We’re all, at different stages of our lives, struggle on a regular basis with things. One of the biggest things we’re always struggling with is finding focus. It’s a constant work in progress because we’re always dealing with the shiny object syndrome. We’re all struggling with a variety of different things to get things done. You’re not supposed to have a perfect balance wheel with everything. What you have to do is find some sort of semi-flat part of that circle or something that works well to help you get some sort of balance with things. Most people are struggling with focus because they’re trying to do way too much than what they need to be doing. They need to keep the whole idea of KISS, keep it simple, silly. Find out why you need to find focus in your life and your real estate business so you can get things done and be more productive.
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Listen to the podcast here:
Finding Focus In Your Note Business
Thank you so much for joining us. I’m always humbled to have you guys join me on a regular basis. You definitely want to grab a piece of paper, take some notes as we dive into the main focus of webinar is all about finding focus, especially when you’re struggling in your note business. It’d be very impactful for a lot of you, and that’s my goal is to hopefully make an impact for you guys. It’s all about finding focus in your note business. For those of you that are in real estate and not in the note business. That’s okay, don’t hang up, don’t walk off. We’ve got a lot of great stuff to go through that you can adapt or use in your real estate business or whatever focus of business you’re in, whether a million people on that were in the healthcare industry that were joining us earlier, that people that were doing a variety of things, wholesaling. We all are different impasses and online from time to time. We’re all different stages of our lives and we all struggle on a regular basis with things. I am not immune to any of that. That’s why we think that I thought this is so important, especially after seeing so many of you that reached out when I ask, “What are you struggling with? What problems that would you like to see on Note Night in America?”
Overwhelmingly, a lot of people are like, “Finding focus. I’m struggling.” That’s okay. We all struggle, we are all going to do that even I struggle to see things done. We’ve set this goal and it still remains the same. In the next four and a half years, we want to educate, help create over 10,000 new note investors. That’s a big goal for us. It’s something that drives what we are focused on with these Note Night in America Webinars. The virtual workshops, the podcast, what we’re doing with the replays of Note Camp 5.0 focused on trying to help educate and create 10,000 investors or the next five years. I’m a big believer that that is still available. There are still plenty of inventory out there. There’s even more inventory mature in the next five years we see as ourselves. First and foremost is this your first time in Note Night in America? Who’s here on the call? We got real estate investors. We have note investors. We have people looking to get into notes in some form or fashion, either a investing or doing deals.
These calls are recorded. I hit the red button on the same make sure it’s recording. You can catch these at WeCloseNotes.TV or also by going to iTunes and look for Note Night in America. Note Night in America, the replays are up to about 2,000 replays, which is fine. Our Note Camp Season One as we say it on here, but 5.0 is up almost 5,000 downloads on iTunes. If you’re listening to either one of those do me a huge favor, please a review. While I was gone, we hit over 100,000 downloads. Right before I headed out to about 100, 10,000. Let’s thank you for listening to podcasts. Keeps me in rock and rolling that you guys are listening, a big shout out to our eight guest hosts that took advantage of the show in a good way and came in and brought some great information while I was gone for three weeks. Thank you so much to those eight people. Cody Cox, Gail Villanueva, Gail Greenberg, Katie Moton, Patty Ped, Chris Seveney, Eric Hyde and Bill Griesmer. Thank you so much for this.
I got a few people coming in town for our Fast Track training. It’s a full Fast Track. Get some great people coming in and Joe Tomko, Eric Hyde, Gail Villanueva. To name a few of you guys, you have a great time. Saturday is also National Social Media Say. What is that? It’s a day. It’s put aside to celebrate social media, a threat across the country, across the world, and we’re going to be doing a 27 hours straight live stream bringing on social media and marketing experts with our good friends, Kristie and Elijah Whites from Serving Social. Stoked about that because we’ve been working on that getting scheduled by halfway full right now. I’ve got some big names coming on to help us out with that. We have Australian Mixer in Houston. I will be actually speaking at that. I’m excited to be there in Houston and speaking. We will also have our next Note Buying Workshop. We’ve tweaked a little bit the schedule on so many events. We’ve made some adjustments to everything based on what the hotels are telling us and other things that popped up.
We’ve got our first Note Boardroom taking place in Las Vegas. What is it the Boardroom? It’s twelve seats we’ve got left available for people to come and spend two days with us, some in depth training on helping them get their business over there out of the rut and into a much more effective real estate business. We’re going to focus on finding deals. We’re going to focus on some funding aspect of things. We’re going to dive into the twelve people that are there and spend some time on the fast track. It’s not my not match my training, but it’s a two-day intensive to go through four assets. Finding, funding, flipping then also your marketing aspect of things for this 4x. I’m stoke about that. Tickets that are $2,500 let me know. It’s going to fill up fast. We’ve only got a few seats left. We finalized the boardroom, we finalize the dates or stoked about that.
We have our next Note Mastermind in Dallas, Texas at the Western excited about Western Galleria and it’s also at bumps up right next to the Quest Expo. If you’re not in the mastermind and you still want to go to the Quest Expo, we’ve got a code for you, WCNEXPO. We use it on caps, we’ll get you 25% discount off of the either regular price or the VIP pricing. Any questions about those events schedule before we dive into the main subject of our webinar? Good to see some people who are doing some live streaming. This is also on Instagram as well. Thanks for joining us here on the Instagram side of things, but you can catch the main thing on my Facebook page as well.
Talking about finding focus in your business is the topic of tonight’s webinar. That takes me back to when I used to do when we used to do literally teleconferences. People dial in, no video, nothing. We would talk for an hour in different subjects and go through different things.
We have a question, “Hello, Scott. Welcome back. Is the mastermind, going to overlap the Quest Expo?”
