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Breaking Bad Beliefs
I’m excited to be here with you. Some of you are familiar if you’ve been through Note CAMP once or twice, especially the last five and six versions of Note CAMP. You either heard Mark Yuzuik on as a breakout session speaker or the keynote one of those days. I have been friends with Mark for probably a few years. We met at Secret Knock years ago hosted by Greg Reid and we run a lot of the same circles. He’s a great guy. He’s amazing. His wife is awesome and we have been meaning to make it out to one of his events. I have not. We’ve also been doing some business together and have not gotten around to doing it over the last couple of years. One of the things that are exciting and the reason I labeled this episode, Breaking Bad Beliefs, is that’s what Mark’s event is all about or a little bit. He’s a hypnotist. He loves helping people overcome their obstacles like losing weight or stop smoking or things like that. For a Total Transformation to take place mentally you’ve got to get outside of your own head and dive deep into your subconscious levels and the limiting beliefs that we have.
Limiting Beliefs
That was one of the great things about Total Transformation is seeing a lot of people there, about 150-plus. Sitting there going through it and thinking about it. A couple of the nuggets that I took away that are applicable to the note business is one, a lot of us have limited beliefs when we get started like, “I can’t raise private capital. I’m never going to find a deal. I don’t know how to market.” Those are a variety of things that we often have. If you start to believe those and feeding into those beliefs, it gets worse and worse and harder for you to do because you have to overcome your obstacles. I can’t put this together. I can’t market. There are many different limiting beliefs that we have as entrepreneurs and as people like, “I can’t invest outside my own market or I can’t get up and speak in a real estate club or I can’t send an email blast out.” These are all limiting beliefs.
One of the great speakers, I think Tim was his name, spoke once or twice about how a lot of times we as entrepreneurs, as people instead of celebrating the good deals or the good things that happen with a mental trophy, we give ourselves a trophy for being bad. We have this awards room of all our bad moments and maybe we don’t have an awards room for all the good things that we accomplished. It’s an important thing to think about is celebrate the victories. A lot of us get busy, bogged down and being, “I’m not good enough because I screwed up. I misspelled that email. The deal didn’t go well. I totally botched talking to that private investor. I totally botched going up getting in front of the room at the local REIA club to talk about what I do.” You have to start stopping that. You’ve got to start giving yourself trophies for doing good things or giving it a go. I’m a big believer and this is one thing that was going through my head, “Isn’t that what we do with kids by giving everybody a participation trophy.” I started thinking more about it. I was like, “You’re right.” We have to start giving ourselves. We have to be our biggest fans. We have to start rewarding ourselves for taking action even if we screw up. “I got up and I botched it.” You’ll learn a lot from that first botch. Get it the second time, the third time. It gets a whole lot easier.
Bad Beliefs: Later never arrives.
We all have limiting beliefs and those limiting beliefs can come and go depending on what’s going on in your business. “I can’t get somebody out there. I can’t market.” I had a guy like, “Do you have a realtor I can use?” I’m like, “Where?” They’re like, “In Ohio.” I’m like, “Where at Ohio? It’s not just one spot. I’m not going to have a realtor go one side of the country, drive all the way across the state for six hours or four hours or whatever and go pull comps for you. That doesn’t make sense.” We pulled out some small little town and I’m like, “It’s a small little rural community. No wonder when you posted it to the WCN Group Facebook page nobody responded.” You have Google, Realtor.com, NoteProz, a whole variety of different ways to find a realtor. Get on there and use that. Don’t wait around a week to do that.
That’s another thing too. You have to take action to overcome things. A lot of us get paralyzed by a lack of knowledge and it’s an aggravating thing. We talk a game like, “I’m going to send an email blast out to my asset managers.” I’m like, “Have you?” They’re like, “I can’t.” I’m like, “What do you mean you can’t?” They’re like, “I don’t know how to send an email in MailChimp.” I’m like, “Get in there and play around with it. Learn. If you don’t like that, hire somebody to go do that.” That’s one of the most frustrating things I see on a regular basis. I enjoyed events with great people. Not your typical note investment I go to the real estate investment, which is great. It was nice to relax and be nobody for the most part and learn a little. Being able to sit back, relax, take in, and listen to the subconscious mind of what we deal. We all deal with this on a regular basis. I picked up a couple of marketing ideas of how Mark and his team shared some NLP strategies and I was like, “I can use that in some of the stuff we do.”
