Everyone gets the case of the Mondays. It’s a part of life that tells you that you’ve been working really hard and it’s time to recharge your batteries. If you have the heart of a champion, you can overcome any hurdle and do great things. But there is going to be that one day when you just want to relax, and it’s okay to do so. Behind every champion is your corner where the coach gives counsel on what you should do to give you that boost you need. But what’s also important to know is that when you get tired, take a rest then keep moving forward. Create your own vision board and get rid of the people who are toxic to you and to the rest of the team.
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I’m really excited at what’s been going on with the show. We got some great stuff going on. Most importantly, I’m always excited about what you guys are doing out there and a lot of the great feedback that we get from people out there. We’re toying around with a new aspect of what we are doing here. We have some great stuff, some new software, and we’re constantly rock and rolling in the office. We’re trying to add new things to help us take our business to the next level. One of the biggest things that we pride ourselves on is the fact that we’re always constantly tweaking something. This episode is titled The Heart of a Champion. I’m not trying to be motivational, although we’ll come out to be a little bit aspect of that thing.
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The Heart Of A Champion: Overcoming Every Hurdle And Doing Great Things
I’m a big fan of music. I have a playlist that I listen to on a pretty regular basis, whether it’s in the truck, here in the office, home at night, or I’m sitting outside and relaxing in my time. I’ll be playing music especially in the evenings or something like that where I got a cold beverage with me or a good cigar. I really love music. One song that I’ve enjoyed is the most recent song by Carrie Underwood and it’s called The Champion. It’s really good, the champion aspect of it. There’s a section in it further in, about halfway through it, where Ludacris jumps in and he talks about champion. His words go exactly like this, “The C is for the courage I possessed through the drama. H is for the hurt, but it’s all for the honor. A is for my attitude, working through the patience. Money comes and goes so the M is for motivation. Got to stay consistent, the P is to persevere. The I is for integrity, innovative career. The O is optimistic, open and never shut. The N is necessary because I’m never giving up. See, they asked me how I did it, I just did it from the heart. Crushing the competition, I have been doing it from the start.”
They said every champion is all about his principles. One of the biggest things that I see from a lot of people out there, with people taking their business into the next level and overcoming hurdles is being able to overcome a lot of great things .If you’ve had that hurdle or are going through a hurdle, what is one thing that has helped you overcome your hurdle? What’s one thing that’s helped you take your business to the next level or help get you through a low? Everybody goes through that. Everybody in life has a low. I’ll start this off by talking about some of the lows that we have had and what we have done to overcome that to do better, to achieve, and go in further along. One of the biggest things that I had earlier on, it was ten plus years ago, was when the mortgage debacle took place.
Heart Of A Champion: Everybody in life has a low.
I got divorced, had some things happen, and I had rehab projects that were way upside down. It was not a good thing. It was being stressed out with the market in chaos. I always like to joke about it with people. If you’re going through a bankruptcy or a foreclosure or a short sale, welcome to the club. There was a period there that was like the badge of honor for a good number of years. Those that have gotten into real estate investing and haven’t had to go through that for the most part yet had been lucky, but at some point it’s going to happen. I can promise you that. Maybe it’s not now but it will be later on, I can promise you that at some point.
Things don’t always keep going up and up. What I had to do is I had to have my faith. By faith, I’m not talking religious faith. A couple of things I’ve learned long ago being an ex-bartender is you don’t discuss religion or discuss politics. Those are two things that you keep out of the conversations because everybody’s right and everybody’s wrong. We’ll just leave it at that. I was fortunate enough though that I could cut things. I cut down cable. I cut down a whole variety of things to make things much more affordable. Luckily I had a very cheap office. I was living in one of my rehabs for a while then I bounced to another one. I had that flexibility, which was great. There were periods of time that I was eating cup ramen all week long or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for weeks. I did that because that’s all I can afford. Luckily enough, I just knew I’m going to come on top and I’m going to keep doing this. I had my plan of action, I talked to coaches, I did what I had to do to overcome obstacles. That’s not always the easiest thing, especially if you’ve never gone through any type of perseverance, if you have never gone through a tough rough time. It’s hard to swallow that and understand that it’s okay. It’s just a short period of time. You appreciate the good times more when you’ve gone through the bad times. You appreciate the growth you’ve made as an individual, as an entrepreneur, as an investor, overcoming those obstacles. You really understand that a lot of times you feel alone out there.
