Note investors who have started doing big things at the start of the year are showing good signs that they are focused. This is the best step to break the cycle of making the same mistakes you made last year. To make this even better, invest time to do the little things on a daily basis. Reach out to asset managers and grow your network. Send out emails to your database to let them know you are active. Start making things happen for your business, because the hurdles in your head are just in your head. Learn how you can cut down on doing twelve things at once and not make February the same way as January.
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Break The Cycle Of The Groundhog Day Massacre
This is Groundhog Day. Things are rocking and rolling over here in the WCN war room. We are working through some assets. I actually got a list of 100 plus notes sent to us that we’ll start working on and do something on this list and advertise it for sale. We’ll take some bids and we’ll make some offers on some of the stuff as well but we’re pretty stoked about that. I hope you weren’t putting off your success for six more weeks. One of the biggest things I want you to think about is, are you putting off your success for another six weeks? Do you constantly find yourself saying, “I’ll wait until next week or I’ll start on Monday?” I know that procrastination runs throughout everybody. I have procrastinated things. I find myself some days not wanting to do the things that I need to focus on and I’m sure everybody else does that, too. You get bogged down with the little things and you look up and you’re like, “Where did the day go? Why is it 5:00? Or why is it 6:00 already? I didn’t get to do what I needed to get done today.” You have to look at yourself and look at your schedule to see what you’re accomplishing or what you’re not accomplishing or where you’re spending your time at. There are programs you can get to throw on your computer and it’ll allow you to see what websites you’re on, if you’re effective or not effective. I’m not a big fan of those because you can very easily label your Facebook time or your YouTube time or your other social media time as work when we all know a lot of it probably isn’t going to be work. It’s going to be just looking and stalking and commenting on things that really have no bearing to your success.
While Groundhog Day, which should be known as Candlemas, was the point where people would put their candles away so they could actually work longer versus having to use their candles to work by the light of the candle light. I want to challenge you to do something. I want to challenge everyone to go out and literally do something different with yourself. It’s important that you work to accomplish something bigger this year. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with the same old results again and again. I’m a huge fan of the movie Groundhog Day by Bill Murray. I think a lot of people are. I love Bill Murray. I think he’s pretty hilarious. If you think back to the movie Groundhog Day, what happens? He constantly is repeating the history, repeating the same mistakes and ends up with the same exact results. What are you doing on a daily basis that’s causing you to have failure at the end of the day? What are you doing every week? What are you doing every month that you’re not seeing the same type of results? I can’t answer that for you. You have to answer that aspect for yourself otherwise, nobody can help you. I really love that our past guest, Michelle Young, talked about it. You need to be aware of what you’re making. Be aware that we all have six-years-olds inside of us. That’s important to first realize that and then working yourself backwards to figure out, “What sets you off? What are the things that you’re going to fail at?” Give yourself permission to fail at it but also not flip to the worst possible reason for it. “What if this happens?” I see that happening all the time.
I had a conference call with a gentleman. He’s a great guy and a very successful investor. He’s bought a chunk of properties and he owner-finances them. He fixed them up in the owner-financed with a wraparound mortgage. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. What he struggles with though is he’s doing all the work himself. He’s going out one at a time raising capital literally the old school way of thinking. We had this conference call because he’d won something on the Financial Friends Network cruise and we were talking about, “What are you doing for marketing?” He goes, “I have zero social media.” I’m like, “Do you have a website?” He goes, “No.” I go, “Why don’t you have a website?” He goes, “Because I’m scared.”I’m like, “Because you’re scared of what?” “I’m scared of what the SEC could do to me.”I’m like, “What are you talking about? Are you doing anything illegal?” He goes, “No. I’m scared.”
Break The Cycle: You’ve been putting off your success because of fear. Fear is False Evidence Appearing Real.
What he was so scared about was the fact that he didn’t want to put anything because he was scared of something. I said, “What are you so scared about? You’re not doing anything illegal. You’re not pulling people together. You’re not doing anything illegal. What are you scared about? You’ve got 60 plus deals over the last year that you’ve done? He’s like, “Yeah, but,” and I’m like, “What’s the but though? If you do this and you do this and you do this, you’re going to ultimately have success. You’ve been putting off your success because of fear.” We all know fear is False Evidence Appearing Real. I see this over and over and over again from people and I’m just like, “You’ve got to start somewhere. You can’t expect to have instantaneous success like that.” You can’t expect, “I’m going to do this right now and see what happens overnight.” That’s not the case. This guy wants to raise $1 million and plans to take things bigger but he’s not willing to put in the foundation and he’s not willing to grow the root to really drive things and help them make it a lot easier.