No, it’s two days. Our Mastermind is Thursday, Friday and the Quest Expo is Friday, Saturday. We’re butting up. We’re not going to overlap. We’re doing two days Mastermind and then you have the Quest Expo being two days. We shortened our Mastermind to make it a more affordable and easier for everybody. Who doesn’t want to come and spend time with 60 to 80 note mastermind students and then also our mastermind members and then hanging out with 500 potential IRA investors at Quest IRA? We do have a room block for those that are in our masterminds, so make sure you reach out to Stephanie to get your room blocked done. Good to see you guys out there. Not an overlapping button right up and we’ll have a VIP room for our mastermind on that Saturday as well at the expo.
Let me go ahead and say this upfront with everybody out here. Focus is something everybody struggles with, so we all suck ass. We all suck. You’ve all heard me say the word, embrace the suck. Just embrace it. Learn to embrace it right now and understand we all suck. I’m throwing myself under the bus as well because there are things that I suck at. All of you do. We all suck at this. It’s a constant work in progress. One of the things is we all deal with shiny object syndromes. We all have goldfish attention spans. We have attention span is less than a goldfish. Goldfish with a nine-second attention span, as long as ours, you have to realize one thing is wrong with that picture is that you’re going to struggle with focus. I don’t care whether it’s your work, your family, you’ve got deals you’re working on, you’re struggling with marketing, raising capital, doing workouts, and your assets are fixing them up or get them sold. We all are struggling with a variety of different things to get things done. I know this because I live it every day. I talk to people every day.
Finding Focus: Focus is something everybody struggles with, so we all suck ass.
I talked to students, I talked to investors that call me up all day, long talking about how they struggle, and I get it. You’re not supposed to have a perfect balance wheel with everything. Whoever thought of that ideal of being balanced on things like your health and your finances and your family and your work, and obviously is the biggest crock of crap I’ve ever heard. We are not meant to be balanced. It doesn’t work that way that well. If you find that, great, congratulations. That’s phenomenal. You’re an anomaly. Most people aren’t going to be able to find that. What you have to do is find some semi flat part of that circle. Something that works well to help you get some balance with things, but what I often find is most people are struggling with focus because they’re trying to do too much or they’re trying to do way too much than what they need to be doing and they need to keep the whole idea of KISS. Keep it simple, silly. Keep it simple, Scott. I say, “Keep it simple, stupid.” Sometimes it’s what you got to say to yourself as well. We’ve got goldfish attention spans and then made you realize that and you embrace that and realize that that’s what you have to do. You’re working with and that you have to avoid a lot of this stuff that we’re going to go through. The more educated we are, the happier we’ll be. I got a whole lot of stuff that needs to be done, but the to-do lists suck. The last thing you want to have is to do list. They fake us into believing it. Focus out in believing we’re productive. You’ve done a to-do list. I can do all these things, did it at a rattle on twenty, 30 things deep, and then you start checking off the little things.
I can knock that out in five minutes, I can knock that out in ten minutes, I can walk there in five minutes or ten or twelve or stuff like that. We avoid the hard things on that list is like the big three things that you need to be doing a big for things to be doing. We want to look back at the end of the day and see that list. That’s all long, all that’s not done. I presented, and my list is knocked out. No, it’s not. You faked yourself out because the three things that aren’t checked off were the most important things that you should have done instead of the unimportant things. What did we do? We push the important things to another day. I don’t have time. They don’t have time in my schedule and knock got the big things I have. What we do is we find ourselves wasting time on stupid things and that’s why you’re not effective. It’s truly a recipe for failure. I only say this because I am pointing the finger directly back at me, done this over time. I’ve gotten better at it.
I’m not the world’s greatest organizer. Steph will crack up and said, “You’re not doing that.” “No, I’m not doing that because it’s a little thing. I’m not going to focus on it a little thing. I’ll focus on the big things.” and you know the little things are a waste of time and energy and you look at what you could have done and how much more productive or profitable or organize you could have been by getting the bigger things done first and then the little things will filled itself in. Here’s this great quote by Shane Sands I came across, “The biggest difference between the people that find time and don’t find times that people find time to actually look for it.” We had enough time to get stuff done on the day, but we often will lose it on the right.
We wasted, or we let it rot by doing other things. Doing something that it takes us five minutes, it takes you fifteen minutes to do that. You should delegate them, begin with, or you should have asked a question is something to think about. Those that are successful find the time to get things done because they either do the most important thing or they’re delegating more of there to do list out to things. One of my favorite things to do is kill the to-do list. Literally get rid of it. What I want you guys to think about is focused on bigger big rocks. The big rocks list. More so than anything else. Focus on trying to get three big rocks done each day, morning and afternoon, early evening. Three big rocks each day will help you be much more productive in the long run than in the short-term can.
Finding Focus: Most people are struggling with focus because they’re trying to do way too much than what they need to be doing.
I will help you be productive in the short-term too it’s sometimes your bigger rocks are the ones the most important things that need to be taken care of. Delegate the little rocks off. “Can you do this, can you find this? Go get this delegated as best you can do to delegate this.” What I see the most from entrepreneurs and note investors as they get to that spot at twenty or 39, maybe 40 notes where they’ve been doing it all themselves and they have this wall they run into, or especially real estate investors. They ran into this wall where they can’t do everything themselves,
The fact that they’re doing everything themselves. It’s cost them from to being more productive. Cost from getting things done. Making that hire to allow somebody to do the 40 hours’ worth of the little things that are bogging them down. It keeps them from going out and discovering something big or marketing more, raising more capital, do things. Usually the big rocks are going to be your most profitable generating items of the day. Raising capital, closing deals, marketing to bring in more capital or more deals. Those are usually the biggest things that are the biggest rocks. Always complete the big tasks first. All the other stuff will fall in. Once you complete those three big rocks, those two big rocks, or sometimes one big rock, you’re going to feel accomplished as you got something big done. That’s what it’s all about. The most successful people are doing the most productive thing and any given time, that doesn’t mean they’re filling out paperwork. They’ve got someone else doing it or not signing contracts or they got somebody else. They’re doing the most productive thing.
