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From Vision To Reality: The Strategy To Become A CEO Of Your Life With Zach Oehlman – Real Estate For Women

 

We always want to find bliss, but we have no control over the things around us. How do we do that? How can we control our lives despite the busy day-to-day of business? In this episode, Zach Oehlman, the founder of Valley Investment Club, shares his insights on developing yourself through a Vision To Reality strategy. Zach dives deep into personal development and personal responsibility, particularly in his real estate business. He tells us that when we are changing our life, we must change the context first. When life sucks, we don’t blame life; instead, we must be responsible for how to deal with it and empower ourselves in the process. To find the world of bliss and become the CEO of our lives, tune in to this episode.

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From Vision To Reality: The Strategy To Become A CEO Of Your Life With Zach Oehlman – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to have you on the show, Zach Oehlman. This is what Zach has to say about himself, “I grew up in a small town in Northwest Indiana and went on to college at Indiana University for Finance and Business. I started a career as an evaluation consultant and became a published author in this industry before starting my own business.

I have spent several years growing multiple businesses and traveling the world with my wife. We own and operate three businesses, a real estate investing community, a software and automation company, and a VA business development company. We find great people with great companies and help them scale themselves out of the day-to-day business.” Zach, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Blessed and highly favored.

I’m excited to be talking to you. I don’t know if you know this about me, but I personally have traveled to 65 countries. Travel is my deepest passion. Here’s one of the things that happened over the last few years. We know what happened during the pandemic, and that was a different reason, but since I started this show and this business, I haven’t been able to travel. The business has owned me.

You and I were talking about in the green room that it’s time for me to get back to the blissful life that I created. I want to get back to that. I love doing this show. I love serving my ladies, but it’s time for me to pay a little bit of attention to my needs too. I’m excited to be talking to you who’s doing that thing. You’re traveling the world and running businesses remotely, and it’s not taking a huge amount of your time. I’m excited to be talking to you about it. Could you tell us a little bit about your story and how this all started?

Way back when, in the little town of Kouts, Indiana, I’m a farm kid. I didn’t value anything other than being outside. My dad died when I was twelve. I took over the family farm before and after school, but I always had this deep desire to travel the world, help people and make a lot of money. I didn’t know how to do it. I started looking into this world that I wanted to get into. What I found was it takes money. I listened to some of your stuff. It’s like, “Money creates choice.” I love the way you say that. I was like, “I want to learn how to make all the money in the world so I could do whatever I want.”

They said, “Become a business owner or an investor.” Fast forward, I went to college. I took college very seriously. I graduated, from IU with a degree in Finance and Business in 2008. If anyone remembers 2008, that is not a great time to be in the finance market. I sent out 3,500-plus resumes over 3 years. I worked down at the Chicago Board of Trade.

I became a consultant in the valuation industry, six figures a year, every bell and whistle you could think of. I was like, “I made it. Here it is,” and I was miserable. I pulled the curtain out. I got to see the underbelly of this, and I was like, “This is going to be the rest of my life, 60 to 100 hours a week, 2 weeks a year, and high stress. A big error could cost millions of dollars and someone’s going to replace you with that. This isn’t what I wanted.”

A friend invited me down to a meeting and say, “Why don’t you come and check this thing out called real estate?” I was like, “I wanted to do it.” I sat through a presentation. I was super interested. I join their community. I got to work. It took me about eighteen months to do my first deal. I didn’t have any money. I had to borrow the money to get into the training and development program for my mom and I’m thankful for her.

I knew that this was the solution because I tried everything else then I was able to quit my job. We started our own real estate investing community because one of the things I’ve learned is you are a product of the people you hang around. I’m like, “I need to bring the resources to me instead of going and getting them.”

Fast forward, we’ve created a nationwide community of over 1,000 people that are connected to 32,000-plus people. In developing that, there are needs. People need access to capital, software, and all these ancillary services. I wanted to make sure that they were well taken care of, so for some of the more business development companies, I created that because I needed it.