Now, he’s got three to six months of putting an infrastructure in before he ever really has an opportunity to do it. Is he going to get around to doing that? Probably not, because he’s got all these other deals that he’s working through already. That’s the thing that is frustrating for me all the time. That really is what frustrates me on a regular basis. I talk to people. I see people struggling. I see what’s going on with everybody. I see people that want to do big things but they’re not doing the little things on a daily basis. They are repeating the same mistakes day in, day out, day in, day out. Then they wake up the next day and they wonder why they don’t have the type of success they should have. It’s because of the fact that you have to break that cycle and start doing it. If you want to lose weight, you know what you have to do? You have to eat less and workout more. You’ve got to be more active. If you want to be a better painter, you’ve got to paint more and quit watching TV. If you want to write a book, you’ve got to set away the things that you’re doing and spend some time writing. You’ve got to practice your craft. You’ve got to work at these things to make things better. What I’m trying to get at is you have to stop doing the things that you are doing and pull out a virtual gun and shoot that groundhog that you keep repeating on.
One-twelfth of the year is done. What have you accomplished? What are you looking to make better about this year versus last year? If you’re not doing the things that you need to do, I can’t help you. I can’t help you if you’re not going to do the little things and the basic things you do on a daily basis. I love the fact that people are up there. I’ve seen some posts about people going into LinkedIn and reaching out to asset managers. They’re connecting to them and they’re doing the things they’re supposed to be doing. That’s phenomenal. That’s great. I love that. The thing that I’m not seeing though is I’m not seeing people literally going after a variety of assets. I see some people marketing some things. I saw somebody posted an asset link and said, “What should I do with this? What are the numbers behind it? What are the deals? What’s the interest rate? What’s the payment? How long is left in the mortgage? How far defaulted are they?: That’s what drives me bonkers a little bit. Share what you have going on. If somebody says, “I have this situation,” but where is the rest of the information? If you want us to give you an accurate answer or a suggestion or give you accurate counsel, give us the full information. Quit doing things half-assed is the biggest thing I can tell you. I’m a big fan of delivered is better than perfect but a lot of people are expecting to pull rabbits out of their hats and they’re not doing the things that they should be doing. You need to quit doing the things that are killing your business on a daily basis.
Here are some of the things that are killing people’s businesses, and it’s sad. You’re spending your time running around networking and not literally doing the business. What do I mean by doing the business? You’re not reaching out to asset managers. You’re not making offers on assets. You’re not raising private capital because you’re scared of. You’re not creating and posting toe social media things. There are so many great things on social media. This is what I was talking about to this guy the other day. I said, “You could literally go on right now and go into different Facebook groups, different real estate groups and add probably 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 people to your database. You could communicate with them almost instantly by posting stuff that you’re doing, posting what you’re working on.” It’s easier than it’s ever been before to raise private capital if you have good deals. I’m a big fan of networking with people that have deals. Where do you go? You reach out to the servicing companies, you reach out to the banks, you reach out to the asset managers, the hedge funds that we know that have assets on a regular basis.
Start looking at what they have available to make things happen. It is just what it is. That’s the only way you’re going to get ahead in life is to massacre that stupid groundhog to literally overcome the obstacles or the hurdles in your head. It’s sad and it’s unfortunate, but until you get to that point where you can do that, you’re never going to find success in anything unless you give your focus to it. This means quit doing twelve different things. Quit going to everything and start doing. Sometimes you’ve got to stop traveling, stop trying to network and literally start doing things and I see that happen. Having a networking club is great, a networking meeting is great but if you do it all the time, you have nothing that’s left. When I used to coach real estate investors back in 2004 and 2009, I would talk to a lot of people, Ron LeGrand students. They had bought this huge package for $50,000 of twelve different classes. A Master’s in Real Estate, I think is what it was.