It can be a lonely place, but that’s why you have to surround yourself with really good people that think like you. If you’re going through a troubled time and you’re not surrounding yourself with like-minded individuals or people that understand, it’s very easy to get into Debbie Downer of feeling sorry for yourself. There were times I felt sorry for myself like, “What am I doing? Why am I going through all this?”There was a point I was like, “I could go get a job but it’s not going to help anything. I’m not going to get any further alone than I am. By doing that, I’m only going to be putting my dreams back on hold. Do I really want to do that or can I just suck it up?”At some point, I feel and I can see what I’m working on. I can see things are starting to rock and roll for me. You’re going to get through that, and it’s normal. I know you don’t want to get through that, but everybody goes through that.
You understand who is in your corner, who is going to help you, when you go through this life period. People that aren’t in your corner are the ones that are not going to talk with you, they’re going to be beating a dead horse. The ones that help you out, whether they lend you money or they give you money or they help you through a thing, they cook you dinner, they buy you a beer and just listening to you and give you counsel, not advice because everybody has advice, those are the important relationships that you have long-term. There are people that when I went through things that are still great friends with and I reach out to you and touch base with on a regular basis. You have to realize that those are really the quality relationships. Those are the quality friends we all need in life to help us become a champion, to help us overcome obstacles, to get to the point later on from where we are right now, which often feels like the sky is falling, the sky is crashing, and the world is coming in on me.
To get through the troubled times to a period of safety of getting my feet back under me, I keep working towards the goal, the point later on where you can feel like success and you feel like you’ve accomplished something. That’s what being a champion is. It’s not really living life on other’s terms, it’s living life on your terms. A lot of people struggle with that. “Look at so and so. Look at what they have.” Who gives a shit what they have? If you’re happy with what you have, if you’re content with what you have, if you’re really enjoying what you have, and smile and feel great about where you’re at, that’s all that you need to focus on. We all have dreams and goals we want to accomplish, and those are great. You have to have it. Those are the things that keep pushing you forward.
If you don’t have a vision board, create a vision board. If you don’t have long-term five or ten-year goals, you will eventually get stale and start to drift. That’s the biggest thing that drives me is when we hit a thing, I’m constantly asking what can we do to expand or what can we do to drive ourselves forward? There are days that I have no idea what the hell we’re doing. I know that may sound crazy, but there are times I just want to take the day to go watch a movie. I want a day just to relax. I want a day not to show up. Sometimes I get a case of the Mondays. Who doesn’t? It’s going to happen to you. As best you can, recharge your batteries. If you need to take a day or an afternoon or an evening to go do something by yourself, recharge your batteries, do it. Realize long term it’s just a small bump on the road. If it’s not going to matter five years from now, don’t sweat about it.
Don’t sit here and assassinate your faith on a daily basis when you need to have that, when you need to keep that positive momentum going to drive others, whether you’ve got a team or people that surround you or family members. I get it. It’s tough sometimes to always be in a positive mood always. The biggest thing I can tell you is that champions do get tired. Champions get tired of training. Champions get tired of going through the motions. They realize that success lies in the day in day out activities that they’re doing. Success and being the best at their craft is something that they focus on a daily basis. One thing to realize is they often cut out all the other bullshit that a lot of times gets attracted. If you’re one of these people that are attracts to drama, you’re probably your own worst enemy. If you’re constantly turning small little mole hills into mountains of big things that are not really a big deal, you’re wasting energy that can be put towards something much better. The sooner you can get away from those toxic things, the better off you are.