Going back to the point I’m trying to make here with you all on this episode. Think about this. You may want to keep a little list, a little notepad as an exercise to do this. How many times do you find yourself giving you kudos or giving you negatives? Many times we’re like, “Good stuff,” we get excited about something. How many times we’re like, “I screwed that up?” I’ll give you an example. One thing I’ve been working through now because I don’t have anybody to do this for the last two Note CAMPs. I’ve got a huge database and we get a lot of people that go to Note CAMP that opt-in to our investor survey where I’m asking them, clarifying what are your top three states? What’s your focus on? It has not been a priority, for the most part, in the last two times that we’ve done it. We can get it out, but once we collect that information, I haven’t had the bandwidth and haven’t had the team to spend some time doing it. I’m spending a little bit time on that now because it’s valuable assets. Those assets as far as who’s buying what state. What’s their focus? Where are they finding us at? All that great information is valuable and I have not spent a lot of time on it because I’ve been busy focused on the portfolio, been focused on marketing.
Getting Things Done
I decided to take some time now and pick those pieces up and realize that, “I found an easier way to do it by messing around with.” I’d been avoiding it for the most part like, “I’ll get to it later,” and later never arrives. I’ll get it to it and I’m like, “Let me go ahead and do this. Let me go try this one little tweak.” Sure enough, it’s much easier to do. It saved me a tremendous amount of time. I thought it was going to take me a couple of hours. It only took me roughly about 30 minutes to do, but it was a valuable 30 minutes. I have my database, especially from everybody that’s been at Note CAMP. I haven’t broken it down. I don’t know how many, but pretty close to 40-plus states. Who’s got their top three or five states and it’s broken down by list and it’s all been uploaded into my CRM to make it simple for me to go in and literally be able to upload a list. Send an email out to those that like that and rocket to them and their database is literally a whole next phase of what we’re doing. I’ve been putting that off. I haven’t had the chance to do it. I’m like, “I’ll get around to it. I got more important things.” We all like to make our list. We all like to make are getting busy list. You’ve heard me talk about the big rocks. This has been not a big rock, but it’s been a mid-sized rock for the most part.
I’m excited that we’ve got it done because it’s going to lead to a whole new way of us moving assets, a whole new way of us raising capital, a whole new way of hitting our focus. At the same time, we’ve been busy working through our assets and selling some of our assets off. We’ve got a big thing especially in February 2019. It’s going to be a great month for us, a good month. We’re going to try to focus on every day, Monday through Friday for the most part, a deal a day. A case study a day. We’re pretty stoked about this. We being me and our staff going through different case studies. I know we’ve faded away from that a little bit because we’ve had different vendors on, but we’re going to be diving into different case studies. What do we do? What do we find out? What’s worked out with this asset? Are we moving it? Is it for sale? At the same time, I also have a portfolio of assets and of performing notes that we got our counters back on and I raised enough capital for it. We had a couple of conversations, maybe not the full amount. It’s about $1.5 million portfolios. That’s a pretty good chunk of change if you’re looking at 60-plus assets.
Those look pretty good. We’re doing some marketing for that. Some of the things that we’ve looked at and tweaked are starting to pay off on some things. What do I mean by little things? I’ll give an example. I created a couple of simple landing pages for some of our marketing and email blast that went out to it. People are already starting to opt into it. People are already starting to communicate. Shannon did a great job of creating a couple of videos. We uploaded a couple of different groups. People are responding. I’m like, “We’re slicing and dicing.” As I like to say, “How do you eat an elephant? You slice and dice it, one bite at a time.” We’re working through those getting some streamlining. That was a nice thing too of being able to go somewhere, flying somewhere where I’m not running an event. I’m not speaking at the event. It’s given me a chance to sit back, relax, take a deep breath, step away and practice some good habits. Hypnotists are basically deep breath and relaxation and that’s one of the things I loved about what Mark did. Stephanie enjoyed it too. It was the ability to sit down and get outside of your head and help you reprogram.
Bad Beliefs: If you’re overwhelmed, it’s okay to take a step back, breathe, figure out what you got to get done, move on, and then pick up your dream again.
I say breaking bad beliefs in you because we all have it one way or another. We all have different things and the thing I want you all to realize as you’re reading this is to take a second. What are your beliefs? What are the big limiting beliefs that you have that are bothering you that are giving you issues on a daily basis? Is it that you don’t believe you can market? Is it that you don’t believe that you don’t know what to say to asset managers? You don’t know when to raise capital or doing due diligence. I challenge you all to take a different approach to it and realize that you can do it all. You can’t understand what’s going on with different things. You can’t overcome those beliefs. The sooner you start tackling them, the sooner you start taking action towards them and believing in yourself.
