Archive for the ‘Personal Development’ Category

It’s an investor’s RESOURCEFULNESS.

That often meant he blasted out of locked room by creating explosions out of tooth picks, bubble gum and duck tape.

It was awesome.

Needless to say, he was my hero.

It’s common to hear many beginner investors focus on all the problems they have:

i. lack of capital to get started
ii. lack of time
iii.  lack of experience (fear)

And even experienced investors will take too long to deal with issues that may pop up because of their perceived lack of time.

Which is really just a lack of priorities.

That could mean taking too long to handle a tenant situation or letting repairs go for so long that they turn into major headaches.

However, the very best, the cream of the investing crop, handle things differently.

They are able to magically summon the resources they need almost at will.

They are resourceful.

They have “The MacGyver Factor”.

Let us share a three examples with you:

Both investors had very little free time, busy jobs and busy family lives.

They were both very capable people and handle a lot of responsibility regularly.

However, one is regularly much more resourceful than the other.

Although he had no time to fill a single vacant room he understood that money is attracted to speed and quickly began calling all the other landlords in the area to see if they could spread the word with their students that a single room was available in another house.

He knew some landlords himself and got the numbers of others from old ads posted online on the Off-Campus Housing’s classified ads.

Smart.

He turned his competition into his colleagues.

He offered a small “finder’s fee” for the student and landlord that would bring someone to him.

Within a week the room was filled.

He placed no ads, did not show the room (his existing students did that for him), handled very few calls and completed the task.

The other investor continued to report to us how painful student rentals were because he couldn’t find time to go down and show people his single vacant room.

He was stuck on the “pain” of the situation instead of focusing on what he could do about it.

He didn’t have “The MacGyver Factor”.

After arguing with the phone service for two days about the problem he finally got the number working again but went on to complain how he just couldn’t generate enough calls.

Upon investigation we found that the ads he was running were in the wrong places and were not being updated correctly.

He seemed more happy to be frustrated than to take action.

The other investor had the EXACT SAME phone issue happen to her during the EXACT SAME time.

She quickly “Googled” another service, signed-up for it, called the newspaper to change the phone number in his ad for the next day.

To make up for lost momentum she ordered 100 signs to place on the side of the road around her property.

Not ten signs, not twenty.

One Hundred.

Because she had kids and works in a teaching role she had to go put out the signs in the middle of the night.

And managed to put out all 100 over the course of a weekend!

She received so many calls that not only did she fill that first property with a tenant she used the extra leads to line up tenants for another 3 properties before she even purchased them!

She then quickly went back to her signs and picked them up so that the city didn’t “steal” them from her.

She went on to use the signs several more times with much success.

Same city, same situation as the first investor.

Two different results.

One investor had “The MacGyver Factor” the other didn’t.

Recently we found ourselves reading the book, Setting The Table, by Danny Meyer.  It’s the true story of one of New York’s most successful restauranteurs.

Danny wanted to build a resatuarant in area of New York City that was clearly not ready for it and would require more money than usual.

And he wanted to open up a second restaurant at exactly the same time in exactly the same spot.

We’ve added the bold and italics to the key sentence in this excerpt from the book….

“People began telling me that it would be insane to create, design, staff, and open two restaurants simultaneously in the same space.  It was becoming abundantly clear to me that I would need to take on more investors and more managing partners, and I did.  I did not have the personal funds to build two large restaurants in the space; nor did I have the gumption to go it alone without partners at my side. I began to think intently about where I’d seek financial assistance. I recruited two new colleagues to become my managing partners…”

Notice how he “began to think intently“.

He put extreme focus on how to overcome his challenges – and he did.

It took two years of hard work before the restaurants would open and even harder work to make them successful.

Six weeks before the first restaurant opened the head chef and business partner quit our of fear that the expenses were getting too high.

Danny went on to recruit another head chef after quickly consulting with his business partners for possible candidates.

Head chefs in high-end restaurants can be make or break the restaurant.  Many would crumble in front of such obstacles.

Danny just kept going.

He has “The MacGyver Factor”.

Start looking around at ALL the successful people you know.

Especially the ones who have created their own success from scratch.

We bet that you’ll find that each and every one of them is extremely RESOURCEFUL.

It’s their resourcefulness that gets them past all the obstacles that block others.

Now it’s tim to ask…

How resourceful are you?

Do you have “The MacGyver Factor”?

Time to get busy!

Until next time … be a Renegade!

So how has the “drill sergeant in your pocket” been treating you?

Confused?  Check out last week’s Feature Article over here to learn about the 5-day challenge.

So, here comes the money question…

Did you do it?

Did you take the 5-day challenge and use the simple little index card strategy we outlined last week?

Or did you not have enough time to get to it?

When we first started using this strategy it became pretty clear that:

A. We didn’t have enough “high value” tasks occupying our attention.

And

B. We were spending a lot of time checking email, getting the latest fantasy pool updates, channel surfing and updating our LinkedIn profile while monitoring how many “connections” our colleagues were making.

