Welcome And Ron’s Backstory

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome back to Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I'm your host, Yusuf, and this is the space where we slow down and talk about real life. The kind that does not fit into neat captions. And today I'm joined by Ron Platt, who works with families through NAFDAX.org to help them restart their lives after the kind of breakdown most people only whisper about. Ron has lived this himself: a difficult divorce, a recession, real financial hardship, and a long road back to life that actually feels like his. We're talking about the tools that helped him rebuild what shifted inside him along the way. And how he went from being loved on conditions to finally being loved as he is. So if you have ever felt you had to start over with very little, this conversation is fine. With that, I welcome my guest Ronda to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Thank you for having me today. I really appreciate being

Money As A Stand In For Love

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here.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Perfect. So Ron, before we get into the rebuilding part, I want to start some softer. When you look back now, what's the first thing you remember about the version of you who was the who was at the very bottom?

SPEAKER_01 1:29

What do I remember most about it? It you know, I I have a saying that every time I get comfortable, God shakes me up and says, You're not done yet. So my my line that I tell people is, get get comfortable being uncomfortable. And at that point prior to the recession, I was I was pretty comfortable. I was living way above my means. I was not listening to advice, and I was in a very toxic relationship. So what I remember is a very not not an arrogant, I was arrogant when I got into real estate 23 years ago and was coming out of the insurance industry. And and I soon became, shortly after I got into real estate, I became a learning-based individual through having mentors in my life. I think at the time prior to the recession, I was the old version of me was tying money into happiness. The more money I made, the happier I was. And that was because I was in a bad relationship. So the, so my means of happiness was in the form of money. And that meant that I had to compete with the neighbors, I had to drive nice cars, I had to be in a big house with that that was, you know, designer decorated and all that kind of stuff. And what I realized after the recession when I lost everything, that none of that meant anything. That my happiness had to be tied into my internal happiness, what surrounds me, not what I can buy. So my life is completely different now, to your point. So the old me was definitely tied into money and happiness, and definitely tied into the wrong thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

For example, getting a job, uh having a particular kind of money, having a particular kind of uh materials, I would say. So isn't it very obvious? Isn't it how the way has how the world has been designed and has been taught to us?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, as a kid, you're all excited about getting toys. Meanwhile, your parents are there ready to hug you, and you want, no, I want the toys. I don't, I don't want the hug, I want the toys. So it's it's it's interesting our perspective from us the way we are as children, a lot of times. You know, I watch my son who just divorced his partner, and what they what they do, instead of spending time with my granddaughter a lot of times, they buy her things. So you go to her room and it's loaded with toys that are sitting in a corner and basically she just wants attention. I'm not saying they're bad parents. I'm saying that during the divorce, they their guilt is such that they feel that they need to buy her things and and children just want love. So I think a lot of us are taught that as into adulthood that when we're not receiving love from our partners or for or the fact that we don't love ourselves enough, we try to compensate through purchasing things, through purchasing Chanel bags or big homes or expensive cars. And and trust me, I like the good stuff too. Okay. I'm not saying that I like being poor. I don't like being poor. I like earning a good living. I think it just has a different vision and it it means something different to me now than it did back then.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, you just briefly mentioned that you had to find the reasons for happiness

Finding Inner Happiness Through Mentors

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inside yourself. Correct. So how does someone start that?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