Somebody emailed, a good friend of ours, one of our biggest fans. We’re also one of their biggest fans. They had to take a little step back from the note business for a while because they’re focusing on some other things they’ve got going on, some personal issues. I’m like, “That’s totally fine. We’re here for you. We’re here to help. We’re not here to bash you. You can stay in the group. We’ll keep you in the WCN Crew. Not a problem at all. Everybody’s got to take some time back.” That’s the thing you have to realize. Sometimes if you’re overwhelmed, sometimes it’s okay to take a step back, breathe, figure out what you got to get done, and then move on. Pick up your dream again or pick up the sword or the cross or whatever it is you’re bearing, and then run with it.
Relationships And Fears
One of the most important things I can tell you is the more you can sit and take some time, five, ten minutes throughout the day and relax a little bit, try to get out of your own head and talk with other people. Sit down and think about what the issue is or how to reach out to people or reaching out to people, peers that you need some help with, the stronger you’re going to be. In this business, it’s all about relationships. It still is. In most of the world, it’s all about relationships. Some of our better relationships we had have helped us overcome obstacles. They’ve helped us take things to the next level or it helped us give an outside view into our own head. Not that you need to go see a shrink or a psychologist or anything like that. I’m not going to get into that, but I’m saying is our minds are the most powerful tool that we have. One thing Steph wisecracks it was like, “You’re never scared.” I’m like, “I get scared. I don’t like snakes. That’s one thing I don’t like. I hate snakes.” They freak the crap out of me.
One of the things that you have to realize too is that your fears, whatever your fears are, they’re your fears. Most of the time a fear we have goes all the way to the wrong side of that issue, like snakes because I don’t want to get bit by a snake. I don’t want to be poisoned. They creep me out. It’s a fear I have. False evidence appearing real. Most snakes are scared of you. They’re running the opposite way. Most of the time the nasty ones, the rattlesnakes or the copperheads, you’ve got to go looking for trouble to get into one of those things. Most snakes aren’t poisonous. Some are poisonous, but there’s always anti-venom. What I’m trying to make of the snake analogies here is we all are afraid of being snake-bit by something. We’re scared. We all have our snake issues, but what you don’t realize are most of us having our own anti-venom to help us overcome it. If you do get bit, there’s always a way to fix it. There’s always a way to help me overcome that unless you’re talking about a true life or death situation. That’s a little different story, but what I’m trying to get at in business and in note investing and your real estate, whether you’re raising capital, you’re looking for deals, or you’re looking to get started. There are many different ways to do it in nowadays society.
If you’re looking to get started, the best place to do is jump online. Start looking. Start googling things. There’s such a wealth of information on YouTube, Vimeo, BiggerPockets, LinkedIn. There are many groups, networking groups, Meetups, real estate clubs. Many great ways to help you get started. Do yourself a favor, step away from the tribe that you’re running that with. What does this mean? Many of us we’re running with tribes, your friends or family members, that are here but they’re not looking to go here. When you’re looking to go there, there’s a lot of static friction that can pop up between your tribe where you’re at right now and the tribe that you want to go to. Most of that friction is caused by I don’t want to say jealousy. A lot of times our friends, families they get used to being the weekend, hanging out with the buddies at the lake or whatever. When they start seeing people, you taking things on another level, a lot of times they’ll start having animosity towards you. Why is that? Maybe they’ve given up on their dreams. Maybe they’ve given up on their goals long-term. For you to chase your goals may cause some friction because they’ll start feeling bad about themselves. This is why I always say, “Look to where you’re hanging out.” If somebody is not paying your bills, if somebody is not paying your bills, if somebody is not paying for the power, paying to put food on your table. They should have no input to what you do.
They can give you advice, but everybody has one. The thing I want you to do is if you’re struggling and you’re reading this, do a couple of things. It’s simple. Pull out a sheet of paper. Start looking and give myself a good one now, “I was down to myself for five, ten minutes. That’s five, ten minutes you can’t get back.” Start looking at that instead of realizing, “Was it as bad or did I slough off? What good things did I do now? Hold the door open for somebody. Did you end up getting somebody coffee? Did you smile at somebody?” Even a smile is a good thing because you never know when somebody’s having a bad day, but these are all little good things. Little trophies you can give yourself mentally to help you do away with the negative trophies. How does that help you? It starts to help you reprogram your subconscious. It starts to have you start looking at positive things versus the negative things. Positive things will help you overcome things in the long run because you’ll now be looking through a different lens, through a different kaleidoscope of different options. “I can raise capital. I need to do it this way a little bit different. I don’t have to do it as Scott does it. I can do it like I need to do it.” You’ll find often opportunities sitting there at your fingertips. You missed them before because you’re busy being harsh on yourself, bashing yourself.
