Whether it be in the real estate world or life in general, everyone has that drive to keep improving themselves. And in that journey of improvement, we all experience troubles and drift from the course at hand. But when we listen to mentors, we get back our focus and not make the same mistakes. They become the voices at the back of our heads that tell us what we did right and what we did wrong. Scott Carson reveals the people who he considers as his mentors that helped him become a mentor to others as well.

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Never Stop Moving Forward and Listen to Mentors

I want to talk a little bit about mentors. I’ve had some really cool and really amazing mentors in my life, and continuing to have mentors. It’s something that keeps me driving forward to make sure that I’m better at what I do and that I’m constantly improving. It’s a challenge to myself to always be improving on things. I think we all have different mentors. Early on, my earliest mentor was my father, William Milton Carson. For many sons, fathers are often our heroes a lot of times, especially if you’re close to your parents. My mom did an amazing job, great. My dad was ultimately really my mentor, my superhero, I guess you could say, early on. Dad was an entrepreneur. He started a hardware store in a small town at Ingleside, Texas, 3,500 people, well before the Home Depots and Lowe’s were around, and ran that store downtown Ingleside. He started off in the fourth grade and wrapped up and sold it off, closed the business as a senior in high school. Seeing my dad and my mom work together in the store and create a business atmosphere, and really those things are some of my fondest memories as a kid.

The thing about it is there are things that I did inside the hardware store that I didn’t necessarily like to do, but I had to do it and I understood it. There are also a lot of cool things that I did that most kids didn’t experience for the most part. From the time I was in the fourth grade on, I could run a cash register and cut pipe, thread pipe, cut keys, cut glass. We were a small hardware store. I did a lot of variety of things: cut wood, cool projects, people would come with pulling problems. There was a fifth grade kid walking around a hardware store solving issues for them, it was a fun thing. That built the work ethic in me to the point that we’re doing the summer exercise and getting older, I was working on the weekends mowing lawns, landscaping, building fences, digging ditches, whatever I could to make money, came from really learning this in the store. I remember actually one that happened. I had a guy come in the store. He’s an older guy, Mr. Calvert, who was in his late 80’s looking for help if I knew anybody. I asked him, “What are you looking to do?” He goes, “I’m looking for somebody to help mow some lawns and clear some shrubbery and stuff like that.” I said, “I can do that.” He’s like, “Really?” I remember doing this for $2 an hour, if you think about this. This goes back a ways though, as a young kid, $2 to $3 an hour doing stuff. $2 to $3 an hour is a lot of money back 30 years ago if you think about it. Fourth grade kid, I was nine, ten years old. That’s a lot of money for a kid at that point.

That led to doing things throughout high school, and then of course working and basically taking care of myself since then. Establishing those things with my father, the work ethic, always doing a good job, always being proud of the work that you do, and treating people fairly has been one of the most important things. One of the things my dad also started on the side was a wood crafts store. Swings, dividers, those wooden cutouts that you see this time of the year with Santa Claus and the reindeer, my dad literally did a lot of that stuff. He actually moved from the hardware store into doing Carson’s Country Crafts for years up until he passed. He had stuff in over 50 states and 15 countries. People have bought it or shipped their stuff out. They would do custom wood projects. My mom would always get mad with my dad because he didn’t charge enough. He should have charged double or triple for what he did, but he always said, “No, we’re doing enough to make, buy. I’m happy, I’m content. I get to do what I want every day. I come and go as I want.” It’s a beautiful thing and that’s always been one thing that stayed with me. I never wanted to work somewhere that I did not like my job. I think that would be hell on Earth to be working someplace that you absolutely hate.

Going forward, there was a period of my life roughly about six plus months that I worked at a job I absolutely freaking hated. It was a high-tech chip company here in Austin, Texas. I worked there for a while because it was in a low spot. I had to take a job for somebody and I had to pay bills. It was not a bad job. A lot of people have been happy with that job, but I always felt like I was settling because I already had that entrepreneurial spirit. I had read Rich Dad Poor Dad and was developing some things. In that six-month period I worked with, no offense to any engineers out there, but engineers in this chip company and we’d have a meeting to have a meeting to have a meeting. I was in-charge of forecasting. I dealt with international sales guys. I got along great with the sales guys, no problem with that. What I did learn from that job is what I didn’t want to do, but I also learned a lot about Excel. I learned a lot about some of the things, forecasting and things like that that helped out tremendously, even though it was a job that I hated for six months. Fortunately, I got into banking.