They were constantly going every month to a different workshop and they would have all these things that they would get at one workshop and they’d start to implement it, send out leads or send out yellow letters or posting ads. Then they would take off to the next event. I’m like, “How many leads, how many phone calls did you get off this letter? How many phone calls did you get off the ad?” “I got a ton of phone calls.”I’m like, “What happened to them?” “I was too busy going to the next event I didn’t have time to call those.” I’m like, “You just literally pulled out cash, lit it on fire and burned it basically.” I see so many people doing that. I see so many people literally running from one event to the next, to the next, to the next. Sometimes you’ve got to steadily say, “I’m not going to do that until I get such and such done.” Sometimes you’ve got to plant a flag and hold yourself accountable. “I’m not going to eat a cheeseburger until I drop ten pounds.” That could be very easy. Hop your happy ass on a treadmill for a day or a bike and knock off ten pounds if you really want to.
Break The Cycle: Cut it back and start putting more focus to what you’re focused on, to what you really want to accomplish.
I’m not telling you to end what you enjoy doing or other things. I’m just simply saying to limit it. Cut it back and start putting more focus to what you’re focused on, to what you really want to accomplish. I get we all have charities that we’re big in, we all want to be humanitarians or we all want to be the people that are donating money and our time to causes. If you’re not putting meat on your table, if you’re not accomplishing your goals first, taking care of yourself first, it’s going to be really hard to give what you really want to accomplish or have that big impact later in life if you’re not doing the things right now to set things up. Set aside the toys and grow up and be a man or a woman who can literally do the things that you want to do. You’ve heard of the 40-year life worked for 40 years, for 40 hours a week, for 40% of what you make. If you want to accomplish big things, if you want to travel more, if you want to put your kids through college, if you want to retire early, you have to do things differently than what you’ve been doing.
That’s the biggest thing I can tell you. Don’t make February a repeat of January if you’ve not had the success that you want. Don’t make this year a repeat of next year. If you have the same exact level of success this year as you had last year, some people consider that good. I consider that not growing. If you’re not growing, you’re actually losing. Everybody has different goals. Our goal this year is to be bigger than we were last year. Do more things this year. What have we done with that? Ultimately, I’ve carved back our travel schedule. I would’ve loved to go on to New Jersey, but those events aren’t going to help us ultimately expand where we’re going. That’s why we’ve been focused on reaching out to asset managers and building those lists back up because we know that’s going to feed the rest of the year. That’s also why we’ve held our people that are going to go through that accountable each week. Put four weeks in, we’ll have something amazing happen at the end of the four weeks. If we’re going to find anything less, which is not the case, we’re already starting to see assets come in, you have a list that’s going to help feed you for the next nine months, twelve months if you work it. When you tell somebody that, you’re still going to probably have about a 15% to 20% completion rate on that. That’s really where the success is. Only about 20% of people ever end up doing anything and honestly, I think it’s more so like 5% for the most part who stick with it long-term.
The question you have to ask yourself is, “Are you dedicated to doing something and being an expert in your field?” There are people right now getting to whatever they’re getting into who, in the next three to five years, will be an expert in their field because they’ll be solely focused. There are people I haven’t even met, people I’ve never even heard from who will start investing in debt, who will start doing non-performing notes, start closing on deals who will be amazing in the next two or three years. If they do the right things, they’re building things up and rocking forward. Steph has had some interesting conversations with some people that have been talking about getting in the Fast Track or the Note Mastermind group. They’re fix and flippers and they’re asking her, “Can those replace my fix and flip income?”I’m like, “It’s not going to happen overnight, but it can happen if you focus on it.” If you’re still so busy trying to find other deals on your fix and flip side business, which you’re not finding anything, what are you doing? You’re pouring energy into a cup with no bottom. You’re not going to be able to drink anything because there’s nothing there to hold it in place. You have to sit there. If you’re coming over from the landlord side or from the private lending side, those are easy transitions for a lot of people. They’re just tweaking a few things. If you’re coming over from the fix and flip side, you’ve got to change your mindset and realize, “I’ve got to do different things.” Finding notes and finding assets on the note side is different than the fix and flip side and a lot of people struggle with that. You have to change. Realize what you’re going to do with that. The numbers are different. The numbers are more plentiful here than those that are out chasing you’re distressed assets, your foreclosure homes, your REOs.