They value their hour more than anything else. I’ve got two mason jars and literally they have the same amount of rocks and sand and each one is that how they went into the jar is different. On the left-hand side, whoever filled that put the little things in first, the medium sized rocks in seconds and the biggest rocks in the last. That’s why they don’t all fit in a mason jar. On the right-hand side. They started off with the big rocks to an end. They put the smaller medium sized rocks in which fit in around the big rocks and then they poured this thing in and it filled out perfect. One of my science professors did this when I was in seventh or eighth grade and he had two big jars like that and it was people that showed up the big rocks in first, or the sand in first. People were like, “Put the sand in first, do a little thing for us.”
Unfortunately, that’s how we find ourselves in those days. We’re doing the little things first and by the time the day ends we haven’t gotten the big things accomplished. Have not gotten the big things accomplished there, left for another day or another week to go from there. If anything, try to keep this picture in mind about what you focus on. Your bigger rocks are going to be the biggest things that you need to focus on. Often the biggest things are the ones that we put off the most because we’re intimidated. We’re not the most comfortable with them sometimes, and yes, you’ve heard people talk about delegate your weaknesses. I would agree to that. The thing is that you have to look at what you have, what are the things I’ve got to get done and you’ve got to rank things.
Finding Focus: We find ourselves wasting time on stupid things and that’s why you’re not effective.
How do you find big rocks? I talk about getting rid of the to-do lists, but oftentimes the first time of doing this, you’ve got through the list of what needs to be done and then you got to rank them in order of importance and expertise. If there are things that only you can do, and I mean only you can do, that’s something that you have to get done. If something that you can delegate off, we’ll use this for example, to a servicer or an assistant or a virtual VA of some sort, or you’re going to hire somebody to go do that for you. That’s going to cost you less than what it costs you to do it, your hourly rate. That’s where you leave the important thing, if you can do that, delegate it off. Pay for something else to go do what you go do what you have to do.
The things that you can’t delegate, rank those and the biggest three are the most important ones as far as time or profit generating or most importance. Those the ones that you do. Those are where you focus on each day. Delegate or push the rest. Push the rest to a time in the evening or time that you’re done and it only takes a little while like scanning documents. Don’t do that. Let somebody else go do it. Go do it or go do it in the evenings when nothing else can be done. The most profitable or productive should rank the highest. This is going to work around for those that are working in another job, working full-time. You’ve got to work these things in around the time gaps that you have with your job if you’ve got lunch or you’ve got time in the morning or get time in the evenings. That’s what you have to look at. This is only going to be effective if you’re honest with yourselves.
Guys and gals out there, if you’re not going to be honest with yourself, then you should. You’re never going to see or achieve any success. You’re never going to find the type of happiness that you can have or the semi balance if you are constantly buying into the BS that you tell yourself, “I don’t have time for that.” Whether you believe it or not, you’re correct, and then you find it’d be more viable to go run around and do all this other crazy stuff like a chicken with his head cut off versus actually sitting down and he gets something done. If you won’t do it, go ahead and remove it off. If you’re not going to sit down and do the big three things, you probably need to get rid of that. Realize you’re not going to do it and try to find some alternative thing to fill in that place. I’m not going to do emails. Can you do videos faster for you versus the editing thing? Then jump on, do that. Do a video versus an email. “I’m not going to do a video.” Can you ask somebody else to do it? Can you jump on and order something from Fiverr to replace that for what you’re doing? If you won’t do it though, remove it. Maybe you can partner up with somebody else who has a strength where you have a weakness in and maybe work together like that.
The trick number two is to schedule your time. I’m going to be giving you two big tricks. First one is the big rock, if you can get rid of organize things and have the big rocks aspect of thing where you got the three big things each day, that’s what you know when you know when you wrap your day. What are the three big things I have to do tomorrow or before you go to bed at night and allows you to sleep better too honestly. They’ve run that. They’ve done sleep tests on this. For those that had their three big things, they knew what they were focused on the next day they went to bed and they slept stronger. Those that worried about everything didn’t have any type of big rocks, they struggled more. They sit there and worried about everything they had to get done thinking they’re going to forget something and they didn’t get much sleep and they were even bigger nervous wreck. I guarantee some of you guys have wives or girlfriends or spouses, you know what I’m talking about, girls. Maybe you’ve got some guys that are worry wart who do the same thing.
Finding Focus: Those that are successful find the time to get things done.
Many of us waste hours and days and let alone weeks that turns into months doing unproductive things that we’re wasting time on. Wasting time because you aren’t scheduled. You’re not organized when it comes to your schedule or you’re starting multiple projects or doing multiple things. You never finish anything, which is often an entrepreneur’s way. It’s easy to start a lot of projects, but not finishing. That happens a lot more than you will think with those that are intelligent. They started a lot of things. When they get bored of projects, they don’t do it. Some of my best friends are then under the strict struggle with us. They are project person. They like new things, but then they fall off. They get all excited about a new project and they get into it and they get bored with it and they don’t want to continue with it, so it falls off and it’s a waste of time.
A jack of all trades is an expert of none. This is one thing that my dad hammered home into my head as a young youth. You’re going to do anything, learn, do it right, and get it done. Don’t try to be an expert in everything. You find what you’re good at, stick to that. Be an expert at that and then delegate it off to somebody else. That’s why we’ve always focused on the nonperforming that say, “I’m an expert at that owner financing. I understand it. I could teach it, but I don’t do it, so I’m not an expert at it.” I understand buying distressed notes that give me a nonperforming owner finance note and we can talk about that. As far as a rate origination or the big fix and flips, I’m not an expert in that anymore. I don’t do a lot of that stuff. I focus on my cup of tea where I’m an expert, what I can understand, and I stick to that lane. Many of you guys and gals out there are all over the place doing a variety of things. They’ll fix and flip and wholesale and rentals and dabble with the notes aspect of it. The reason you’re not seeing any success is all your energy is going out the window bouncing from lane to lane to lane.