I used to have a toxic business partner who was toxic to everybody. The year after leaving that and getting out of that partnership, I experienced so much growth. It was so great. I feel like I’m actually breathing versus struggling to breathe. A lot of us have jobs that take on full time, and I get it. You’ve got to put food on the table, you’ve got to do the things that you to do, but at some point, you’ve got to start taking activities in your spare time. If you’re in the note business, maybe it’s calling banks, maybe it’s reaching out to hedge fund, maybe it’s spending time on LinkedIn and then reaching out to special assets or secondary marketing managers. There are things that you can do and you can carve out in your spare time if you have it. For a lot of people, sometimes maybe it’s not being out there. Maybe it’s moving up the corporate ladder, maybe it’s moving up and doing things or going into something other than that. That’s completely fine. There is nothing wrong with that if that’s what you want to do. If that’s going to get you closer to your goals, then by all means.
Heart Of A Champion: It’s not living life on others’ terms, it’s living life on your terms.
One of my mentors was just given an honorary doctorate in India. He posted something, “What’s your favorite quote that gets you through things?”One of my favorite quotes is by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He’s got a tremendous amount of quotes. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”A lot of us feel like we’ve had to do that over the last few years in the note industry. What I’m trying to get at is we often feel like that. There are people who probably felt that they they’ve carved out their real estate company and real estate investment. I know I felt like that. We have often felt that way, especially if you’re doing something a little bit different than the status quo.
Sometimes you’re going to feel happy and you may not have people that are there to help you out in your immediate market, people that are forthcoming at the time because they’re busy doing other things. I have felt like. I have felt like some of the people that I have learned the business from hampered me and they had me pigeonholed in where I was working for them, or pigeonholed me with what my relationship was with them, when I wanted it to be something more, I wanted it to be something bigger, something greater. I had to eventually just leave the nest and go out and hack a path myself. This is going back into 2010 where there wasn’t a really a big secondary market for distress debt. There was on a bigger player, but I had to hack out my hack out my crumbs, I had a hack out buying assets.
There was plenty of opportunity, but there was nobody there to show me the way. I look at it and I’ve met some people that went through the same thing in different parts of the country over the last fifteen plus years. Some of my good friends who I absolutely love and adore now, we’ve gotten to know each other over the last decade, people that I can pick up the phone and talk to and just share with and bounce ideas off of. You’re hacking out a living, and sometimes feel that way. We all feel that way at some point. Hopefully you don’t have to feel that way very often, but when you do feel that way, what’s the best way to overcome those obstacles? A lot of times people will just shut down, “I don’t know how to overcome it so I’m going to shut down.”
The best thing I can tell you is jump online. Jump on Google or YouTube, and do a quick search of what’s going on or something out there. I’ll give you example, video marketing. A lot of people struggle with video marketing. If you jump on YouTube and look for a guy by the name of Roberto Blake, he’s one of the best YouTube teachers online guy. I met him at Podfest. This is a channel that I absolutely love. I spent some time watching his stuff and it’s helped me immensely already. Already come up with several tools that he’s recommended to help us do some things with our videos. I look back at myself and I’m like stupid. You want to track to those people, you want to reach out to people, maybe read the book when you’ve got a book that really hits them. Drop an email to the publisher or that person or see if they’ve got a Facebook page.
I’m in the process right now where I’m doing something with the hopes of meeting a big idol of mine, or at least interacting with a big mentor of mine. If he doesn’t know me, that doesn’t matter. I have people like this and I look forward to. If it works out well, I’ll be overjoyed. It’ll be exciting. I’m doing something for that person that they don’t even know about. They haven’t mentored me, but they have motivated me. There are things that I follow from this person. I’m not talking about Gary Vaynerchuk. I’m talking about something else. If it happens, great, but if it doesn’t, it’s not a big deal, but at least doing something nice. Sometimes we feel that way. I get a chance a few years back to talk with a Mark Victor Hansen, and if you don’t know who he is, he’s one of the co-authors of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Chicken Soup for everything. He had a tape series out that I listened to. This is going back ten plus years ago. I bought that tape series probably twice. They were given to me once, and then I bought a second online.