I was paying big bucks to all these consulting firms and third-party people. They weren’t in alignment with the other people. I brought all in-house, learned how to scale businesses, learn how to document the process, and then learn how to put people in that. My big vision was to travel the world, then I had this great opportunity called COVID because I ran an in-person meeting twice a week, with 2 to 300 investors every Wednesday and 100 to 150 investors every Saturday. We had training. We moved all of that online. We had this beautiful apartment in Downtown Phoenix on the twentieth floor we just moved into. We were excited about the nightlife and restaurants, and we were in there for a week, and everything got shut down.

I was like, “What are we going to do?” After about four months of doing Zooms every day, I looked at my wife and said, “We don’t even have to be here.” We went to Hawaii for two months, tested that out, loved it, and didn’t like the time change. We came back. We got some things in order, then we went on a two-year world travel like in Columbia and a bunch of different countries. We go and stay for 2 to 3 months. We work during the week, set up our office, and then on the weekends, we enjoy the fruits of labor. It’s trial and error. Eventually, we figured it out.

What I’d love to share with the people is how we did that because it’s different for everybody. It’s a simplistic process if you’ve been through it. If you haven’t been through it, it’s wild. We ended up making it happen. We came back to the United States. We bought another house. We’re getting that up and ready for our personal flavor, then we’re going to short-term rent that out and head to Asia.

People need to understand what it takes to get started in a business. Could you give us your perspective on that?

There are a couple of perspectives on getting started in a business. I’m an analyst by trade. I used to be the most socially awkward person you could ever see. I would break out in sweats, stutter, and stammer. My mind would go blank. I was not a people person. It still takes something for me to get in front of people. I have to call it forth and be intentional about it. What I’ve learned is there are a lot of people that want to go into business, and they don’t even understand what that means like, “I want to start a business. I want to quit my job.” Even the phrase, “I want to be a real estate investor,” what does that mean? There’s such a simplistic to complex conversation around that.

What I tell the people starting off in business is to go find a great product or service that someone else is already created and then sell it. That is such an entry-level, low-risk, learning time of your life because you don’t have to worry about fulfillment, product creation, and all of that stuff that goes with running and managing a business. There are a lot of moving parts to this. What I tell people is, “Go find something great and learn how to sell it.” Once you make some money and understand the processes of business, selling, and making money, then you can start replacing yourself and moving into that. I tried to move to owning and running a business way too quickly, and I didn’t understand all the other variables of it.

 

In the context of real estate, what I would tell people is you could do real estate with none of your own money and none of your own credit. It’s very true. Here’s one of the easiest things for people to do. I neglected to do this. I was a high six-figure earner, great credit, and I didn’t use it. I was focused on getting these crazy discounted properties and doing it with none of my own money or credit that I neglected doing the simple thing called, “Go get pre-approved. What can I find off the MLS that cashflows?”

I want to highlight that. Even in reading this blog, a piece of me sometimes feels like I want to apologize to my ladies because there are many cool ideas and things that people bring to this show, and it’s cool to read. It can be a little bit confusing, especially when you’re starting because when you’re starting, you want to start the business with the least moving parts and complications. That is what will get you moving. You want your first steps to be the easy ones to feel good because once you have success, then you have more confidence to do the next step. You’re more willing to work harder too.

First of all, they get confused by all the options. When they finally jump in there, it’s hard that they burn out within the first couple of years and they can’t do the long-term, which in real estate, the money is in the long-term. Dealing with the simplest path, which is getting regular credit and buying something on the MLS, I recommend you make sure it’s your first home because you can put the least amount down.

The loans are the easiest to qualify for. You can get the most money. It’s the lowest rate. All of those things are in your personal resonance. If you want to cashflow it, now you can house hack. Rent out a room, Airbnb, and all of those things. I’ve done it all in my primary resonance because it’s the easiest way to get started, and then, “We did this. What can I do next?” Now there’s room for expansion and learning. It’s fun because you’ve already had success.