It’s completely bouncing and you’re not having any type of success because you’re trying to be jack of all trades or you’re racing time. Another thing is people’s wasted time doing TVs or hobbies that aren’t helping you get any further along in life. You’re hanging around friends, spend time with friends that being there, a waste of time. They don’t have the same goals. You’ve seen more of this as you’re younger, as you grow into who you are. I know that some of my friends and that’s something that I struggled. I stopped hanging out with people sometimes because they weren’t focused on where I was going. They didn’t have the same priorities in life. I didn’t hate him like, “I don’t have time to sit around and drink beer with the six nights of the week.” I’ve got to be busy and focused on what I do. “If you’re not going to support me, we got to get rid of you.” This is a big thing.
If you aren’t where you want to be, you don’t have time for friends. If you aren’t where you want to be, you don’t have time for friends. The only time you have time for friends is if they’re working to get where you wanted me and unfortunately, there are a lot of peer pressure from people sometimes like, “There’s Mr. Moneybags or Mr. Buffett.” I’ve had somebody who refer to another friend of mine, “There goes Madoff”. That guys busted his ass working his ass off trying to get things like going to school, like working extra job. If you aren’t where you want to be in life, you don’t have time for friends. You can either bust your butt and get things done. Work, take some time off, work, take some time off. If you’re not where you’re at and you’re uncomfortable, you either need to be uncomfortable or start doing something.
Finding Focus: The most successful people are doing the most productive thing and any given time
Don’t tell me you don’t have time. If you tell me you don’t have time, most of the time, I’m going to laugh. We all lie to ourselves about not having time. This is the biggest lie because it’s fallacy. When somebody tells me they don’t have time, I’d rather come and say, “I love golf. It’s my thing to do. I’d rather spend four days or four hours on weekend playing golf.” I’m like, “You’re honest, or I’m on the line. Enjoy working along. That’s great.” If that’s what you do for your fine. It could be three, four hours. You got to do something else. Go to a movie with your wife, your kids, taking them to watch The Incredibles for two hours and then you get two hours to do something else in your business. Don’t tell me you don’t have the time because we all have before work. We’ve all got the lunch break or lunch hour or after work. If you’ve got a long commute home and traffic, hang out. Knock some stuff out for an hour. You probably get home at the same time anyway.
Take that hour, get some work done, and then we’ll head out. Then as a one of my favorite guys ever listened to, we always have from 7:00 PM to 2:00 AM. If you’re working another full-time job, kudos to you. I get that but put in some of the time to make things happen. If you’re on Facebook or friends with Wayne still online and you’ll see he’s doing the same thing, seeing the same thing we went through. Flax roots were out traveling, we have a great time. We’ve worked our asses off, worked to live a life that most people can only dream of. If something is important to you, you will schedule whether it’s a vacation or “I need to send an email on Sunday night” or that I need to set up my buffer account for the month. I need to spend time on LinkedIn or I need to send an email out to my asset managers.
If it’s important to you, take the few minutes and schedule that time to get it done, whether it’s the hour every Sunday night or an hour Saturday afternoon or an hour after work every day, schedule it. When my health became priority for me, I went ahead and made a priority by scheduling every day from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM almost every day. If I’m in the office 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM , If I’m not with the coaching students, we’re traveling on, going to be at the gym 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM every day because it’s a priority for me and I pay for it. It’s done. My emails that go out Sunday night most of the time are already written and scheduled when it’s done so that they’re rocking and rolling.
Somebody asked a good question. “Transitioning from flipping to buying notes, what’s a realistic time frame? 40 hours day to day, cold calling, and sourcing notes that we expect five to ten minutes per month?”
Yes, you could expect to find five to ten minutes notes per month. I don’t think you need to be spending 40 hours. If you’ve been at any of our workshops, you see where I show you how to build a list of emails and then you hammer those emails with one email that goes out to 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 asset managers. Then you follow up with people that have opened the emails. That’s a much more effective thing versus cold calling strangers for 40 hours. Start off with an email like through MailChip. I should have said 40 hours for marketing. By all means, if you’re reaching out to those people, you’re communicating, you spent time in bigger pockets. You should be fine in five to ten deals a month. One of the biggest things, if you’re struggling, if you’re no longer working, you’ve left your job, your time freedom can strangle you. What do I mean by that? That’s where you are used to having somebody look over your shoulder. Maybe you sleep later, and I’ll get up about 10:00 AM. I’ll go do something about 11:00 AM. I’ll work for three hours and I’ll go to happy hour or go to a networking event or I’ll go to a two-hour networking event.
Finding Focus: Learn, do it right, and get it done. Don’t try to be an expert in everything.
If you’re struggling, write a schedule and time block. “I need this time on Sunday evening between 5:00 PM and 7:00 PM to write my email to get it out by 7:00 PM. I need time Thursday afternoon to write my emails that’s going to go out Sunday and Monday.” Time block it first. After a while, it’s going to become habit. You’re going to be used to doing it and you get that habit time to grow. It becomes like, “I enjoy this now.” It becomes instant gratification to you every time you’ve been doing it. It’s gratification. Email from somebody even heard from or seeing somebody jump on a webinar. It’s gratification, knowing that all you need is one person to read that email or one person to see that video or that Webinar or comment.
One person can change the whole outlook of what you’re doing, but if you never get around to doing it, that one person isn’t going to go to you. They’re going to go to somebody else who’s going to do it. Somebody else is going to take the time to do it. For every time you lie to yourself, so you don’t have the time to write an email or having time to do an email blast or call asset managers, that’s fine. They’re probably going to answer me or see me. If you’re working full-time, I get this. You’re working full-time, 40 plus hours a week. You don’t have time to get twenty things done or you may only have a debt a few hours. They don’t wait to get. Don’t beat yourself up. Try to focus on getting three things done. Look at your big rocks list and focus on those three things this week and three big rocks the following week. Email is a big thing in marketing. Sometimes it’d be network, sometimes it’d be going to an event.