We got caught up in life’s minutia.

Spending a lot of time in the “Not Urgent” and “Not Important” category.

It feels good spending time with that sort of thing but one day you wake up feeling pretty sick of it.

When we started putting things like “go see 5 investment properties today and make an offer” as Urgent and Important activities things began to change.

All of sudden we weren’t caught up in months worth of deliberations over which property type in which neighborhood is the very best investment.

We did our homework and then went out and made some offers.

And then we had a property.

That lead to the next Important and Urgent task on our little index card…

Figure out how to manage it.

And B-I-N-G-O the momentum had begun.

After a few months of using the little index card “drill sergeant” strategy it’s interesting to go back through last week’s cards and look at what you’ve been spending your time on.

You know what?

You’ll be shocked at how many things you were able to accomplish.

And you know what’s even better.

You’ll be upset at all the important tasks that you didn’t get accomplished.

Hopefully you’ll feel horrible.

Why is that better?

Because if you start associating a cost with each of the things you didn’t do it’ll make future Important tasks even more important to you.

Then when you’re about to get distracted you’ll remember that awful feeling and it’ll force you to stay on track.

This forces self-discipline.

For example, if you have “Play soccer with my son tonight for 1 hour” and you didn’t get it done that time is lost forever.

Gone.

How much is that hour worth to you?

Probably priceless.

Instead you were caught up on your crack berry checking some pointless email chain that really didn’t deserve your attention.

Good job, hopefully you saved the world.

Or how about during your little review you notice that you always write down something like, “spend 90-minutes learning about direct response marketing for my new garden product business” but never seem to get it done.

How much is that costing you?

What is the cost associated with not getting things done?

What are the emotional and physical costs of constantly being so distracted with Facebook updates that you’re skipping your most important activities?

Ever considered that?

Reviewing these cards every week is almost like a reviewing a journal of your life.

It can be a game changer.

Time to get excited about what’s possible when you focus!

One more topic to cover….

For the record, we have lots of things that we want to get done that we haven’t.

So we can’t win any perfect citizen awards over here.

But we consciously work towards accomplishing the things we want regularly.

Daily.

Let us ask you this…

Do you remember New Year’s Eve 1999?

A few days ago we entered into a new decade.

That’s right, DECADE.

Ten years have passed.

How do you feel about what you have accomplished in the past 10 years?

Did you travel to the places you wanted to?

Did you create that cash flow you’ve been talking about?

Did you spend time with your family?

Did you develop that new hobby?

Look, we’ll let you in on a little secret that took us some years to accept.

There really is enough time.

For everything.

If you act with purpose.

When you’re building a house, like the Rock Star Mansion we’ve been showcasing on the blog, there’s a set of blueprints for it.

That’s the only way all the clay and stone and granite and glass gets organized into something livable.

Why can we accept that we need a blueprint for building a house but we have don’t have time to create a blueprint for our lives?

Please don’t confuse this message as being purely about accomplishment.

We are both big believers in taking time off and we have our own guilty pleasures.

This is more about lifestyle design than it is about getting 30 things done everyday.

But you need to get serious about creating your own blueprint.

Creating your own life.

And starting with a daily blueprint is easier than figuring our your life’s purpose by tomorrow before lunch.

Using the little index card strategy is a great way to start acting more purposeful every day.

Stop sleep walking.

We all get caught up saying “yes” to too many needless activities.

Having that little drill sergeant in your pocket makes it easier to say “no” more often.

And maybe that’s the biggest change you can make for yourself in 2010.

Saying “no” because the drill sergeant in your pocket is forcing you to say yes to the important.

Get started today.

2020 is just around the corner.

Until next time … be a Renegade!

 OK, so you’ve sat down and made a list of goals.  You’ve even stretched your comfort zone this year.

You’re going to raise more funds to grow your portfolio of single family homes by three this year.

Or you’re going to buy the strip mall where you’ve been leasing for years.

Or you’re finally going to buy that apartment building that you’ve been talking about.

Or maybe you’re finally going to take the first step towards acquiring your very first property.

And you’ve neatly organized your list on an impressive notepad or fancy spreadsheet and saved it somewhere with care.

Great stuff.

Now what?

Life’s busy.  That list will be collecting dust before you turn your calendar to check out next week’s busy schedule.

So how can you help increase the odds that you’ll actually achieve what you want?

Here’s two strategies that we seem to work best for us…

First, ask yourself this:

Give it some thought.  

What is it that is preventing you from already having what you want?

Most of the time it’s not a lack of anything that’s holding you back.

For example, if you can’t qualify for financing to purchase a new investment property there’s always a partner you can find if you give it some real effort.  You know it’s true.

So maybe it’s a limiting believe if holding you back.

Or a lack of priorities.  Having you been making the latest gossip on TMZ.com more important than phoning up about that latest property you saw?

Look, Tiger Woods is going to be on TMZ.com a lot this year so you can catch up on his missing teeth and golf club to the face hypotheses any time.