My dad was my first mentor. My second mentor for the most part was a couple. It was Bob Leonetti and Jayme Kahla. I learned a lot about speaking. I learned a lot about marketing from Bob and Jayme and about some of the things especially with public speaking. I learned the note business from them, which is the most important thing. I learned a lot of some of the things that you should do and I also learned things that you shouldn’t do. I’ve always been a big proponent of our Mastermind and things like that should be focused on getting deals done. That’s what has separated our Mastermind from most out there because our students are actually closing deals. They’re actually making things happen. We’re extremely, extremely proud of that, especially over the years. That’s been one of the biggest driving factor for us when we have a Mastermind, “Who is doing deals? Let’s work and get some deals done.”

Another mentor that has been big, I’ve got a chance to meet him. I think we all have mentors and people that we admire, people that we read, people that we follow along the way. I got a chance to meet my buddy, Tom Hopkins. If you already know Tom Hopkins, he is probably still the best sales trainer in the world. His book How to Master the Art of Selling, I’ve probably read it a dozen times. I’ve got to meet Tom in Austin during one of my lowest experiences. It was before I worked for the high-tech company, a chip company here in town. I’ve got to meet Tom at an event that he was teaching. He was teaching this one-day event where he was teaching the second half of the day. I think it’s Ron Marks that was teaching the first half of the day. It had a lot of realtors. It had a lot of mortgage brokers at, sales guys at. It was at the Hyatt Convention Center. There were literally about 3,000 people in this conference center. I had basically called in, developed the case of the instantaneous cough disease, instantaneous sickness, where I feel horrible, I can’t make it to work but I can go to somewhere I wanted to during the day.

I drove down there to the event, played hooky from the job I was working at, sat through the day-long thing, enjoyed it. At the end of the day at 5:00, it wrapped up. Everybody’s in the car to get home. If you’ve been in Austin, Austin traffic is horrible, especially on a Friday. I was sitting in my car for twenty minutes. I was like, “I’m not going to go anywhere for an hour.” I said, “Let me go upstairs and maybe I can network, get some business cards.” I went upstairs, networked a little bit. I went to the bar, the bar was packed. There wasn’t really a place to sit. I did find a table and I went sit by myself. Lo and behold, I’d been there for less than five minutes and in strolls Tom Hopkins by himself, not with an entourage. I’m like, “There’s Tom. There’s Tom.” I’ve read his books, a big fan of him. This is all before social media and a lot of the things that we take for granted today. I was like, “That’s Tom. That’s Tom. That’s Tom.” I was literally just excited. These two people at the bar get up and walk off. Tom sits down at one of the chairs. I was like, “There’s an empty chair next to Tom Hopkins. Somebody should go buy him a drink.” I’m sitting there, “Somebody should really go buy him a drink.” I’m thinking I’m not worthy to go talk to Tom. I’m not worthy to go do that. I’m this guy that had to basically lie to get off of work, barely paid my bills to the point. I was afraid of it. I was like, “I’m inferior.” I can remember finally getting the huevos to literally stand up from the table, I was sitting at about twenty feet away, and walked over to Tom, tapped him on the shoulder and say, “Hi, Tom. I was figuring how things are today. I was wondering if I could buy you a drink.” I was scared to death that he was going to say no.

Sure enough, he turned to me. He was finishing up his glass of red wine, Merlot, if I remember correctly, and he’s like, “Yeah, that would be great. Let’s find a spot where we can sit it and visit.” I’m like, “What?” He goes, “Yeah. I’ll find us a seat where we can visit. I’ll take a glass of Merlot.” I’m like, “What? Okay.” I ordered Merlot and I got a beer, very classy. What’s really classy is that I was scared my debit card wouldn’t go through, but it went through. We walked over to the corner. There were these four chairs, four lounges, and the four people that were there were getting up to leave. Tom sat down on one and I sat down next to him. For the next hour, I got to visit with Tom one-on-one and that was very interesting. He asked me what I did, what I was looking for. It wasn’t just like, “I think you’re wonderful.” Of course, who doesn’t think Tom isn’t wonderful? Tom is a great guy, as nice a guy in person as he is on stage. It was just interesting. He actually listened. It wasn’t him waiting to talk. He was actually listening to what I said. He just said, “I see you’re going through troubles. Everybody goes through that. Just don’t give up on your goals. Don’t give up on your dreams. Keep striving forward. Keep doing the things that you want to do. Everybody goes through low times. Everybody has ups and downs, the peaks and valleys. The peaks are what get you through the valleys, and the valleys are what help make the peaks even sweeter.” After he left, I remember coming home that night like my feet weren’t touching the ground. It was not touching the ground. I remember I was wearing khaki pants. I was wearing a blue and white pinstripe shirt that had white cuffs. It was pretty sharp, very snazzy, and a yellow tie with blue dots on it. It was very nice. It was a sharp-looking tie. Khaki pants, maybe not.. I remember walking to the door and just excited. I haven’t been excited for a while. It was that thing that got me through some things that helped me get to where I made a decision and left and went and did a couple of things.

