hang out with, and the new, you know, experiences you have, but you don’t know that until you get there, right? And so, you know, hanging around people, that’s why hanging around people that have it make you see what’s possible. And I think if, if you don’t do enough of that, it’s real easy to get stuck in complacency and really not go make those big commitments that are scary.

Sharad Mehta  23:35  

Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. Linda, so let me ask you this. You have so many things that you’re doing, you know, you have incredible success, absolutely inspiring story. What’s your why? Like, why are you doing these things? Yeah,

Linda McKissack  23:51  

well, Dan Sullivan says there’s two kinds of entrepreneurs. There’s one entrepreneur that is, we’ve tagged it. He didn’t give it a name. We gave it this name an achievement entrepreneur. And that entrepreneur, when they hit a certain level of something, they say, Oh, that’s awesome. I wonder what else I can achieve. And they go out to achieve more, right? That’s kind of the way they’re wired. And then there’s another entrepreneur, and neither one are right or wrong. They’re just categories. The other entrepreneur is what I like to call a lifestyle entrepreneur. They are after a certain dollar, a certain lifestyle, a certain car, a certain house, whatever. And when they get there, their thought is to stop doing what they’re doing right and just enjoy what they’ve done, maybe do golfing or charity work. Nothing wrong with that, right? But I believe that the more success you have, the more you get to do only the things that give you energy and light you up. And why would I stop that? Yeah, now I get the joy of watching other people succeed and win, and I get to be. Along for the journey and the ride and enjoy it. And I’m a solopreneur, so you’re hearing somebody say this that it’s so much easier for me just to go perform than it is to do what I’m telling you here. But there’s joy and building something big enough that other people get to bring their talents and unique gifts into and watch the magic that happens. So I think either you have to, kind of like to see what else you can achieve. And I think you you, you realize, should realize that that’s how you become who you become. And who do we know? How do we know that we’ve become all we can become? You don’t know if you don’t try, right? And so, so for me, it’s just part of what I love to do. I love to achieve. I know I don’t want to do the things that don’t give me energy anymore, and I will find someone else that that gives energy to really love it, and they they’ll like Thank you. I love this, but for me, I only want to do the parts I love, and I want to bring other people along on this journey, because I think that’s why we all have success. I don’t think we all have success just to go sit down and enjoy our success. I think we get our lessons and our opportunities and our success so that we can go back and find another person that would love to do the same thing. So I think part of significance is when you get to a certain level. I’ve never met an entrepreneur that didn’t really enjoy helping other people now do what they’ve done. So I think that’s kind of the next level. Is the significance of trying to go help other people do that. Want to, want to go on the same journey? Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  26:33  

absolutely, yeah. Once, I absolutely, once you get to a certain level, then everything you’re doing it becomes bigger than, like, just you and your immediate family, then as you have team members, it’s so it’s such a grateful feeling to be able to impact other people’s life. It comes with a sense of responsibility that, oh, wow, I’m not no longer just responsible for my life and my immediate family. I’m responsible for these people, these strangers that I hired. Now they become almost like an extended family, and then all the decisions that you make is not only impacting you, it’s impacting other people. I’m sure you have go through the same feeling and seeing the team members in your company, in your community grow, and you’re like, Wow, just sometimes sit back and like, oh, I can’t believe, like, you know, we’re able to something web build, and it’s able to have such a impactful, such a huge impact in their life, right? Yeah.

Linda McKissack  27:31  

And I think if we weren’t meant to do it, it wouldn’t feel so great when we did. That is so true, so great. So it’s part of what we’re supposed to be doing. Yeah,

Sharad Mehta  27:40  

absolutely. How do you deal with I’m curious because it’s, you know, I’m sure, as an entrepreneur, you go through some of these days where you feel low energy, you know, you question kind of things you’re doing, and then you go through, am I, am I doing the right thing? Am I making the right decision? How do you do you work with? Are you working with a coach, or do you lean into, you know, your close set of friends? How do you deal with some of those rough days?

Linda McKissack  28:07  

Well, first thing I do is ask, is there something in my life that’s sucking energy from me? Is it a person, or is it an activity? And if it’s that, I’ll get rid of it interesting. If it’s not, I know by now. I know what things inspire me, and I know what I need to do. And yes, I do have coaches always. So usually, if I can get a coaching session or go to a, you know, a mastermind or something that I’m in, it changes everything quickly. I’m inspired again. I’m ready to go. I don’t, you know, I don’t feel like I stay down very long, because I’ve learned how to, you know, okay, what do I need to do? Do I need to exercise? Do I need to go hang out with somebody who inspires me? What do I need to call somebody? What’s going on? So I think you gotta learn that a little bit about yourself, so that you learn how to get yourself out of it. Or am I doing something that I don’t love to do? And if I am, who would love to do that, and I’m not going to do that very long, or if it’s a person, I’m not going to have that person in my life very long, because it’s just not Life’s too short, and it’s I don’t want to do it, right? I’ve had plenty of those for too long, until I learned, okay, I need to do something about this. But, yeah, I think that’s the main thing. And then, you know, I’m inspired by learning. So what inspires you? You know, I think Tony Robbins and Mel Robbins both said the same thing, change your state. Well, you got to know what to change your state too. I know what to change my state too. It’s education, learning high minded people something or serve someone. Sometimes I just, I need to stop looking at my navel and look at somebody else and say, How can I help you? Because I always feel good when I help somebody else. Absolutely