Bad Beliefs: Our mindset can be our biggest tool and it can be our biggest hurdle.
This is why we often feel that when we have bad days, we start off with a day and it keeps rolling throughout the day. You have the power to stop at any point before it starts to compound and then rolling and snowballing. Do yourself the biggest favor. Stop what you’re doing. Get out of your situation. Take a break. Go get a cup of coffee. Go do something to break that chain of events because that will help you overcome and start breaking bad habits, breaking the bad decisions, breaking bad beliefs. If you want to see somebody do something, go hang out with somebody who’s doing what you want to be doing. There will be no excuses for why you can’t overcome that. There will be no excuses why you can’t raise capital and go hang around with somebody who is raising $1.5 million in capital. There are no excuses that you can’t find deals and then you go hang out with somebody who’s closing on ten, twenty, 30, 60 deals a month. There are no excuses. That BS factor goes out the window quite rapidly. Going and do that will help you break through whatever beliefs you have.
Break The Handcuffs
That was one of the great things that Mark did at the Total Transformation event. He had a break board breaking through. Always find a good karate chop and break stuff. It was great seeing 150 plus people going through, being empowered, breaking through, doing something that a lot of people didn’t believe they could. You had these older women and older ladies and some women that are pretty frail. Not frail in a bad way, but they didn’t look strong. They do different things. Breaking through a board, a one-inch board that they’re breaking through yellow pine and being able to do something more than they ever thought before. Think about what you’re breaking, what your bad beliefs are. What are the things that are limiting you back? What are the handcuffs? You choose those, your own bad beliefs are your own handcuffs. You’ve handcuffed yourself to your bad beliefs. Nobody else has done this. We all have experiences. We all have different things that we grew up with and surround us, that get programmed in. You have the choice to break through. You have the choice to break those handcuffs and go do something amazing. You can go do something greater than you’ve ever done before and that could be breaking a board. It could be making a phone call. It could be getting up and talking in front of somebody. It could be sending an email. It could be making offers.
The thing I tell you the most is if you are in something that is uncomfortable, you’re in a spot. You’re in a rut. That you aren’t moving, you have to get out of your rut. You’ve got to get outside of your limitation. You have to get out of the house, get out of the office. Start thinking of different ways and don’t be afraid to reach out. If you’re struggling with something, always reach out to me. Drop me an email at Scott@WeCloseNotes.com. I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to hear what the issues you’re dealing with. That’s what we’re here for. If you need a coach, we’re here to help coach you. I’m always glad. People are like, “Scott, you’re so busy.” I’m like, “I’m busy but I will always take a few minutes to talk with students. I’m always talking to the audience. I’m always talking to a fan. I’m in #NoteFamily.” We’re a pretty close group of people for a few specific reasons. We’re here. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like note home. Some of your guys’ limiting beliefs are like, “I can’t even get funding because I’ve got a judgment. I can’t do it because I got bad credit. I can’t do.” I hate, “I can’t,” because I would much rather deal with, “I can.” Everybody in our audience, you have the ability to break through bad beliefs. It’s all in your power. It’s on your hands.
Ultimately, it’s all in your mindset; four to six inches between those two ears. That’s our biggest tool. It also can be our biggest hurdle. It’s all up to you. I don’t care what your experiences are. I don’t care what country or Western song you’ve been through. I don’t care if you’ve been divorced or gone through bankruptcy or failed in the past. I don’t care if you had a short sale foreclosed. It doesn’t matter. Welcome to the club. Welcome to the little thing called life. Life is a four-letter word. We sometimes cuss it, but it also can be something that’s even more rewarding to live through when you can do away with a lot of those negative annotations, those negative awards. Get rid of those bad awards and start focusing on the good. Go out. Make it happen. A big special shout-out to Mark Yuzuik. Thank you for having me. If you have not signed up or gone to one of his events, you need to do so. It will leave a big impact on not only your soul but your conscious and subconscious as well. It will help you make the most of your time. We’ll see you all at the top.