Something is better than nothing. Our good buddy, Ron Lambert, here in Austin, Texas works a ton. He’s like, “I don’t have time. I work. I barely have time in the evenings to make it to a networking event. That’s what I’m doing each week.” I’m like, “Ron, that’s completely fine. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re going to be fun. Keep it. He was like, “I enjoy what I do. Then that’s completely fine. If you love what you do, enjoy what you’re doing, and this is a hobby for you. Follow me, this is great, but for those that are more serious about it, they want this to be your full-time thing, you got to be focused and you got to take what time is given to you and maximize it. You can’t sit in dilly dally the ten hours with that. Gary Vee said this great quote, “We’re in control of the one asset that will give us the most, we care about the most, and that is time.”
We all are given 24 hours a day. How those are done is either they have great staff, great vendors, great assistance, get some things done. I’m not lying. I’m a little behind the eight ball right now because I got back. I’m excited. We got a new marketing person coming on board, getting her up-to-date on some things. I’ve got some conference calls scheduled with Singer Law Group and Madison go through exactly what we’re at some things because we had to let somebody go. We’ll get somebody hired, getting it back on track. It’s a short hiccup in the road. It’s important to me to get those things done. We’ll get them done, but it still doesn’t stop me from focusing on big three things every day. I sleep good at night most of the times. What are the big three things I’ve got to focus on and can I get them done? What should I focus on? You’re branded on to the one I focus on. Let’s make it very simple.
Finding Focus: Learn, do it right, and get it done. Don’t try to be an expert in everything.
Big things for you to focus on is where has your income come in the last month. Where is your income coming in last month? The time that is spent on that to get that. If you work 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month and you’ve got your salary, figure that out. If you did have a side gig, you want to look at how many hours you spent your side gig and did you make money on that? Number one, if the majority of the money came from something and that’s what you want to do, do it. If it’s not, then you need to go to number two. That’s why I say you got to figure out if I spent time on what I want, try and make money with that. Can I replace my income? Can I do those things that I need to do to get better off where I need to be? If the answer is, “No, I’m not going to make any income,” then you need to kill it. Kill a squirrel and focus on something else. If you are going to be honest with yourself and you ask me, you spent two behaviors, spend ten hours a week initially, can I bring in 20% of what I need to make or what I would have made somewhere else? You start looking at your time break down. Eventually, at some point, if you do focus on those that have some point, you’ve got some great income because you have two big things going, but you can’t run two big full-time things. It’s almost impossible once you delegate.
You often find that you will spend 20% of your time with 80% of the profits. That 80% of the money you make is only spending 20% of your time. If you were to focus 100% of your time, your income would probably increase by 400% over the 80/20 principle, 80% of your income is made on 20% of your habits. If you get rid of the other 80% on habits that are bad or aren’t focused on, you would probably have 400% of the income. Some of the things that I killed. Things that I had to kill along the way to get where I wanted to be. I’ve stopped watching Gary being Grant Cardone. I know some of you won’t believe that, but I did. I found that out when I would watch the daily Gary Vee. It was a half hour to hour long and by the time I was like, “I lost an hour of my day watching Gary Vee and Grant Cardone.” I can’t do that.
Eventually, I got to the point where I’m like, “I’m losing way too much time watching Gary Vee.” It’s great to get motivated, but when I lost five hours of my work days, it’s about a half a day. I lost a half a day per activity in a week. I was like, “No, I have to unsubscribe.” Don’t get me wrong, I love Gary Vaynerchuk, Grant Cardone not so much, but to listen to it, I would I stop watching it and I had to unsubscribe, unfollow so that I was not wasting my time. I stopped attending things that didn’t help me. I literally stopped going to some Meetup groups that weren’t beneficial to me. I stopped going to a mastermind that was focused mostly on fixing flips than on the note business. I stopped going to conferences that didn’t benefit my business. I wanted to go somewhere where I was the dumbest person in the room, so I can learn, I can grow more that way, but if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re not growing from the event. You’re basically standing still. That’s what you don’t want.
Finding Focus: I wanted to go somewhere where I was the dumbest person in the room, so I can learn, I can grow more.
I removed people from my life that weren’t supportive. The previous business partner, friends, I got some family that wasn’t supportive earlier on going back about eight years ago. I removed them from my life. They weren’t supportive, so I got to move on. That’s the biggest thing I want you guys to focus on. I want you to think about where you’re at today. If you’re comfortable, fine. I don’t like being comfortable. I like getting uncomfortable. I know that sounds a little bit backwards, but you’re going to grow the most when you get off your butt and do something to become uncomfortable, to get out of that uncomfortable basis.
If you’re struggling to pay your bills, you’re struggling to get things done. What are you focused on? I know you guys are working. That’s fine. If you’re working full-time and that’s good or working more than 40 hours, 50 hours, whatever like that, you got to put food on the table. I get that. I’ve had people come to me, “I’ve made a lot of money in the fix and flip business. That’s great. How many deals have you done recently?” Nothing. Can I make a $1 million in this? Yes, it’s going to take time. Did you make $1 million your first year as a fix and flipper? No, great. You got to spend time on this. If you’re keep focusing on one thing, your other target is never going to get hit. If your attention is somewhere else. Because your attention, wherever your attention is, where you’re going to be focused on, it’s not going to be on it.
I’ve had people come in and look, “I’m going to be focused on this and then also bring another business. I’m like, “Don’t even bother with this. They were taken back. I’m like, “Listen no offense, you’re not focused. You can’t try to start two new things at once. It’s never going to work out, so you need to pick one. Pick one thing and stick to it. I’m always amazed when I see people coming from different webinars or conferences or I’m going to be the fix and flipper, the wholesale king and the rehab king. No, you’re not. You’re going to spend a lot of money and not get a lot of stuff done and screw yourself up. I used to get a lot of Ron Legrand conferences early on and it’s people always buy like ten workshop kit, either masters of real estate from Ron Legrand. They were going kanzi from workshop to workshop and they were never have time.
We had a guy come to my mastermind here, coming for a fast track and he told me he was going from my mastermind to another workshop on student housing or do another workshop and I’m like, “Why are you here? I love you. I’m glad you’re here, but you wasting money being here. You aren’t going to do anything.” He took offense to that. He got upset. I’m like, “I’m sorry, but you’re doing your itching by going around and around and around. You’re not going to find any type of truly fruitful activities because you’re constantly thinking there’s something better out there and you have a hard time making things happen.” There are a lot of people that are talking about different things in the business.