I know that some people are like, “What do I share when it comes to social media?” Just start sharing. Share what’s going on in your life. Share where you’re going, share the deals that you’re working on, share what you’re looking for. Those are some of the easiest things to do. For most people, fear paralyzes them from doing anything. “I don’t know how to market.” You do know how to market. I just saw you the other day taking a photo of something else that you were marketing for somebody else. I see that you are working on other things versus what you should be focused on and you’re marketing that as well. That’s great. That’s fine. That’s where your focus is at. If that’s where your focus is, that will ultimately do you results. If you are wanting different results, you’ve got to have different input. If you sleep until 2:00 every day and then don’t get much stuff done and you wonder why you’re not seeing many deals or things like that, that’s the reason. You’ve got to get up early. You’ve got to make a change. You’ve got to shock your system to go do something different.
Live by your schedule. It’s important to track your schedule. A lot of entrepreneurs get strangled by the freedom of entrepreneurship because they don’t have a boss to be directed by every day. Time blocking is a great one. If you’re brand new, I don’t necessarily suggest IMN to be an event you’d go to. You need to close a few deals to really take advantage of what IMN offers. I know it’s going to have some bigger players there, and it’s great to go because you’re going to learn a lot of stuff. It’s literally drinking through a fire hydrant and see where people are at and talking to them and see where they began. It’s important to keep that in mind and to take that with a grain of salt. This is one thing that you have to realize, too. When you have people in an event that are employees of a company, that is not the same thing as being an entrepreneur. Never ever, ever let anybody talk down to you because you’re brand new in something. This goes out to anybody out there. If you’re brand new in note investing and somebody talks down to you, tell them to F off. We all start in the same place. We all start at the beginning. We all start doing something that we have to do to get over the hump. We have to all get started somewhere. We’re all new, wet behind the ears to begin working at something. I don’t care who you are. If you’re putting your own money, your own time on the line without the safety net of having a salary like an employee does, it’s a big different thing. Guys, gals out there, if you’re doing your own thing out there and you don’t have a job, you don’t have a salary and all that stuff, you have huevos. You’re putting your business on the line. Whereas employees for companies, don’t let them think that their shit doesn’t stink. They have a safety net. They’re not the man and the woman that you are as entrepreneurs who are going to make that happen. Keep that in mind.
Break The Cycle: You don’t need to have a 50-minute conversation for a five-minute discussion. Get to the point, it will save you time.
“You mentioned about offering some of the 100 assets you are working on. What are the minimum requirements newbies have to have before you roll off to bid on them?” You’ve got to get yourself in place. You’ve got to have an LLC. If there’s anything I can tell you that would be a great asset for you, start your day, chart what you did every hour or half hour. What did you work on? If you do that for a week, you can then go back and look at your schedule and see what you’ve spent most of your time on or where you wasted your time on. That was one of the effective tools that a previous employer of mine would have us do. When I was working as a new banker at JPMorgan Chase, we had to chart our hours. We had to chart our accounts, so the accounts open and the account close, the investments, the phone calls we made. We had to chart all that out and then turn that in on a daily basis. For a variety of things, it helped us track our commissions but it also tracked to see how we were effective or not effective. If we had a long conversation with a client and it didn’t lead to anything, you had to learn to adjust your aspects. Still to this day, I’m guilty of that. If I get into a long conversation with people and it’s going around and around and not getting to the point, I’m going to say, “Can you get to your point? I don’t need all these details. What’s the ultimate point going to be?” That’s one thing I keep in mind. You don’t need to have a 50-minute conversation for a five-minute discussion. Get to the point, it will save you time. It will save a lot of others a lot of grief. You’ll also get a whole lot more done and be taken a lot more serious on some things.
That’s really all I have for you. I want you to go out and make something happen. You control your own destiny. I don’t control it. Your friends don’t control it. You control your own destiny on what you want to accomplish. It’s ultimately up to you and what you focus on and what you do. If you need to pull out a gun and kill the groundhog so that you’re not doing the same thing six weeks from now that you were doing today, you need you need to make some changes to find success. That’s the only way you’ll ever, ever, ever be able to ultimately succeed in life. No matter what your focus is, focus on it. Get rid of the distractions. Get rid of the people that aren’t going to help you accomplish those goals and you’ll be a whole lot happier in the long run. Trust me. It’s well-worth the time away from the things that you really enjoy doing, to work hard on something, to see the success because it will just absolutely blossom and blow up in a good way most of the time. If it doesn’t work for you, trust me, talk to the people who’ve been there before. I guarantee they’re willing to share with you their success stories and what they had to overcome or how they overcame those obstacles along the way. Go out and make something happen. Have a great day. I will see you all at the top.