How does somebody start that? That that's a good question. I don't know how somebody starts it. I can tell you how I started it. Since I was since I got out of college, I've always made a good living. And but I didn't have a great deal of mentors in my life. My father was probably my first mentor, but he grew up very poor and he made money later on in life, and he kind of did it just by common sense. So now I come into his career and I start to work with him, and I start making really good money at a much younger age than he did. So instead of him taking pride in my success, he became very envious. And instead of acting as a proper mentor, he actually would put me down because I just he didn't, he thought it was too quick too soon. So I had to have the initiative to leave his office and open up my own business and be able to seek out other people that would show me how to be better. And again, as I said in the insurance business, I had a great deal of success and I had people that were looking up to me, but I didn't have any mentors. When I got into real estate, I was blessed with a business partner who sat me down and said, in order for us to succeed as business partners, we need to get a coach. And I said, A coach, I don't need a coach. I know everything there is to know about marketing, rah, rah. You know, I was very arrogant back then. And then I sat at the first coaching seminar that I went to and I watched this gentleman get up on stage and tell his story about coming from Ireland to the US and having a $250,000 motorcycle accident that $250,000 in medical bills, welcome to the U.S. He had nothing. And I looked back and I said, this man has a $10 million home in La Jolla, California, and a highly successful business. I don't have any of that. I should probably shut up and listen to him. And all, and what he was telling me was to journal, to, uh, to journal my thoughts, my emotions, to write down my goals and put them in a place that I can see them at every day, to establish gratitudes, to, and as well as how to run my business. And I remember him saying to me to us at one of the seminars, I'm a very wealthy man, but I'm giving a majority of my wealth away to charity. My wife and I will make sure our kids are set, but they're not going to be overly set. You know, majority of our money is going to charities. The one thing I can leave my kids that'll be the most impactful thing I can do is my journals. And I paused and I really thought about that. And he says, It's my, it's my celebrations, it's my failures, it's my lessons in life, are all in there. And I thought, what am I leaving my kid? And it impacted me so much that I started journaling. I've been doing it, I've been journaling now for over 20 years. And when I could not afford a therapist, that was my therapy because I would sit down and I would pour out my heart. Or if I had a dream that was so intense, I had to sit there and explain and really write about the dream. And there's always a message in your dreams. You just need to take time out to write about it. And I would

Journaling As Low Cost Therapy

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literally sit at times in front of my book, bawling my eyes out because the message was so strong. Uh, and it was such a big part of my healing process. So during the recession, that was my outlet because I could not afford. I let me explain what happened. I was in a toxic relationship. I owned a big expensive house that I had just gotten done renovating. I had a Mercedes and a BMW sitting in the garage that were both leased. I was believed that I had to buy my love from this other person. And it didn't matter how much I made, how much I gave, what I bought. It it just the love wasn't there because it was conditional. So the day that the recession hit, being in real estate, my business went from six figures to nothing within the course of a week. And I had never seen anything like that before. So, but uh my but my overhead remained the same. So I suddenly couldn't afford it. And I remember opening up my refrigerator, looking in the refrigerator, going, I don't have money for food. And

The Recession Week Everything Collapsed

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I had never, I was in my 30s at the time, and I don't ever remember having a situation where I had never had money for food. And all I could do was sit there and stare at it, stare at the refrigerator. That was the moment that God or the universe said, I'm going to teach you the connection between money and happiness. I'm going to teach you how to budget. People had tried teaching me, but it it was tied into other things. So you had to have everything taken away from you before you could say, I have nothing, I need to rebuild. And that rebuilding process really determines who you are as a human being, whether you're getting a divorce and having to start over, whether you just, God forbid, lost your partner of life, whether you've lost your job and you're sitting there at the bottom of the barrel thinking, I have nothing to live for. You always have something to live for. You just need to take the time out to figure out. And what was what were those things that were causing you to be happy? What were the things that were providing you with the happiness? And how do I rebuild it or how do I make it better? So that process, I couldn't afford a therapist. Thank God I was able to go to my father and say, hey, I need help. And it didn't re I didn't move in with him, but he said, I don't, here's what I can give you. I later on paid him back with interest, even though he didn't ask me to. But I had something to fall back on that enabled me to purchase food, but I wasn't able to pay the electric bill. I wasn't able to pay my credit cards. And of course, the first thing they do is they start calling you and nagging you. And then I had to return both cars for in both cars that were sitting in the garage. I just voluntarily turned those in because I couldn't afford them. What I love about our electric company here in South Florida is when your bill starts to go up, they want an additional deposit. So here I am with an electric bill I can barely afford. And then they come back and say, so your electric bill is now $500 a month. And oh, by the way, we're going to want another $1,000 deposit, or we turn off your electricity. So not only could I not afford the $500, I couldn't afford the $1,000 deposit. So it was like, okay, how much more could they take from me? What I ended up doing is realizing