I’ve got some really good friends that have worked with Tony Robbins for years and Tony’s been really great. I read a lot of his books as well. I was talking about Tom Hopkins being a mentor, my father being a mentor, Bob Leonetti and Jayme Kahla of being mentors to me initially. After that, I would probably say one of the biggest mentors otherwise was my buddy Greg Reid. Getting the chance to meet him six years ago was an interesting aspect of things. I’ve been teaching for a little while, a couple of years, and Duncan Wierman actually picked the phone and called me up and wanted to know if I’d like to come speak at one of his events in San Diego. I’m like, “Yeah, that’d be great.” He’d gotten some good phone calls or emails from people saying that I should come and speak. I went out and spoke. Then I met Sandi Shaner. Sandi was a saleslady for me for years. I met Sandi at the event and said, “You should have an event here in San Diego.” I’m like, “Sure, why not?” We decided, it was one of my sales tips, “We’re going to do a workshop here in San Diego.” Sandi said, “Do you need a saleslady?” I’m like, “Yeah, that’d be great.” Sandi started working with me. I remember Sandi calling me one morning. Sandi asked me, “Would you like to have Greg Reid come speak at your event?” I didn’t know who Greg Reid was. I’m like, “Who’s that?” She’s like, “He’s the guy that wrote Think and Grow Rich: Three Feet From Gold.” I’m like, “Think and Grow Rich, yes. That’d be great.” That’s Napoleon Hill and Napoleon has been dead for a few years. I was like, “Yeah. Let’s have him.” Greg comes out with his wife Allyn and I meet them there. We visited a little bit with them and hit it off and found out that they hadn’t picked a name yet, because Allyn was pregnant with their son, Colt. I’m the one that actually gave them the idea for Colt because Greg’s little guy was fast on the draw, and it stuck with him. Then I got a chance to spend some time with Greg and listen to him and just talk with him.

Greg has been a mentor to me in a variety of ways. First and foremost, I love the fact that I got Greg as a friend. We exchange text messages and a few phone calls and stuff like that. I’ve seen Greg go through some different transitions in the last two years as well. He’s figuring out what he wants to do and what he wants to do when he grows up. I’m very proud of what Greg has done and see the changes he’s done. It’s been nice to bounce ideas off each other, and as I’ve had little valleys, pick up the phone and be able to call him. What I love about Greg is he’s a straight shooter. What you don’t want in a mentor is somebody who’s going to blow smoke up your tail. I think it’s the best thing that I’ve had with mentors is that it’s not always sunshine and rainbows or unicorn. It’s the straight up, “You’ve got to have some decisions.” Greg, probably six months ago, gave me some really great advice that has been very helpful and impactful on some things.

I’d like to consider our buddy George Antone and Aaron Young. Not only are those two guys exceptional friends of mine, but also great mentors of myself as well. Aaron has helped me out with a variety of entity stuff. George has given me some great ideas. We’ve bounced ideas off too. I think that’s one of the things that you have to look at. You’ll have mentors that come and go. I’m a mentor for people in the note industry space and it’s great. Ultimately, we all are striving to better ourselves. We’re trying to get to a place that maybe we don’t know where that finish line is at. I know that when we are looking at numbers, and we spent the morning here in Austin with the staff going through what our year-to-date numbers would be and how they compared to last year and how we’re going to wrap up, a new client-base, new growth rates, and things like that, and working to implement 2018 plans now. A lot of that comes from what I’ve learned from my mentors in the last fifteen, twenty plus years.