I listened to it over and over again. It got me through some tough times, it was a motivational thing. I got a chance to meet him on stage. I walked up to him and I shook his hand, talked to him for a few minutes. I said, “I listened to his series, it really got me through a really tough time, it really helped me keep my head in the game,” and he laughed. He goes, “Scott, I was in one of my lowest points when I recorded that series. I was in one of my lowest, lowest times with a lot of self-doubt, lack of self-faith, just really doubting myself when I recorded that series. It means a lot to me that I was able to help you with that.”That turned out to be one of the best series that he ever filmed, the one of the most purchased tape series that he ever sold. You can draw a lot of conclusions from that, and you can take a lot of faith from it that these big people go through low times, too.
Stephanie said, “Do something every day that scares you. It’s a powerful motivator and a way to see you’re stronger than you think.” Challenge yourself to do some stuff, expand that comfort level. Going back to what Mark Victor Hansen told me and feeling about that is a lot of us get down and we don’t pull our head out of our asses. We don’t do the things that we need to do. If you want to be a champion at some point, you have to let those lows be shorter every time. If you find your lows getting longer and longer, look at it. It could probably come down to a variety of just what you’re doing on a daily basis.
My personal trainer Thomas Nee is famous for telling me this on a daily basis. “It’s all about three things. I have nothing to do with your success, you have everything to do with your success. I’m just here to help guide you along the way.” I spend an hour with him. He goes, “I can’t control the other 23 hours.”The three most important things that you can do to find success in working out or losing weight is to sleep right, eat right, and exercise right.
Those are the three things. I guarantee you, those three things affect us on a business level, on a faith level, in motivation level, too. If you’re putting crap in your body, you’re probably feeling like shit. If you’re not sleeping at night, you’re probably feeling tired and cranky and groggy, and negative the next day. If you’re not working out, you’re getting overweight, you’re getting winded. You’re basically strangling this amazing machine that you were given to help you get further along. I know that. I was strangling the machine. I like to make the joke, my three plus years of nonstop travel were sponsored by Crown Royal and rib-eye steaks. While that is great going in, it’s not always a good thing adding in a year or two years or three years later.
Heart Of A Champion: Champions don’t always do the most difficult things. They do sometimes the simplest things, but they do the simple things very well.
Those are the things I can tell you. If you’re struggling, make one change. If you’re eating crap and you find yourself not doing well, just make subtle change. Start eating better, you’ll feel better. If you’re not getting enough sleep, go to bed an hour earlier if you can. Sometimes it’s difficult for me, I’m a bit of a night owl. I don’t go to bed until 11 PM, 12 AM, sometimes 1 AM or 1:30 AM, but I sleep until 8:30 AM. I’m at the office by 10 AM, and if I’m rock and rolling, sometimes I’ll stay later at the office and then exercise. If you can get up and move, especially if you find yourself in an office, sometimes it’s best just to get up and go for a walk around the office. Sometimes just walk around the building. Sometimes you need a break. I know that I haven’t done enough of that, especially during the day. Sometimes I need to get up and walk around. If you’ve ever been in to my office, you’ll often see that Greg and Jennifer’s office is on the other side of the building. It’s a nice break to walk over and see what’s going on and walk back.
I also like Admiral William McRaven’s speech. “If you want to change the world, make your bed. Start with small accomplishments and build up your confidence and your abilities.” We all struggle with things. I look back where I was physically three years ago. In business, great. Things were growing. We’ve had this office here roughly now for about three and a half years. I’m not travelling nearly as much as I used to. In the last year and a half to two years, I’ve been very focused with my trainer. When I look at my health, I feel how my back feels. After working out with Thomas, I feel like I ran through a brick wall. I see a difference in my body, I feel different in my body, and I realize that I’m much closer to that championship bell than I was a year ago, two years ago.