Gratitude Walks And Daily Affirmations

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what do I have in my hands? What, what, uh, what did my coach teach me that I can no longer afford the coach, but what did I learn from the coach? What are my gratitudes? Well, I got out of bed today, I put my feet on the ground, I have all my faculties and I have the ability to make a living. I I have a roof over my head and I have food in my belly. Start with that. Then I had a dog at the time, and I would take that dog for five-mile walks because you got to get oxygen in your brain, you got to get out there. If you stay home all day and you let it, you know, think about all the bad stuff, it's only going to get worse. I got to get out, I got to put my shorts on, I got to go outside, take my dog for a walk. And when I took my dog for a walk, I did my daily affirmations, which, by the way, that was 20 somewhat years ago. Every day I get in the shower, I do my gratitudes and affirmations to this day. And then the same ones then that I do now. You know, thank God for giving me my faculties. Uh, how do I start it off every morning? I'm grateful for my ability to stand up in the morning and put my feet down at night. I'm grateful to have my partner by my side. I'm grateful to have food on my belly, clean air, yeah, a beautiful home, you know, all these things. I'm not going to go through all of them, but I still recite them today. And I started putting those together at that time. So I would take my dog for these walks and I would say my affirmations, and it changed my energy. And I was able to get back home, couldn't go to, couldn't afford the rent at the office to have an office anymore. So now I'm working out of the house. I had to relearn how to sell real estate because now it was about foreclosures and short sales. I as much as I desperately needed the money to from these real estate sales, I would still sit with my clients and say, don't sell your homes. Don't do a short sale. The market is at the bottom. Hold on to the house. And everybody's like, yeah, but everybody's telling me my house isn't worth anything. I shouldn't make my mortgage payments anymore. Don't do that. You don't sell stocks when the market crashes. You sell stocks when they're at their highs. This is one of those crashes. Hold on to it. But as much as I was advising, they still said, I still want to sell. And then I was good. So I still had to hold on to my moral belief systems, which is as much as I need the cash, I don't want to be dishonest. And I think that's what helped me to succeed even more once the market picked back up, is that my customers really trusted me. I had to sit with people who were doing foreclosure sales and say, how do I do these things? How do I become a better foreclosure agent? How do I become a better short sale agent? And slowly by journaling the pains and the things that I was going through in my life and really being being honest with myself in my journals, by doing my affirmations, my gratitudes. At that time I did not meditate, I should have, but I didn't know about it. I didn't think of it. I slowly recovered and I realized I don't have to pay my creditors. They're not going anywhere. I will get to them when I can. My credit score is hitting zero. Who cares?

Rebuilding With Ethics And Basic Needs

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I'm not borrowing anything at the moment. It'll get better. What I have to focus on is putting food on my table and paying the rent. And that's what I, you know, I narrowed it down to not all of it, but what are my basic needs? This was my basic needs. Put food in my belly, make sure I have a roof over my head and the electric bill gets paid. Everybody else can wait. And everybody else waited. And what was interesting is I began to make more money. I realized my creditors were calling and they were negotiating with me. Okay, you owe 10,000 on the credit card. Would you uh could you send us a thousand now and we'll call it even? I'm like, okay. Let me see if let me see if I have the money. And you know, even even the car companies that I had to give my my leases back to, a couple of them called up and said, you know, you have 15,000 you owe on your lease. Would you settle for a thousand? Nope. And I'd hang up the phone. Eventually I settled for $500. You know, you realize that there is power in being able to say, I can't do it. The answer is no. No is a complete sentence. I can't do it. You know, I have members who are going through the same scenario, and I've said, just say no. They they can't come after you. Yeah. You know, they can't, they can't take your house away. So you'll get to them when you're better and you're better off and you have money in your pockets and you can negotiate. And they and they call me back and they're like, that's that's amazing. I just settled for whatever amount. So, anyhow, the point being is life seems overwhelming at times, but the answer is no, I can't right now. And here's the other thing I learned. When my friends would call up and they'd say, Hey, you want to come to dinner? I'd say, Yeah, I'd love to, but I don't have the money. And they'd say, No problem, I'll treat you. I was honest. I don't have the money. And they said, and every time they said, I'll treat you, because how many years was I treating them when I had the money? How many times