The mentor I miss the most is my father. My dad’s been dead about a decade now. The funny thing is your mentors are the people you hear in your head when you don’t want to hear them, the people that you hear their voices and their advice. It’s not necessarily your conscience but sometimes I think it is. I think a really good advice is the stuff that you hear that help you make good decisions. It’s also the voices you hear when you know you’ve made a bad decision. You keep hearing things. I think God speaks to us in a variety of ways. For many, God is a mentor to many of us as well out there. I don’t care what your religion is or your faith and stuff like that. If you’ve got a higher being out there, believe in something like that, there’s a voice out there that talks to you. I think it’s important to have that and then listen to that voice. I think we all have a sixth sense of different things of what we want to do, what we want to accomplish, what things feel good, what things feel bad, but we don’t want to complicate that with fear. A lot of people don’t take action on things because they’re scared of and they chalk it up to their inner voice telling them stuff. That’s not necessarily the case. It’s just that they’re sometimes trapped by their fears.

If you ever have the chance to read the book Outwitting the Devil by Sharon Lechter and Napoleon Hill, please do so. It is one of the best books that I have ever read. It’s a little dry in some places but what it is basically is a great conversation. It is an exceptional book and I think it’s a must-read for everybody. It’s about Napoleon Hill interviewing Satan, talking about what makes Satan so successful. He wrote it back in 1938 and his wife wouldn’t let him publish it because she was afraid of the backlash. I know it’s not Napoleon Hill tripping on a good LSD or cocaine or any hallucinogen. It’s just a very interesting story where he’s just basically sitting there talking to the devil. The devil goes on to tell him that what makes him successful is being able to cause people to drift. What does drift mean? Drifting means losing focus, being all over the place. I like to use it when you’re chasing squirrels, Shiny Object Syndrome. In the book, Satan talks about the fact that how he is successful is by taking people that have passion and focus and to get them to lose that focus, losing that passion where they’re doing a variety of things.

Those people that do the most amount of good in the world are those that are laser-focused, those people that have sole purpose. They’re able to get some stuff done, they have enough focus, they cause good, and they affect the people around them in a variety of ways because they are focused. They’re not spreading their energies over twenty things. They’re not really seeing any success in any one of them. They’re losing their way because they are drifting. They let little things distract them. They get bent out of shape on stuff that gives them three to four hours of grief when it should only be five minutes. Don’t get me wrong, there are things that happen to everybody’s life that takes longer than five minutes. That’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is the book is such an impactful story to me that it’s one of the books that we give away more than anything else. I think everybody needs to read it. If you’re struggling in life, if you’re struggling to find some clarity of purpose, clarity of focus, I think you’ve got to read Outwitting the Devil; one of the great books written. Napoleon Hill Foundation found the manuscript in his office, took it to Sharon Lechter. Sharon Lechter, if you did not know, is the co-author of Rich Dad Poor Dad. Sharon’s also a friend. Sharon basically wrote the book but left most of Napoleon Hill’s original comments in place. All she basically added to the book was her idea of what she thought Napoleon would think of in today’s society being 80 years later than when the book was originally written. If you’ve read  Outwitting the Devil, I think you would agree it is a very impactful book. That’s one thing that I tried to keep coming back to is how focused are we, “Am I chasing multiple squirrels? If I am, is it taking away from what I’m currently focused on?”

I think one of the great things about mentors is mentors will have to shake you up a little bit. They should not being all full of unicorns and rainbows. They’ve got the whole slap-in-the-face-cold-water-over-the-head philosophy of things, “You’re probably messing up. You need to be focused on this. Don’t make the same mistake that I have.” If you ever hear your mentor say, “Don’t make the same mistake that I did,” those are probably the most impactful words you’re ever going to hear. One of the biggest mistakes I ever made early on is when I got in the note business, I focused on it being like a fix and flipper. That was a big mistake. Another big mistake that I did is for about good two years, I travelled across the country and I’ve just really had fun being divorced and being single again and having fun. Going to all the cool places I went to is great. I didn’t really focus with my business as much. I had fun, I made money, but I let my business slide. That’s okay, you learn a lot about it. What I’m trying to get at here without being on too much of a ramble is try to avoid the drifting aspect. Avoid what you’re doing. Sometimes you need a mentor. If you don’t have a mentor you’re working with, find somebody. A mentor could be your father or a trusted friend.