At that simplistic level of MLS and using your credit and a realtor, you got the realtor and broker or the finance person guiding you. In this world of real estate investing, it’s fast-paced money and high-risk rehabs. I know you own your own construction company. Rehabbing? Understanding that skillset is a big journey. If you take the opportunity cost of high-interest money and timeline to rehab stuff, they’re probably better off getting out of the gate and buying straight off the MLS.

In the very beginning, you’ve got pros that you get to take advantage of them. You’re getting into the business in the most intuitive way like the way that we all understand. The other thing that’s also interesting about that is you’re getting into the business in a way that your community will support you. You’re not going to hear all the fear factor of everybody saying, “That’s hard. That’s risky.”

People might be saying now because we are afraid of a recession and interest rates have gone up. In general, people understand that it’s a good idea to own a house. Until you’ve built a community of other real estate investors that understand where you’re headed, you’re not going to be dealing with the naysayers in general when you start in this way, which is super helpful not to have to fight that.

I did tell anybody for one year and a half I was doing this because I didn’t have the confidence. I was a six-figure earner college degree. I had the proverbial dream life. Everyone is like, “Why are you wanting to quit that?” I didn’t even tell anybody because I didn’t have the confidence to deal with the naysayers.

You don’t want them pulling you down. This topic is deep and close to my heart. Can you talk about personal development and personal responsibility with regard to your business in real estate?

I’m an analytical guy. I understand discount rate cap rates. I’m a published author in finance. I’m like, “I’m going to make so much money. This is going to be great,” then nothing was happening. I was focused on the tactical and practical side of it. I can do spreadsheets. I’m the numbers guy, but in my bank account, it wasn’t happening. My mentors and the people I hang around are like, “We have a personal development guy coming in this weekend. You need to be at this training.” In my mind, I was like, “What is that? What’s personal development?” It wasn’t even in my vocabulary.

I remember I came to this training and cried for six hours. I was in the front row. It was the first time in my life that I was like, “Here is the door to this room I’ve been trapped in. It’s called personal development.” I signed up for his program. I got his coaching. I went straight to the library and was like, “Do you have any books on personal development?” They looked at me funny and go, “Yes, that whole section over there.” It’s like this whole world that I uncovered.

I’ve never been talked to like this. On one of my first coaching calls, he was very respectful, but I was paying for a guy to help me get through something that I didn’t know what it was. He laid it out like this, and I’m going to paraphrase, “Quit blaming everyone else for your lack of success. You’re at where you’re at because of you, and no one else. Take responsibility for that. Own it. Let’s move forward.” He had a couple more choice words in there. I remember where I was. I was angry. I was like, “I didn’t want to hear that.”

Quit blaming everyone else for your lack of success. You're at where you're at because of you, and no one else. Take responsibility for that. Own it. Let's move forward. Share on X

It was like, “What do you mean that’s my fault.” Five minutes later, I had this breakthrough. I was like, “If it’s my fault, that means I could do something about it. Personal responsibility. I’m responsible. I don’t have to wait for the raises or for someone to offer me deals. I can go out there and hunt instead of waiting for things.” Over time, this concept of personal development and responsibility, anytime something isn’t going right or isn’t going the way I want in my life, I go, “How am I responsible?” and then I can do something about it. I’m constantly in programs. I have coaches that don’t coach me around real estate. It’s all personal development, and there are many different flavors of it.

I wrote a book called Choose Bliss. I talk about the flavor of bliss with regard to everything that I teach. Here’s one of the things that I say over and over again, and people have heard me say it so much that they don’t even hear me say it anymore, “We can’t control what happens outside of us, but we must control what happens inside of us because that’s all we can control.” It’s all we have true access to.

I can see where you’re coming from, and I’ve come from this same place. We’ve got this amazing education. It’s, “You can’t tell me it’s my fault. Do you know who I am? Do you know how smart I am?” I didn’t say how smart I am, but we could. We’ve got these college educations and all of this stuff. The reality is, “Do I know who I am? If I don’t take responsibility for who I am, it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks, says or what education I’ve got because that education doesn’t mean anything unless I am utilizing it for what I want in my life.” In my book, I have a whole chapter about 100% responsibility.