Going back to the recharge of things, it’s important to schedule your recharges, to schedule things on the calendar so you don’t end up overbooking yourself. We’ve got a couple of things on our calendar already planned for in the next 90 days. Then we’ve also got something planned for the next year that’s going to be a working and fun thing as well too with our friend Jeffrey Taylor. Schedule it out because if you’re working on things, you’re very intently closed and focused on things and you’re not looking up a lot, you forget to schedule those things to help you unwind or recharge. You’ll forget about it and you just plow over them. I’ve done that in the last four years. One day, Steph said, “Just schedule it. Let’s go do those things and we will make them work. We’ll find a way to make it work.”
What happens when you put things on your calendar, when you put things in your schedule? You find a way to make it work. You’ll find a way to figure those things out. It doesn’t have to be traveling to Europe. It could be like the old Yes, Man. That movie with Jim Carrey where he would go on a different weekend, and they would just pick the airport and pick a city and then travel to that city and do fun things in the city and be tourists for a day. Sometimes you got to do that. Sometimes you just got to take a break and go do those things. It’s important. You’ll be surprised how often when you’re recharging your brain, something will pop into it. “I need to do that.” I’ll give you a great example. Something popped in my brain a couple of nights ago. I’m up all night thinking about something and suddenly in the next morning the answer appears. I was like, “That’s awesome. I’m so going to do that. It’s so obvious. Why didn’t I think about that sooner?” I was over-thinking the problem. What’s the simplest thing that I’m going to do? I realize, that was the best answer.
Champions don’t always do the most difficult things, they do sometimes the simplest things, but they do the simple things very well. If we look at the Philadelphia Eagles, they blocked better, they tackled better, they caught the ball better than what the Patriots did in the Super Bowl. That’s what it all comes down to. That’s really the difference in the Super Bowl. No matter what business you’re in, whatever aspect or real estate, it’s all the little things that you do on a daily basis. It’s reaching out to banks, it’s making offers, it’s doing your due diligence, and it’s marketing. Those four things are the tackling and blocking of the note industry.
I talked about the whole thing about championship earlier on. That’s what it all comes down to. You’ve got to have the courage to keep going forward. That’s what C stands for. H is you’re all going to hurt at some point. At some point that hurt is not going to hurt, it’s going to become honor. My buddy Gregory likes to talk about Evander Holyfield. When he interviewed Evander Holyfield, Greg was asking, “Don’t you feel the punch?” He’s like, “The minute you start feeling and listening to the punches, then you’re back’s on the canvas.” When you win though, you don’t feel any of those punches. You feel amazing. People are lifting you up. If you lose and you give up or you’re knocked at, you feel every punch in the bones locker room.
Heart Of A Champion: Do something every day that scares you. It’s a powerful motivator and a way to see you’re stronger than you think.
A, attitude is the most important thing. You’ve got to have a positive attitude. You’ve got to keep a positive mental attitude in life. M, money comes and go. You’ve got to have the motivation. What drives you every day? What’s your why? P is to persevere. You got to stay consistent and keep persevering through things. Integrity is important. Be a man or woman of your word. If you goof up, be the first person to say, “I goofed up. My apology, let me show you how I’m going to fix it.” Optimism about the things is important. Necessary because I’m never giving up. You got to keep rock and rolling on and realize that that your champion belt or your championship trophy or the end game got to be in front of you every time. That’s a note champion.
You’re not always going succeed. You’re going to have hurts, you’re going to have pain, you’re going to have failures along the way. I’m just going to tell you, knock it out, keep rocking forward. Eventually, I don’t know when that is, maybe it’s a month, maybe it’s six months, maybe it’s a year, maybe it’s six years from now, you’ll be sitting there standing and looking back at yourself and realize how far you’ve come, and that you are further up. Whether it’s on top of that mountain top or it’s in the ring, or it’s on a podium, or where it is, keep knocking it out. You’re going to keep rock and rolling. Cody Cox likes to say, “A few simple disciplines practiced every day leads to a champion.”
Thank you for joining us on The Note Closers Show. Go out, make something happen, do something to help you recharge your batteries. Drive that into the beginning of the week to have a much more successful week ahead of you. We look forward to seeing you all at the top.