Ultimately, a mentor should be somebody that you admire who had some success. It should not be your best friend who’s in the same position that you are because that does not help. You want a mentor that’s going to help you grow, that’s going to help you do things, that’s going to help you avoid the pitfalls that they’ve already been through. A good mentor is going to be a caddie on the game of life. They’re going to help you avoid the pitfalls, the sand traps, the water hazards. They’re going to give you the right club to hit the ball because they know that course. That’s what a really good mentor is. Especially in today’s world with Facebook and YouTube and TV and all the other distractions out there, people literally are talking heads. I will throw myself in as a talking head because we’re on a regular basis. If you’re not into notes, I’m somebody you probably shouldn’t be listening to. If you’re not interested in notes, that’s not a big deal.

One of the very most impactful people that has literally helped me probably more than anything else in the last two years and I’ve had the honor of meeting him once or twice is Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary is a mentor for a lot of people out there. What’s great about Gary, he’s used the social media, video more than anything else, that literally drive traffic to really get his message out across the board. We’ve taken a lot of what we have seen Gary do and use and implemented for our own stuff and had some success in what we do. Not nearly the amount of success he has, still though, I think our niche in the note industry, we’ve had a lot of great stuff of what we do. I took those things that I watched him do and realized literally I could do that. Gary will be the first one to tell you, you can do the things that he does. You’re not going to walk around with a photographer and a videographer with you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to take these great Snapchat photos and things like that if you sit in the cab or in the airplane or any places like that. You can still take photos. You still can share what your journey is going on. You can be a mentor to people that are years behind you wherever you’re at in life by sharing your story. I think it’s one of the biggest things that we literally push, push, push is to share your story.

Let’s talk about drifting. Drifting I think, is one of the things that everybody, including me,  struggles with. There are times that we drift that’s not due to anything that we have done or not. It’s just outside forces: our family, our friends, jobs, real estate deals, things that will punch you in the face. I’m excited because I’ve got a big face puncher right now that is wrapping up hopefully in the next 90 days. Big face punch deal that we have been working on for two years. I am so glad this is almost over. It has been like dragging a sea anchor on some things. It has affected some other things. Anyway, that thing has caused us to drift a little bit on some things. You will have things like that happen. The most important thing that you have to realize is sometimes you have to pull your own head out of your ass because we get so bogged down into the micro of hitting your head against what we see on a regular basis. Whether it’s, “I’ve got to look at what’s in my account, or I’ve got to look at this one deal, or I’ve got to focus on what’s going on in my personal life or my kids.” If you’re working at a job, focus on that. I totally get it.

What often happens though is if you are trying to do more than two things, and by two things, that’s really all that we’re capable of doing efficiently. Two things: The first thing is if you’re working at a job. You’ve got to put your 40 hours in there, your 60 hours in there. That’s what you do. The second thing is if you’re going to be a part-time real estate investor or a part-time note investor, is literally focus on that. We only have 24 hours in a day. If you’ve got a family, you’ve got kids, those have to take a big chunk in your life as well. You’ve got to be very smart. You may only have two to three hours a day at night, in the morning, at lunch breaks, to focus on your second thing or really technically in case of importance, your family should come first, so it’s really the third thing. That’s difficult. That doesn’t leave a lot of time. If you’re adding a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh thing, then you will not get anything accomplished because you’re too busy going and spreading your time and energy across the board.

We talked about hiring assistants on the Note Night in America webinar. If you’re struggling to get things done because you find yourself split amongst different things of importance, you want to find out what’s really important to you. Do yourself a favor, look back at your last 30 or 60 days. Be honest with yourself. Look at your last 30 or 60 days in your calendar and look at everything you’ve done, where you’ve been. If you had a job, what did you do on your free time? There has been weekends where I took the weekend just to have fun. I went to an Astros game on a Friday. I went to a UT Longhorns game on a Saturday. I contemplated driving to Dallas for Dallas Cowboys game on a Sunday. I chose instead to grab my computer on a Sunday and go to the cigar bar next door here at Havana House, and watched the game with everybody and got some work done. I was like, “It’d be great to go up there but I don’t really want to go up there and drop $500 or $300 or whatever, and then drive back here and be tired for Monday.” I didn’t want to drift that much. I had my two days of drifting and then the entrepreneurial itch started to come back again.