You can make money in fix and flips or rents or wholesale and stuff like that. That’s completely fine. Sometimes going to other places like I used to go to the Collective Genius Mastermind. It was great, learned a lot of great stuff and some business stuff, but some of the guys made some great relationships, but after a while it wasn’t for me. I’m like, “I don’t need to sit here and figure out how to itemize your flips and your expenses and stuff like that or focusing your wholesaling stuff because that’s not what I’m doing.” You’re spending a chunk of time and stuff that’s not important to me. Then I could’ve been back home working on things that would been more important. Sometimes you have to look at where you’re going. It’s like, “Is this benefiting me or is this going to make me more uncomfortable?”
At the beginning, I killed cable. I killed the gym. I fell in love with peanut butter. This goes back thirteen years ago. I stopped. I got rid of cable. I had a big screen TV. I don’t have a DVD yet. I probably wore out Cinderella Man DVD, played it over and over and over and recite the movie. Every time I see them, if I get up, I don’t want to punch something. I killed the gym. I kill them. Whereas I would come home at night and I would focus on one to focus on my marketing, my LinkedIn. I reached out to asset managers aren’t doing something different every night for, so it wasn’t boring, so I wasn’t doing the same thing over and over again, but I was doing something new each night to help benefit myself.
The things that I couldn’t get done during the day I did it at night. What I mean by I fell in love with peanut butter. I still love crunchy peanut butter to this day. I love it. I will eat a scoop of it versus I go get a candy bar. It’s very filling. If you don’t have that much money to go out to eat. Peanut butter sandwiches still are one of my favorite things because it’s filling. It’s fast. Not the worst thing for you, but it’s also fast. It’s cheap. When I had to tighten my belt to be able to pay for something, peanut butter sandwiches for a week. The money I saved from going to lunch or getting coffee or things like that allowed for me to be able to afford a ticket when money is tight.
I know a lot of us are on shoestring budgets to start off or something. If you can’t keep living life like you’re high on the hog kid. You can’t have a champagne, a mindset when you are on a beer budget. There was time I was like, “I didn’t eat steak for dinner,” I eat out for almost nine months. An actual sit down you’ve got some dry fruit, stuff like that, but literally it was cheap, but it helped me in that nine months grow up to where I needed to get things in place. Over six months specifically I evolved into something better than where I was. I had to grow and evolve into the person that I wanted to be to get where I wanted to go. A lot of us are students in the spots today wanting that success, but we haven’t evolved into. We haven’t matured. We haven’t got rid of the toys or the time losing things along the way so that we can be successful at that next phase.
Finding Focus: I had to grow and evolve into the person that I wanted to be to get where I wanted to go.
Couldn’t share with you more enough that there were times around me and it was not sexy. There were times it was like, single. At the time I can’t go out, that’s what I wanted to go out, I’m good. Sorry. I didn’t go home for Christmas. It was like, “I don’t have the money for the gas. I need to stay here and focus on wanting to get focused on.” People don’t understand that. People don’t understand that sometimes. I also had to evolve in my future self and my future I had to delegate, I had to learn how to hire. I had to use systems that are better, I had to use tools. I had to use vendors better. I had to be coachable.
I’ve always thought I was a very coachable person there, but I had to become coachable again. I didn’t know everything. I needed new mentors in my life. I knew people that need to evolve into and I was very fortunate to find some great mentors that have helped me on a variety of ways. I had to change my priorities first and foremost, what was important to me, and that comes with a variety of things too. A lot of times we have a little bit success and we have some new things to run our lane and you have to look at is this taking me away from where I ultimately need to be?
What’s your big goal and making money? Is it closing deals? Is it a million views in the podcast, is it 10,000 investors? What’s your big view of things? We have the big goal of helping 10,000 investors out there. We also have big goal closing on average in deal per day. For the year 365 deals for the year. We went above that years before that. We were a little short of that, but not much, but still a phenomenal year for most people. I had to change. I did my things differently. We exceeded the 300 deals because we adjusted how we did some things. I took some systems in place and we went bigger. We added a zero to the deals that we made. Very simple on what we had to do, and that’s one of the things I want to challenge all of you. If you are seeing things that are distracting you from your main focus of making offers, getting deals done, then make more offers. Put the things on the sideline.
Sometimes I know things get thrown our way. Sexiness. “I’ve been asked to speak here. I’m asked her a ride, or I’ve been asked to go to this event, you know, that’s great, but make sure it doesn’t take away. Are you hitting what you need to hit with the 10, 20, 30, 40 hours you had? Are you still hitting your numbers of what you needed to be? Is that putting money into your pocket or is it taking your focus away from the moneymaking objects?” That’s what people think about our note mastermind is that we have seen that evolve. I’ve evolved a bit over the last five, six years we’ve had it because of different people that come through. I’ve learned as much from a lot of my students as I hopefully would have helped them with. I’ve seen the problems that they have faced and tried to help them overcome it because I was usually there ahead of them. They’ve also had some people that have pushed me in a good way to evolve in different things or to solve things. That’s what I love about it.
I’m excited for this weekend with our Fast Track students. I’m excited for the Mastermind taking place in August. We got some great stuff lined up over the next two months and I’m excited to see the changes that I’m involved in right now. Evolving, focusing on some things and I look forward to what the next evolution is. I’ve had to evolve into something bigger. Sometimes you have to go through down trod or down things and fix things. It happens to us all. You’ve got to take a step back, make sure everything’s good before you take two steps forward. Sometimes you have to take a step back and move forward. I look forward to what’s going on in the next 30, 60, 90 days. I know we’re all struggling, and I put a little pull together to ask you guys what you’re struggling with? Is it real estate deals I need to focus on? Is it marketing? Is it focusing on due diligence?
