Here’s a snapshot of a few things we talked about…

•         Introduction
•         How Did Things Start Out for Casanova?
•         How His Backstory Made Him What He is Today?
•         His Journey of Recovery from Cancer
•         How Did He Know that Working for Someone Else was Not for Him?
•         How The Journey is What Really Makes You Who You Are
•         How He Got Started in Real Estate?
•         Why Did He Leave His Sales Job?
•         How He was Inspired by Jay Morrison to be the Lord of His Land

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

In this episode from the series of Casanova’s appearance as a guest on other podcasts, Casanova and host Jamila Souffrant talk about how he overcame adversity, the power of building relationships and how to leverage them, and why having a positive mindset is the key.

Casanova’s backstory is what led him to become who he and what he has accomplished. He grew up in inner city, Chicago, and was raised by a single mom, and his grandma stepped in to help lead the way of being his dad. He had the odds stacked against him, but he did have a strong mind. He had two strong minded women who always tried to protect him. The first stage of adversity that he went through was losing two of his best friends. By the end of his sixth-grade year, his grandmother decided to move him to Sioux City, to keep him safe from the turbulent streets of inner-city Chicago.

While he was sophomore in high school, and things were going great for him, adversity struck again. At 15 years old, he was diagnosed with stage four, Non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer; where he was two weeks away from death. While going through two years of chemotherapy, what started to change was that everyone looked at him like a victim. He started to wonder how could he cope with these things mentally? Life took a huge turn for him, but he didn’t know how to cope with a lot of those things, but that’s where his mindset really started to take that shift. These things started to build his armor and build his character.

Casanova had an entrepreneurial mindset from early on in his life, largely inspired by the VH1 show “The Fabulous Life Of”. At 8 years old, pumping gas for other people at the gas station, he started to see that he could create his own success. He continued to try different things throughout the high school and then going into college. During his junior year, he started to realize that just having a degree is not going to guarantee him success in life. Along this path, he had 18 different jobs, trying to figure out his calling.

Casanova adds that his motivation behind these decisions was that he wanted to control his own time. He also felt like he was never being valued at what he was worth, and he wanted to have an impact on the world. Talking about the journey, Cass shares that he learned that you have to be committed to the destination. Jamila adds that who you become on the journey allows you to get to the destination. Cass says that it all starts with a dream, for a lot of people, all you have to do is think of the big picture. What is the point I impact you want to have on others? What kind of legacy do you want to leave?

Cass shares his eventful journey to real estate; from playing poker, to wanting to be a professional video gamer, to serving tables, to getting talked into being a car’s salesman. He was not only selling cars there, but he was also building relationships. Then he was introduced to network marketing, and this is where he learned a lot about personal development. He then moved to Omaha, Nebraska to work as a marketing consultant for a big company. He garnered great success in the company, finishing at number eight out of 4000, inside sales reps.

While he was taking every step, he knew that he always wanted something bigger. Then, he stumbled upon a Jay Morrison video on YouTube, where he had said, you got to figure out a way to be the Lord of your land. This was a light bulb moment for Casanova. From that point forward, he got his real estate license, with the goal that he was going to be the lord of his land. Talking about what helped him succeed, he says “what is your gift, right? And so, your gift is what comes easy for you and harder for others.”

His final stint of adversity came in the form of losing his mother, after they had recently moved to Omaha to live near him. On top of that, he also ended up losing his job and his house, all within a matter of weeks. What helped him rebound from search severe losses to the point where he did 46 deals, eight million dollars in volume in his first year, was horning in his biggest strength, which was building relationships.

Cass adds that the only thing you can never control the result, but the only thing that you can control is your effort, and you always have to find some type of positivity out of every single situation. In every situation, no matter where you are in life, you can find some type of hope. He adds “It allowed me to just keep going when I lost my mom to know that everything that I do every minute of every hour, every person who I tried to impact their lives, and I can use her as the beacon of hope that was for me.”

Key Quotes:

•         “I always like to think of myself as a relationship builder before anything else…”
•         “I didn’t grow up with a sense of ignorant mindset that said that just because you didn’t look like me, did not mean that you had to be against me, and you couldn’t be with me…”
•         “Where I got a lot of my inspiration from was the TV because my parents, my family never owned a house, a car, a business, nothing…”
•         “My mom always tried to, you know, instill some type of positivity in me, even though she didn’t have it to give to me as far as financial literacy or resources…”
•         “We want our kids to try some of everything, right? Whether it’s sports, or its show choir, whether it’s band, whether it’s, doesn’t matter what it is, we want to try everything to figure out the ropes…”
•         “I of the belief and the understanding that just because I had a degree did not mean I was going to be successful in life…”
•         “I wanted to control my own time. Right? Because maybe that came from having the cancer where I knew that tomorrow was never promised…”
•         “I looked at it and I said, listen, if I want to be able to have a true impact on this world, I have to be able to leverage my time…”
•         “You don’t have to love the journey. You don’t have to love the process. You just have to be married to the destination…”
•         “In the corporate world, everybody could tell you no, but nobody could tell you yes…”
•         “The number one thing that I always thought of is that joy wouldn’t feel so good if it wasn’t for pain…”
•         “My gift was building relationships with people. My gift was having high energy high charisma, and I understood that because people were already saying, wow, Casanova like your energy is contagious, it’s infectious. And so, I just built off of that…”
•         “So, all within a couple of weeks timeframe, I lose my job, I lose my mom and I lose my home…”
•         “For you think of what is your gift, what comes easy for you and harder for other people and then double down on that strength…”
•         “With Kobe and with his daughter and with the other people on there, it was a profound impact in the way that it unified all of us to really just think that there’s so many bigger things that we can be grateful for in life, because it can be gone too soon…”
•         “Understand that your journey, a lot of the times, it’s not for you…”

Links/Resources:

•         https://journeytolaunch.com/
•         Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason
•         Go for No! by Andrea Waltz
•         Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

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