If people took personal responsibility, we would have a different world.

If people took personal responsibility, we would have a different world. Share on X

You’re not blaming people politically, the recession, your boss, your children, or your spouse. You’re taking responsibility for how you’re responding to these situations. From that book, that is the chapter that makes people the most upset. I get emails on this all the time. For instance, I’ve had horrible things happen to me, “Are you responsible for what that guy did to you?” “I’m not responsible for what that guy did to me, but I am responsible for how I choose to respond and how I choose to have relationships and live my life afterward.”

I have coaching calls with my coach. She’s like, “How are you responsible for something?” I was like, “I’m not even privy to the relationship.” She goes, “I know, but if you find a way to be responsible, then you can do something.”

People think that because you’re responsible, it’s your fault, but because you’re responsible, you can affect change. It’s empowering. It’s not depowering. Thank you for bringing that to the table. Could you talk a little bit about knowing where you’re going and who’s coming with you?

This is an evolving conversation. A lot of the training I do is from life experience. I run as fast and hard as I can. I go through the roadblocks and the challenges, and then I’m like, “What did I learn from it?” We share that with the people following us. I remember when I first started our real estate investing community. It was like, “I’ll take anybody. I need some help.”

Everybody is welcome. As we have grown and developed our personal lives and businesses, the more money we make, the more intentional we have to be, and the more we have to select who we’ve spent our time with. We have to make sure that those people’s ethics, principles, and the way they conduct themselves align with the overall mission and vision of where we’re going.

First off, if you don’t know where you’re going, we always hear that you’ll float around. The other aspect, and I’m learning this as we scale where I put people in my place, is I don’t train on the practical and tactical stuff as much as I do the principles because I want them to be trained in sound principles so that they can attack anything that comes their way, which means they don’t need me because they can do the critical thinking. One of the things I see a lot of the time is people coming in, and maybe for you or me, this is hard to fathom, but people don’t have a vision.

I’ve learned this over the years. I’ve been doing this for many years. We’ve helped thousands of people. We’ve created this process called Vision To Reality. We help people in their businesses and get started in real estate. When I ask them, “Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, or 15 years?” I’ve had people break down and cry. They’re like, “No one has ever asked me that question. I’ve never put any time into it. I don’t even know.”

What’s critical is knowing where you’re going. I didn’t understand that. I just wanted to learn the tactical and practical. I hear people, “I want to make $5,000 a month so I can quit my job.” Some are, “I want to make $10,000.” My question to them is, “What is that money paying for? If it’s a dollar value, you will lose motivation.”

What I recommend people do is create a vision. We do it through vision boards. We have training and development programs for it, but it’s as simple as a vision board. For me, it was to travel the world, help people and make a lot of money. That’s been that for eighteen years. I constantly bring that down to more of a reality. One of our ways to give back is I want to create a content creation studio in every country. That’s why my list. I want to have a house in all the countries that we love to visit because we travel. I break it down into that.

I put a timeline to it. What that does is that help us manage the day-to-day because we can get stuck in the day-to-day of being busy with zero intention. We waste so much time being unintentional, yet at the same time, we need to make sure all of our activities are in alignment with the grand vision. Too many times, I see people say, “I have this vision. I’m doing this.” The first two are taking you backward, and then you should put all your attention on the third one because that’s what’s going to get you there the quickest.

If they’ve never laid that out, they’re going to be busy being busy. I get stuck in that. I revert back to my plan, “What does the plan say? It has nothing in there about this. I’m going to take that out and I’m only going to focus on what my plan is.” I found that to be such a critical component of our success because I’m a person that wants to do everything. I mean everything to the detriment of my bank account and having success in one thing. I’ve taken the task to be an expert at 1 or 2 things and stay committed to it.