Or maybe it’s a process problem.  

Are you spending all day on low level, unimportant tasks, like paper pushing and approvals that can be handled by someone else?  

Can you ignore all of that for an afternoon?  

Can you close the door, focus, and make a few phone calls that will push you towards your goals?

Here’s something that held us back for a long time.

I used to real a lot of self help books.  I mean, a lot.

And I would always skip over the exercises in them.

I figured that I would just read the whole book and be better off for the knowledge I was gaining.

And there’s likely some truth to that.

However, without actually doing the exercises I really wasn’t changing myself.

I wasn’t becoming a new person.  An action oriented person.

I was becoming the same person I always was but just with some more knowledge.

It served my ego very well probably.  I felt kinda smart I guess.  Knowing all that stuff.

But who really cares?

So a problem that I fixed for myself was after gaining some knowledge on a subject I now know I need to follow-up with some steps towards action.

For example, it’s OK to read about investing in real estate to increase your knowledge of the subject.

It’s important actually.

But after six months of reading you’re likely ready to move.  

To “DO”.

So let’s ask it again,

Why don’t you already have what you’ve been asking for?

Make a list.

You know how you’re taught to make a “to-do” list?

For some reason they don’t work well for us.

Not sure why, maybe they’re just not our cup of tea or something.

To each their own, right?

For us, they just don’t seem to work the magic that they promise.

We write our list of activities and then put stars next to the important ones.  The ones that will move us towards our objectives.

But we just tend to ignore them when we get busy with distractions.

And funny enough, even though we know they don’t work for us every once in a while we’ll quickly put one together.

Here’s one from earlier this week.

We use index cards for our lists and carry them in our pockets.

Pretty high tech we know.

After years of digital calendars and syncing them between an infinite amount of cell phones and planners and computers we trashed them.

Paper and pen have become our weapons of accomplishment.

Can you make out the little stars on the left hand side of the list for the day?

So although we still use them occasionally we prefer this next strategy.

And although, we should let you know, we occasionally stray from this next strategy a little but we’ve committed to doing it again consistently because we get more done with it.

We picked it up from Stephen Covey’s, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, book I believe.

Here goes…

You get an index card and divide it into four sections.

You label the two columns across the top “Urgent” and “Not Urgent”.

And then you label the two rows along the side “Important” and “Not Important”.

Then you just pop in your tasks for the day into one of the four boxes.

Here’s a couple of our fancy index cards:

Is picking up your dry cleaning “Important and Urgent” or “Not Important and Not Urgent”.

Is spending an hour studying Google Adwords “Important and Urgent” or “Important and Not Urgent”.

Is putting in that offer “Important and Urgent” or …. you get the idea.

For some magical reason that we cannot explain this simple strategy works WONDERS for us.

Throughout the day we glance at the card and determine which activities we have to do next.

And if we’re running out of time in the day and we haven’t accomplished an “Important and Urgent” task all of a sudden we ignore everything and jump on it.

It’s amazing.

Basically this little index card controls us and we love it.

It’s our drill sergeant.

Warnings about using this strategy:

1. Your friends, colleagues and peers will think you are crazy when in the middle of the day you pull out a crumpled up index card from your pocket to check if you can go for lunch with them or if you have to call Mom because it’s “Important and Urgent”.  Trust us, we know from first hand experience.   Likely no one in your office is using this strategy and that’s even more reason why you should.

2. You need an endless supply of index cards.  You’ll find them in Staples, row 17, in all colours.  Wait until someone sees you pull out a pink one – priceless.

3. You will want to complicate this strategy with all sorts of non-sense.  That’s normal, you’re human, but don’t.

For some strange reason sorting your daily activities into these categories allows us to get more done.

There’s all sorts of reasons we can come up with for this…

Maybe it’s the clear prioritization of goals and the personal embarrassment you feel when you’re spending all day working on “Not Important and Not Urgent” tasks.

Or maybe it’s the subconscious mind working away on some of the stuff for us.

Whatever it is, we don’t care any more.

It works.

Like we said it’s like having a personal drill sergeant in your pocket.

Yes, that may sound disgusting but it’s the best way we can describe it.

Here’s a 5 day challenge for you.

For the next 5 working days pull out a scrap piece of paper or an index card and try this out.

Give it a shot for 5 full days.  No exceptions.

How hard is that?

And let us know how it went for you.

We’re totally curious.

Maybe we’re the only ones this works for.

Doubt it.  But who knows.

Are you willing to invest 5 days testing this out?  

It’ll take 10 minutes at the start of each day – tops.

Then review the card at lunch and at the end of the day.

2010 may depend on it.

There’s a great little book that summarizes some key distinctions between Millionaires and the Middle Class … but the best part is the survey of people in their 90s!

We’re often asked about the mastermind groups we continue to pay to be a part of.  We’ll likely be paying for them and be a part of many for years to come…we always find value in them.