What I’m trying to get is if you look at your 30-day, 60 day-calendar, look at what you’re spending your time on. What you’re spending your time on will tell you what your focus is. If you compare what you think your focus is versus what you spend your time on, I guarantee the two will either match up or they won’t. If they won’t, you’ll have to have some hard decisions, “Do I need to spend time going to this anymore?” I know some people are excited because college football or football will soon be over here in the next month or two so they can focus on their business now. If that is you, that should tell you right there what your importance is. It’s not your business, it’s football. After football, we have college basketball. After college basketball, we have college baseball. We have sports here that’s year-round. If you wanted to do that, great. If that’s what your focus is, then go spend it on sports. Don’t spend it on real estate. Don’t spend it on other things.

Honestly, you can only really do one thing very effectively these days. Two things. Obviously, it would be family first. Second thing would be obviously your business, your business focus. If it takes you two weeks to get counters back to our counters, if it takes you three weeks to get a realtor to go out and look at a property, if it takes you four weeks to get something done, that should tell you right then and there you don’t have the bandwidth to get things done or in your free time you’re doing other things that you should probably not be doing. I only say that because I have been down that road before where it was more important for me to go do something fun versus actually focus on my business. Things drifted on me and my business drifted on me. Honestly, it took a mentor to slap me back into place to get me away from drifting and realize I’ve got an opportunity. I need to make sure and take advantage of it versus waste it away.

Mentors are one of the most important facets of what we do. I have paid for mentorship. I still pay every year for mentorship. I get them through masterminds or groups I’m a part of. One of the best things that I’ve been a part of over the last couple of years, I wasn’t a member this year but last year, was The Collective Genius Mastermind that Jason Medley runs. Jason does a great job with his Mastermind. He brings together 100 to 150 of the brightest real estate investors across the country that are closing 50 to 100 plus deals a year and puts us in a room for three to four days over four times a year. This year, I did not renew because the fact is my schedules are reset for three out of those four visits. When I let Jason know that, he was fine with that. What I did learn is I learned a lot about operations. It’s one of the things that these guys are doing in their own business. Most of the guys are fix and flippers or wholesalers. There’s a very, very, very  small niche of note investors, but I still learned something from everybody. I learned one of the great marketing hacks they shared from a buddy mine, Josh DeShong who’s an amazing realtor and fix and flipper and wholesaler in Dallas. Patrick Precourt has been a great mentor as well over the last three years. I learned from him some things about life and lessons. Jason has shared some insight of some of the things that he’s gone through, stuff like that. Those are all great mentors.

Another mentor of mine and I think he’s had probably more impact on a business standpoint in the last decade is a buddy of mine, Roland Frasier. Roland is one of the co-owners of DigitalMarketer. Roland, I’ve got the chance to spend a couple of years a little bit on and off of learning some of the marketing techniques that he was using for his business years ago. Obviously, that has changed and evolved in the last fifteen years. Anytime I hear Roland speak at a digital marketing conference or one-on-one talking or on Facebook and some of the things, it is valuably valuable. It’s very valuable in taking things and seeing if you want success and realizing those hacks aren’t that difficult to do. They’re pretty relatively easy. It’s just a matter of going out and actually putting them into place. I think that’s one of the most important aspects of mentorship is your mentor should drive you to do stuff.

If you’re not ready to do things, maybe you need to take things at a different pace. If you’re getting guidance, you’re getting mentored, you’re getting nuggets, you’re learning to avoid the drift factor that we all face, success is just waiting for you out there. Success has a different definition for all of us in today’s society. Success can be money. It can be the number of deals. It could be lifestyle. It could be family. It could be whatever you do. Whatever your definition of success is, it is achievable at any standard. I look at what we have accomplished in the last five years and the last ten years and how different my life is from what it was a decade ago. I look at how interesting my life has changed in the last two years too with different things. Being a little bit more focused on what we do just in Austin at the offices versus being out on the road so much. I think the most important thing I could tell each and every one of you out there is find a mentor.

Find a mentor that is going to help you accomplish things, who’s going to hold you accountable, somebody you can be truthful with. The minute you’re going to be truthful with yourself and your mentor and put away all the bullshit, put the pride away, that’s when real growth happens. That’s when you really start to accomplish amazing things in your business, in your life, whatever your focus is. That’s when you start being real and looking at yourself in the eye in the mirror every day in the morning and realize that, “Today is going to be a great day. Today there’s going to be something I’m going to accomplish. Today may not be a great day but at least I learned something.” Yesterday when I got home, I was tired. Steph was like, “What is wrong with you? Your energy is a little off.” I was like, “I’m exhausted.” I had a migraine kick in about 8:00 last night. I’ve been doing a lot of reflection on some things, on our numbers, our things and our goals for the year and for next year.