Sharad Mehta  29:49  

no, this is such a such a great message that you shared. Yeah, absolutely love that. I love the fact that you know you’re leaning into your figuring out. What is it that is making me feel this way? Is it an activity? Is it a person? If it’s an activity, let’s go find someone who can take this activity. There’s always people. There might be something that you absolutely hate to do. If you hate filing your taxes, for example, there’s accountant out there that absolutely love that, you know, if you hate cold calling, there are people out there that absolutely love cold calling. So you got to find people things that are sucking energy. There are people that the same activity gives them energy. And if there’s someone in your life that draining your energy, then you need to move on from that person. Wow, that’s I love that answer well,

Linda McKissack  30:33  

and sometimes too, I always if I’m not doing something that I know is super important. So here’s a good example. My trainer was after me forever to stretch. Well, I have a philosophy that says if I was gonna do it, I would have already so if it’s important, I gotta say, Why am I not doing that? You know? Okay. Well, I just now what I do is okay, if I was going to do it, if it was easy for me, or I loved it, I would have already done it. He wouldn’t have had to tell me more than two times. So how can I or who can so for example, he stayed after me, and after me about stretching. I wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it. And I’m a health person, I know that’s important. So I said, Okay, Linda, you would have done this already if you were going to how could you get this done? And I went and found a stretch lab, and they stretch me, you know, or stuck on something, I say, Okay, who could do this? Because I’m not doing it, you know. I just said to my assistant not too long ago, I really want to talk to some of our key people that have been through our leadership academy. Will you first? I told her to let that put their name on my calendar, and I would call them. Guess what, every week I’d have task overdue. Task overdue? Well, it sucks to have calendar that says task overdue all the time. So I called her back into my office and said, Look, if I was going to do this this way, I would have already, let’s change it up. I want you to set the appointment, and they call me at the designated time. Guess what? I’ve never missed a call since. So instead of staying stuck on why you’re not doing it, or beating yourself up to say you got to do it, you got to do it. Okay, get it done. What would work? And so rethinking what would cause you to do what you need to do.

Sharad Mehta  32:18  

Yeah, Linda, I absolutely love that about you. You’re just so clear about if I haven’t done this, rather than, like, being down about it. Let’s figure out why didn’t I do this? And let’s figure out, okay, I need to do this if I’m not going to do it. Let’s figure out who’s going to do this. I absolutely love that like you’re living I’m sure you’ve read the book, who, not how? By Dan Sullivan. Of course, it’s like, it seems like you’re absolutely living by that book, like it just, hey, this is something that needs to done if I’m not going to do it. Like, even just talking about, like stretching you went and like, you’re not going to stretch anywhere you went to a place, they’re going to help you stretch. That’s such a fantastic example of that. I absolutely love that. And, you know, one thing I’ve noticed is I have this, like, amazing opportunity, so grateful, so blessed that I get to interview, you know, great people like yourself. And one thing I’ve noticed people that are successful is they they know what needs to be done, and they figure out a way to get it done. Yeah, they’re not going to let anything get in their way. They’re just about so action oriented. And you know, another thing I love about what you do is you have a such a short feedback loop. You’re not giving yourself like on your calendar, the example that you were talking about. It’s not like you’re giving yourself one two years to figure it out, like you saw it after a couple of weeks, you’re like, Okay, this is not working out. This needs to happen. Let’s figure out who can help me do this, and let’s just get it done. That’s such a great thing is like we need to take action. We need to get to the end of the let’s figure out if I’m not going to get there, who’s going to get me there. Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing that pleasure. Yeah. All right. We want to pivot into the next segment of our podcast. What do you do for fun? You have so many things you’re doing. What do you do for fun? Okay,

Linda McKissack  34:06  

so, you know, our kids are all grown, and we have grandkids, so that’s all fun for me. We stopped quite a few years ago, doing a lot of gifts, and now we do experiences. I love that. So for example, two days from now, my youngest son and his wife are going with us to Greece on a yacht with John Maxwell to walk where Paul walked. Well, that’s an experience that they will remember forever, right? Yes, anybody that is key in my life, especially my family, I’m looking for ways that we can do some experiences that they will remember way longer than what I got them for Christmas last year. Right? Absolutely. So that’s one way I love pickleball.