Debt Boundaries And Honest Friendships

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did I pick up the bill and I said, No, I got this? Now it was their turn and they stepped up. And for those friends that didn't step up and said, Okay, well, it's you know, nice talking to you. I'm gonna call the next person. They were no longer in my life. So at the same time that I was reevaluating who I was, I was also re-evaluating who I was hanging out with, who my core group was, who stepped up to the plate. You know, I had I had gone to some friends who and I said, Hey, I need a loan. And a lot of them said, No, I don't do that. And others said, Yeah, yeah, how much do you need? And I would, you know, they would loan me whatever I can't. And the minute I had the ability to pay them back, not only did I pay them back, I gave them interest. And they said, You don't have to pay me interest. I said, I know I don't, but you didn't have to lend me the money. So I wanted this is my way of saying thank you. So it's so many different ways, so so many different things in my life changed by having everything taken away and then restarting it. I I even journaled about what I wanted in my next partner, and I found it. Exactly the person that journaled about I was so passionate about. I I had what we call our reticular activator going. And if you've never heard of that word before, it's like when you go to buy a car and you want to say a white Volkswagen, and you're driving, and all you see on the streets are white Volkswagens, that's your reticular activator. It works when it with relationships as well. So I was so hyper focused on what I wanted, like that's who I found. It's the it's the power of journaling for me.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Oh it was such an emotional story. But I like the fact that you had values, you had lessons, you implemented them, and

Vision Journals And Reticular Activator

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even after suffering so much, you are there for the people to know, for the next generation to know, so that in their life when they are struggling or when they are going through some similar kind of experiences, they know what to do. They don't fall into the wrong path, they don't fall astray.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Thank you so much for that. Everybody has a different story. Everybody's gonna handle things differently. This is what worked for me, because when you don't have anything, what's the basics? My thoughts, my my ability to work. I, you know, none of us lose the ability, and unless God forbid we have a you know, death disease or we have some kind of disability, but we always have the ability to work. I have to tell you, I moved to California at one point for a great job opportunity that lasted exactly 89 days. Not 90, where I could have collected unemployment, but 89 days. And I stayed in California looking for a job, and the market was so tough for me that I came back to South Florida and I was completely broke. So the recession wasn't the first time I was broke. It just took me that time to learn how to handle money. There was another time when I had moved to California and I was flat broke. And I was taking jobs here, here I am. I've run insurance companies. I moved out to California and I had a vice president role with a big insurance company as well. And they just let me go. I mean, one day they they're giving me a raise and another and another position.

Humility Jobs And Leading With Why

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And the day after they're telling me to leave, and they won't tell me why. So now I'm out job searching and I can't find a job and I still got to pay the rent, and I have rent in California and I still have a mortgage back in South Florida. I I did whatever I had to do. I was suddenly a temp at a at a law firm, and I was answering phones, and people were asking me, Do you know how to do a fax? Do you know how to send an email? And I'm like, really? Like, you know, I've run insurance companies. You know, it's like I've been an executive, but I will go ahead and take this position, you know, uh answering phones and doing whatever I had to do because I knew I had to earn something. All of it was very humbling. All of it helps me to better understand people and my own employees now. And that's why now that I run two companies, when I hire somebody or when I have an employee, I sit them down and I want to figure out what their why is. Why are they coming to work? Why are they here? What are their expectations for the future? So let's sit down and have that conversation. And I'm going to help focus on your why and help you to achieve that because I want everybody in my company, what I say is I want everybody in my company to drive a Mercedes Benz. It doesn't have to be a Mercedes Benz. It's whatever that looks like to them. You know what I'm saying? It could be a Chanel bag, it could be a condo, it could be an expensive car. I want everybody, I don't want to be the only guy in the office driving a Mercedes. I want everybody to be driving a Mercedes. Because if everybody's driving a Mercedes, I can go out and get a Rolls-Royce. You know what I'm saying? You know, everybody, everybody needs to flourish with you. So when I owned insurance agencies and I'd go to some of my conventions and I'd sit with other agency owners and they'd say, How much do your people make? I'm like, they make six figures. How can you afford to pay them like that? I said, I give them a base salary, everything else is earned. And I show them how to earn it. I want my people to make six figures because they're happier. They know, I mean, to this day, I mean, I own those agencies like 30 years ago. To this day, I still have people calling me, my old employees who have moved on and done great things, and there's I'm still in their lives because of how I helped them to get to where they're at.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Perfect.

One Honest Step Forward

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Thank you so much for coming. It was genuinely a lovely conversation with you. And you know, for people who are listening, there was a reason. I think this conversation found you. Maybe you haven't started yet. Maybe you are just realizing how something heavy something has been. Wherever you are, take Ron's word with you. Okay. The smallest first step still counts. Okay. You don't have to fix your whole life this week. You just have to take one honest step toward yourself. This is Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I am Yousuf. Take care of your mind tonight, and I'll see you in the next one.