I’m excited about what 2018 holds. I’m really excited how much growth that Jennifer and Nichole and Greg and Stephanie have gone through in the last twelve to eighteen months. They are doing so many amazing different things now than they did when they first started here. It’s actually different. Good things, bad things, and there’s things I have to work on to make sure that they keep growing. One of the things that we have focused on is what our students are following. What can we keep doing to help our tribe grow? Over the next few weeks, over the next few months, you’re going to see some really cool things that I hope that you think is cool to help you really achieve some great things. There have been some things that we’ve done recently that I have been really overjoyed with. I love the fact that our WCN Crew Facebook page is growing. There’s so much interaction.

If you’re listening on iTunes or Facebook and you’re not a member of the WCN Crew Facebook page, go out and find it. It is for our students only. Drop us an email or sometimes we’ll make exceptions if you’re listening to the podcast but have not gone through a workshop yet. There’s so much interaction taking place in that Facebook group. We’re really, really overjoyed with it. Bigger is not always better, for those that are curious about it. I see some big Facebook out there that have no interaction and that drives me bonkers. I’m very proud of that and probably with some of the changes that we’re making here. I’m very proud of the amount of deals that we’ve closed, especially in the last 120 days. It’s been a good year. It’s going to be even better next year.

Book recommendations, Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk is a great book too. It’s a pretty easy read. Anything you can read by Seth Godin; Tribes is phenomenal. The ONE Thing by Gary Keller, the The E-Myth by Michael Gerber is phenomenal. It’s a great one every entrepreneur should read. The Power of Broke by Daymond John, very, very impactful book as well. It’s relatively new over the last two years. He’s got a very interesting story, very amazing story. His overnight success took eight years. On Shark Tank, he is the token smart guy, as he likes to say. Not the token bright guy, the token smart guy. Very, very smart guy but very focused, and that’s the thing we focus on.

It’s all about mentoring. This episode knot me on a tree stump but I guess it’s turned out to be a little bit like that. Just sharing, I’ve had some very impactful mentors and people that have influenced me in some amazing ways. If you have a bad mentor, they can really hurt your business. You’re going to hurt yourself if they’re more focused on them than helping mentor you on some things. Be careful on who you choose as a mentor. Your mentor should always be able to be there to pick up the phone and give you a phone call and talk with you whether it’s via text message or Facebook message or whatever. I think it’s one of the biggest things that you can do. If you’re going to mentor somebody or have offered them mentorship, you’ve got to be accessible to your students and to the people that are looking to you for guidance.

That’s all I’ve got for this episode. Hopefully, this episode has been helpful and impactful. On the next podcast, we are going to focus on making six figures in 2018, a game plan of success for people out there. It’s a game plan I put together two years ago now. A lot of people have implemented that plan and are having success with it. I’m going to tweak it up a little bit, a few changes to it, and we’ll discuss about it on the next episode.

Go out. Have an amazing day. Go make something happen. If you’re listening on iTunes podcast, please, please, please do me two things. One, leave a review. You know I love reviews. Secondly, feel free to share the podcast to somebody. If you have real estate investors, if you have people in the real estate who’s looking for help or stuff like that, share the podcast. I’m sure we have plenty of nuggets in what we do that will help affect their business in a positive nature as well. That’s all I have for this episode. You go out and have an amazing day. We look forward to seeing you all at the top.

 

Important Links

• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• Bob Leonetti and Jayme Kahla
• Tom Hopkins
• How to Master the Art of Selling
• Greg Reid
• Duncan Wierman
• Sandi Shaner
• Think and Grow Rich: Three Feet From Gold
• Think and Grow Rich
• George Antone
• Aaron Young
• Outwitting the Devil
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• The Collective Genius Mastermind
• Josh DeShong
• Patrick Precourt
• DigitalMarketer
• Crush It!
• Tribes
• The ONE Thing
• The E-Myth
• The Power of Broke

• Here’s How »

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• The Note Closers Show Facebook
• The Note Closers Show Twitter
• Scott Carson LinkedIn
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