Sharad Mehta  34:48  

Oh, my God, you and me both. Linda, yeah, I love,

Linda McKissack  34:52  

I wish I had more time to play it. But I love pickleball because I travel so much I’ve got to, I have to get things set up in every location, like in Montana, we. Just bought a house in Whitefish couple Christmases ago, and I’m working on who’s my pickleball players there, that I can have a set thing who’s my trainer. But I love pickleball. I love exercise. I love reading and learning about health. That’s my second love. Is biohacking and becoming the CEO of your own, you know, health, that kind of stuff. I love reading, you know, just not enough time for all the things we love, travel. We just, yeah,

Sharad Mehta  35:28  

really quick on the pickleball. I love pickleball. I played a league last night. Are you pretty competitive? I think so. Yeah, what’s your duper rating? If you don’t mind sharing, what’s my what duper rating? Or you don’t, like, you don’t play in any competitive leagues, like, Oh no,

Linda McKissack  35:43  

yeah. You know what’s so funny is, I’m one of those that I set a really high, stupid, silly girl right off the bat, and I’m like, Okay, are there Olympics for pickleball, or is there some kind of tournament? So I have that still on my list, but I haven’t done anything about it, because I’m not consistent enough to be on somebody’s team or League, yeah, calendar every Wednesday, because some ladies play at the country club here. Got it, but I think I’ve only made it once since my assistant put that a standing thing in my calendar, because I’ve always got something else going on. Oh, I can totally

Sharad Mehta  36:14  

imagine you setting a goal for yourself, and then you’re hiding the best coach out there to improve and get you ready for the Olympics. I love that you obviously read a lot. You love reading. If you look back, what’s the one book where you look back and say that this book had the biggest impact in my life? It could be a business book, it could be a personal book, or one of each, gosh,

Linda McKissack  36:38  

there’s so many, because I contribute so much of my getting on this journey of, you know, self help. And you know, because so many times the problem that we all have is the obstacle in the way is us. It’s not anything else. It’s not outside stuff. It’s us, our thoughts, our beliefs, our perspectives. And so sometimes you have to spend time working on that. So Jim Rohn has always been one of my heroes, Mark Victor, Hansen, nito Cobain, all the old motivational people that just inspire you to realize that no matter where you start in life, you know anything’s a possibility if you’re willing to put in the work to on yourself and the activity to get it done. So I would say, you know, I probably have books in each of those categories, but I have to say, in the beginning, it would have had to be Cash Flow Quadrant, because we didn’t know about money. We we just thought, you just went and got a way to make a lot of money. And my husband was making a lot of money in the restaurant business, but we were blowing all of it, and we didn’t know anything about moving our income to the right side of the quadrant and having multiple streams of income. So I would have to say Cash Flow Quadrant, because it set us on the journey to build the wealth and then to go to the next level. It’s who, not how. You know. Yeah. And you know, I’m in, I’m featured in 10x is easier than 2x which is the other book by Dan and Dr Ben Hardy. And I think that’s another concept that when people get their arms around that, and you realize that as fast as you possibly can, that’s you’re going to build a big life, because everybody tends to think in the form of 2x and that’s just a little bit more than I did last year. And most of what I did last year will work this next year to 2x me, but you have to throw all things out the window and stretch and do uncomfortable things to get to 10x right? So, I mean, each book has had a certain impact because of where I was and what I

Sharad Mehta  38:41  

needed? Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it makes sense. I agree. Like you’re in different seasons of your life, you need a different book to get you from the level where you stuck at to the next level. Yeah, all, all three books that you mentioned, absolutely amazing books, right? Final question, if you could spend a day with anyone, dead or alive, who would you want to spend the day with and why? Gosh, that’s

Linda McKissack  39:02  

a hard question. I’m going to set my faith aside, because everybody probably says that, but that’s really, gosh, dead or alive. Wow. You know, wow. That’s a hard that’s a really hard question. Well, I’m going to spend time with John Maxwell this week, so I don’t get to say him, which he’s one of my heroes. You know, I loved Jim Rohn, and he was so inspiring to me, and I actually got to introduce him at a at a conference and have breakfast and lunch with him. But I think he was such an inspiring, simple man that I probably would spend more time with him if I could. But there’s so many, I mean, anybody in the world, I usually like to go for people who’ve accomplished at a high level, wherever I’m trying to enter. So today’s world. As the online world. So, you know, I have heroes in that, like Amy Porterfield, Russell Brunson, people that are have really mastered the online world. So I would probably go for one of them too, because I learned by modeling people

Sharad Mehta  40:16  

absolutely great answers. Minda, right? Anyone listening to this absolutely inspiring interview, if they want to connect with you, what’s the best way for them to find you? Well,

Linda McKissack  40:27  

you can go for made for more.com/go and that will hook you up with our made for more newsletter that we put out. And then you can always look at Linda mckissick.com which is m, c k, i, s, s, A, C, k.com, because everything is pointed there. Also

Sharad Mehta  40:45  

perfect. We’ll put all of those links in the show notes. Linda, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your incredible story. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it

Linda McKissack  40:54  

My pleasure. Thank you and have a happy holiday.

Sharad Mehta  40:57  

Thank you. You too. Bye.