Due diligence is taking a lot of my time. Is it raising capital? Is it working? Then I’m working more than 40 hours a week at a job that takes my priorities. I can respect that. I can understand that. Do I have it on supportive family? That can be difficult. Am I struggling with what am I doing after or with my vendors? What am I doing when I’m struggling with and I struggling after the fact? I know some people have talked to you that bought a lot of assets a year ago, two years ago, and they’re still struggling to move those assets. That’s fine. It happened. Trust me, I’ve got a few assets are dragging on as well. I’d like to ask, what are you guys doing? I appreciate the insight. We get about 10% of those that voted up. We’re up to 16 now. It should have popped up on your screen. What your focus is real estate here on Zoom. Those that are on Facebook can’t see everything.
What are you struggling with? What are the things you’re focused on? Take a few seconds clicking on a button until I can’t see what you’re struggling with, but what we can do is we can talk about it. I don’t know if it’ll let you do more than one. I don’t remember how I said it, whether they do it for more than one or didn’t want one. I’m interested in what real estate deal should be focused on first or seconds, fix and flip, stuff like that. Marketing, that’s a big thing. That’s the number one thing. What do I need to do that they’re doing in the market due diligence? The second, workout scenario marketing, that’s not a big thing. Quarter of you’re struggling because you’re working a full-time job. Raising capital is about 35.
It does let you do more than one. What’s your biggest thing here, focus on one? If you focused in couple of things, that’s completely great. Number one is marketing. Number two is raising capital. Third would be, “What real estate deals should I focus on?” Four, “What do I do with my job and raising cat?” That doesn’t surprise me because those are the four biggest things that people struggle with. Let’s talk about marketing. First and foremost, an email out to your database or posting on social media is you got to do that these days. If you’re not posting to Facebook or Instagram, especially Instagram now will allow you to do up to 60 minutes of video on a post or it can be seen. That’s dangerous
It’s also a whole tool. It’s going to hurt YouTube because the fact that Instagram is so mobile-focused, that’s huge. You got to learn to market. What am I talking about marketing? It’s emails, it’s video. Those are the two biggest things. The biggest bang for your bucks. Using a combination of posts to LinkedIn, bigger your pockets, sharing what’s going on or asking questions on a regular basis. Very easy to tap into an RSS feed through DS news or housing or to share things on a regular basis. What’s going on there to drive traffic? The easiest things you can do is to schedule it. All this is only going to work if you schedule time to do this. I got a new tape and I can spend time on due diligence. Now you need to spend time on marketing. That is not what I want to do. “Did you do your marketing?” “No, I didn’t do my marketing today.” Then do it first. That should be your big rock every day. What are you doing today to market?
Finding Focus: If you’re struggling raising capital, I guarantee it’s probably because you’re not marketing enough.
Second thing we have on here is raising capital. If you’re struggling raising capital, I guarantee it’s probably because you’re not marketing enough. You’re probably not marketing enough. You’re not getting out and talking to enough people. You’re not getting out networking. You’re not pressing the palms or sending an email out and electronically pressing the palm. That’s the second biggest thing in raising capital. Third thing on here is what real estate deals to do. Focus on one thing and one thing only. If you’re offering to try to do three or four things, notes probably aren’t for you. I got money burning a hole in my pocket. Are you doing as much marketing as you possibly can and you do an email blast out your database? Are you trying to go to the low-hanging fruit? Be honest with yourself. If you’re going to low-hanging fruit where everybody else is gone, you’re going to get pay overpay.
Spend some time, put some things in place to spend a weekend working on marketing. Spend the weekend or a night at least on something new for your business, for your asset managers, direct messages on LinkedIn. They can’t see that you’re up at 3:00 AM. It might, but who cares? They want somebody is hungry at 3:00 AM. If you’re working more than 40 hours per week, you got to focus on trying to get ten hours in. It’s two hours every work day or it’s four hours in the weekend, an hour and a half each day. If you have a long commute time because of traffic, try to do something, figuring out something you can do with that commute. Either you’re riding the bus or if your traffic you’re driving around hanging on or either get to the office an hour earlier or staying around for an hour, work on some stuff. Maybe you don’t do it in your office. Maybe you need to go to a cafe around the corner someplace like that Starbucks had worked for an hour.
If you had a guarantee that you had to miss the traffic, you’re going to get home probably the same time. If you leave an hour later anyway, tell your spouse, “I need an hour or two. I’ll be home at 7:00 PM instead of 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM. I’ll be home at 7:00 PM and we’ll leave a little bit later. I need to focus on this. This is what I need to do.” If you have unsupportive family, the best thing you can tell them, “Believe in me, give me a year to work on this in a part time because I’m not happy with where I’m at.” If your family or your spouse know that you’re unhappy, they don’t want you to be unhappy. They want you to be happy or they’re not your friends. If you tell them that and you’re honest with them about your happiness or your unhappiness and say, “Give me a year. Give me a chance to make this work. I can do this. There are a lot of other people that have done this before me. I get to surround myself with,” that’s the beautiful thing about the note on the street is it is so friendly. Most of the time there’s only about 5% of assholes out here you don’t want to associate with, but 95% of people, for the most part, have a big heart and wanting to succeed. They’re not in it for themselves.
Somebody asked a good question, “How do we get back focused when you get sidetracked on a loan workout or a deal that seems like it keeps returning? Seems like all you’re doing is dealing with those and not the better money-making opportunities.”
The thing I would tell you is do you have a vendor that’s helping? If you’ve got a difficult loan workout, hopefully you’ve got a vendor that’s doing that. Like the Singer Law Group doing it. If you’ve got somebody that’s done doing a good job moving to somebody else, “We need to do this. Here’s the drop-dead date. If you and if you’ve got borrower who keeps pulling the rug out at some point, “No, we’re not doing this anymore, we’re going to move on and you’ve got to make a decision. That’s what I would say is making the decision only we’ve got a third-party vendor. It’s not benefit that you don’t have to be the asshole. You can let them be my attorney you’ve got these specific days to get done.