You are doing the things that you love to do, and that is the best use of your time and your energy. They’re the things that you’re passionate about and good at, but then you’re going to have other people that do these other things. You’ve built a business around your rock stars. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Hiring people is such a critical component. I’ve hired bad people and I’m still cleaning up the messes. We’ve all been there. I believe in people, in the human spirit, and that anyone can accomplish anything. The challenge is sometimes I believe it more than they do. There are these many different phrases like hire slow and fire fast, whatever.

One of the key components I found about hiring people is if you do not have documented systems and processes, they’re going to do whatever they see fit. You can’t blame them for it because you didn’t show them what to do. If you want to transition from this world of self-production and self-employment to this world of a business owner or CEO, you have to understand and document every process from how you check the mail and do your bookkeeping.

 

How do you handle emails that come in? All of this little stuff that we do without thinking, when you’re moving somebody in, they have to be able to replicate your thinking. The better you have this process documented with training, the cheaper you can get somebody to fill that. Almost all of our team are overseas. We have people in the Philippines, multiple different countries, South America, Africa, Bangladesh, and the Netherlands. We have people all over the world. My competitive advantage is I have bulletproof systems and processes that I put my team in then those people that I’m looking for to fill that need, I have to make sure that their attitude fits who I am.

This is key. I do a Vision To Reality strategy session with them. I was like, “What do you want out of life? What do you see your next 3 to 5 years being? What is your vision for whatever you want?” I then tie that vision of theirs to the position, and how they make the money. The better they do in that position, the more money they’re going to make to help fuel their dream so they’re no longer coming to work. They’re going to work on their vision and their plan to accomplish whatever it is they want. I’ve tied myself as the source of them getting fulfilled on their vision.

That’s how rock stars work. They are bigger than just the task. You’ll notice that anybody that’s good at what they do never say things that people use frequently, “That’s above my pay grade.” Entrepreneurs will say that jokingly. When you hear it, you’re like, “Oh.” It’s not about boundaries. It’s about their attitude about what they’re doing in their world. Many people will be like, “I need to set strong boundaries because,” and you’re right, you do, but you should not have boundaries on your dream. You can have boundaries on how much time you put in and all of those things. That’s healthy, but you don’t want to put boundaries on your capacity to work and be a rockstar and achieve your dreams.

What I tell people is we have an attitude of, “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out,” even my wife. My wife is a COO. Her background is social work. She was a Director for the Ricky Martin Organization down in Puerto Rico. She is an expert at that, not an expert at finance, real estate, and business ownership, but she has the attitude that she could figure it out. She goes on there and does it. Everyone on my team has the attitude to figure it out. They come to me and go, “I want to make more money.” I was like, “Let’s figure it out. What do you want to do? What lights you up?”

They are like, “I want to try copywriting.” “Let’s put you in a copywriting position and slow roll you into that. See if you like it and if you’re good at it.” We have people who are like, “Let’s move you up into managing a sales team.” They get to come to me and I create that safe space that, “You can make as much money as you want in my business. If you’re great, I’ll find a way to help you get what you want.”

Talk to me about changing your life by changing your context. This is something that you do for the people that work for you and yourself.

Change your life by changing your context. Share on X

First off, what does context mean? This is the world that I live in. If you’re reading this, I want you to imagine me sitting here with my hand holding up in the context of human body parts, a finger. In the context of body parts, this is a finger. In the context of numbers, it is one. In the context of direction, it is up. It’s like, “To the conversation you’re telling yourself, what is the context?” Instead of saying, “Life sucks, all of this stuff happens to me,” change the context to like, “Look at all these problems I get to solve to become a better person.” In the context of business, “Everybody has a problem.” I use words like disempowering conversation. Is the context you have about your life disempowering you? Mine used to be. Now, I have an empowering context in an empowering conversation.

I have many different contexts for different parts of my life, but one of the things that I want people that are around me to understand is I’m here to empower people to have amazing life. That is everything I focus on. It’s not just around your finances because I know a lot of people have great finances but their marriage sucks or they’re not getting fulfilled.