Here’s what my big belief on first and second you take it or leave it. If you have first and second right now, congrats. You’ve got seconds now. Most people don’t see seconds. Seconds aren’t coming around here as much. Going into the first side or starting to teach, “I’m going to be a teacher now you’re going to be done twenty deals at 30 deals or you haven’t done that many deals. You can’t be a good teacher and first side or the note business when you’re teaching about something that is dead. If you’ve got first and seconds and you got that, keep them. What I’m saying is where are you going long-term? I don’t see a lot of seconds being created. I’m seeing a lot of second grade in the last couple of years, so I would not be focusing your time and originating. You’re trying to find seconds now, focusing on first.
Another question, “Where do attorneys come into plank and real estate closing is handling the closing. You always mentioned Singer Law Group, but it is a no closing region specific.”
You’re not going to close with an attorney. It’s more of a wire money and then the collateral shows up. That’s a longer discussion than right here. You need real estate attorneys in that specific state who handled the foreclosures for you. Foreclosures and that stuff, that’s what you need real estate attorneys for. As far as closing or not closing at a title company, you’re not closing with a real estate attorney for the most part unless you’re doing a private transaction. If you have trouble with REO marketing, hire somebody to help you out. That’s first and foremost. You got to hire somebody to help you out to get things done. If you don’t know what to focus on, focus on one thing. That’d be what is the most successful that what they’re doing. You see somebody doing two, three, four, five things running like they’re chicken with its head cut off. They’re not going to be successful at stuff long-term. They might be successful for a little while, but they’re not going to be successful long term. It’s not going to happen.
Finding Focus: Focus. You have to schedule something if you are constantly running, banging your head against the wall because you don’t have time.
Unless they are hiring, unless you got a ton of money and they’re hiring people to major businesses, that’s the only exception. Hire like a franchise. You handle this business here. They’re handle this business. You’re handling this business. That’s no excuse, but I guarantee most of you aren’t doing that. Guys and gals flipped two biggest things you can do. Bigger rocks list and scheduling. Those are the two biggest things of things you’re struggling with. Schedule your marketing. Schedule your email. Schedule your blast. If you need help scheduling, you don’t have the time to post everyday go on and learn Buffer or Hootsuite. Those are the two easiest things.
Focus. You have to schedule something if you are constantly running, banging your head against the wall because you don’t have time. You’re the problem. I only say that because I was my biggest problem. I was doing a multitude of things, so I need a heart to heart thirteen plus years ago when I focused on. I’ve had to do that even so. What are the things that I’m focused on and make things get things ready when you guys don’t see everything I do? You see some of the things I did, but you don’t see nearly 75% of the stuff that I’m doing behind the scenes. I know that you see the podcasts and see Note Night in America, but you don’t see the staff. You don’t see the conversations I have. You don’t see the phone calls I have with asset managers. You don’t see the marketing stuff that we’re focused on long term.
I build things up to help get things going long-term with things. The most successful people focus on one thing and one thing in time until they got that rock and running and then they worry about side things. I’d been sidetracked. If you’re reading a good book about helping you with your focus, are you not wearing the devil? It’ll make you think, “Am I drifting in my being my own worst enemy by constantly drifting into the other lanes?” It’d be like a NASCAR driver. They picked their line and they’re sticking in their lane. They pick that line out and that’s how they run it. Run that race. We’re all on a race of left turns some right turns it upside down, upside down. Pick your line, stick to it, and wanted to schedule it. Get rid of the distractions the best you can. Start with a bigger rocks first. Schedule those big rocks. If you are working full time somewhere else, scheduled the time, time block it and you’ll be a lot happier in the long run. Any questions? Comments guys, gals? We’ve got over an hour.
Another question, “What software do I use to organize?”
Simple. I use Outlook Calendar to schedule events, Google Calendar to schedule my time blocking is that we do. That’s what I use to organize. I use software and Excel don’t have to be anything difficult. If you want to go out and get planners and keep it simple. It’s easy to use, easy to interact with and be focused. Go out and make some stuff happen and trust me, keep it simple. You love it. Beth asks a question. You can use Buffer.com or Hootsuite. I use Hootsuite initially to help me set up my marketing as far as regular posts. I can schedule that stuff up and we’ve moved to buffer because Buffer gives us a bigger alternative to more social platforms, emotional posts, so I use Buffer.com. I’ll give an example. I got Shannon coming in tomorrow and obviously my regularly scheduled posts over the last 90 days filtered out obviously because we stopped focusing on that. We’re revamping that backup. Let’s get back on a 90-day marketing calendar that we’ve met a lot schedule. Then we went to vacations out of the way that we took here, may getting set back up for the next six months.
Let’s get stuff posted on a regular basis. It will be using Buffer.com for that and that will help out and schedule posts. Calendly is a good application to help schedule appointments. Very simple to use. I think it’s free to casualty count of calendar. A cool thing that I can set it up, so if somebody needs to reach out to me for the most part, unless they’re in my phone as a mastermind student who calls me all the time for questions, which I’m glad to answer. That’s completely fine, but a lot of times I try to put people to the afternoon from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM schedule appointment and let’s talk to them. That’s what I use. Come in handy and I blocked the rest of my schedule for the most part. I feel I’ve always related more stuff done with my time blocking them. I know I’ve gotten stuff knocked out, get stuff done, and we’re moving on to the next, the next evolution, the next thing in my account or get things done.
Hopefully, this was helpful and beneficial to you all. Do yourself a favor. If you want to make me happy or be happy, please implement some of these things. Please. You’re not harming me or only harming yourself if you don’t take things into action and do things on a regular basis. You’re only hurting yourself and trust me when I say people are hanging around and constantly hanging around, counseling, hanging around, you could be doing so much more. We all can reach higher. Did the little thing where you reach up and walk, can you go a little higher? I can go a little higher. Go Higher. We could do more with our time with, with the tools that God gave us. We can all do more, and I challenge you to do more. With that way when you reach a little higher. Eventually, we’ll see you all at the top.