One of my biggest things was travel. I used to say, “I’m going to have to work 50 years even as an entrepreneur, business owner, or whatever, fill that in, then one day I’m going to get the travel.” My coach said, “Let’s create a context of you can have it all.” I was like, “I could. Couldn’t I?” What’s that founding storyline you guys tell yourself? One of them is, “You can have it all. You can travel, run businesses, and have epic motorcycle adventures, which I love. I love doing all this adventure stuff and I love running businesses. I love making money and helping people do it.” I’ve created the context if I can have it all.

One of the things that you said but led to somewhere else is you started with, “I have different contexts in different areas of my life,” but then you move to the overriding context of, “I can have it all.” Part of what creates bliss in our lives is to have that overriding context. It’s like the culture of your life.

For me, the overriding context or the culture of my life is blissfulness. Everything that I do needs to feel blissful to me, whether it’s my relationships, working out, building my business, doing this show, coaching, construction, or whatever it is. To any of those things, the overriding context is, “Does this support bliss in my life? If not, how can it?” The, “I can have it all,” is an overriding context, but then you take that into the different areas of life and you create a context that will make that area successful based on the overriding context.

That’s the bowl that all the other ones fit in.

This is a great segue into changing because into being at cause. Talk to me a little bit about that. I love this because the cause concept already said it that way. I want you to share that with my ladies because it’s valuable.

All I do is talk to people. I’m getting training development. I ask people like, “What do you want in life?” They start sharing with me, “I want to travel the world. I want to do this, but I can’t because.” Anything after the because is fear. We call it a tear barrier. If you want that thing you’re saying, “I dreamed of traveling the world since I was eighteen, but I couldn’t because I had a job, I didn’t have the money, and the world is scary.”

I wanted to travel, and people are like, “Don’t go there. They don’t like Americans.” We let people lead us. There are all of these becauses. What I’ve learned in the world of personal development was if you want it, you can have it. Transform because to two separate words, be and cause in your life. If you want something, you say, “How can I get this?” It’s the questions that we ask ourselves. You will get an answer.

 

“How do I travel the world?” My answer was, “We got to get out of this job.” Entrepreneurship and real estate investing showed up. We became great at that, but I became successful at it, so I have to be here now. I’ve worked myself back into this thing I’m trying to get out of. COVID came. We moved everything online, “How can I travel the world?” “We’re online, let’s go for it.” Start asking yourself, “How can I?” instead of immediately cutting it off with a statement.

Immediately cutting it off with a statement can be valuable, too, because that shines a light on what it is that is deep inside that makes you feel like you can’t do stuff. You understand your obstacle right at the very beginning. If you have a because, for me, it’s because I feel like I need to have certain audio or video quality, I need my studio and all of these things. If I want to do a podcast and release it every single week, even if I do, then I need to be in my studio long enough to record this.

I can batch my recordings, in this many episodes, but I still need to be in my studio because I’ve got all these ideas of what the quality should be like. What I’m starting to discover is if I’m at a speaking engagement and I’m going to record somebody, and that’s the only time I can get them, I have my laptop, the audio quality is not awesome, but it’s still a great conversation that’s going to benefit my audience. The because statement taught me what my hang-up was.

You deal with the because. It’s like, “I can’t because I don’t have time,” then I took that and I found out how to be a real estate investor. Thank you for distinguishing that because that’s the topic that we need to focus on.

The ‘because’ topic and issue now allow you to be at cause for fixing it. Be a cause to fix that issue, that was the because. We use the word victim. People hate to hear this victim word, but the because is the victimization of yourself, “I can’t because.” that’s a victimization of yourself. Being at cause releases you from that victimization. You don’t know what you’re a victim of unless you can qualify it. The way that you say this about changing ‘because’ into ‘be cause’ are these beautiful transitions from the because statement becomes the be cause solution.

You unwrapped it. We are in the context of because and we do need to know why, but then we could do something about it. In the world of real estate investing, we have this conversation of, “I need to learn how to comp. I need to learn how to run my numbers.” I call them hard skills, like sales marketing, operations, and the business of it. I also have discovered what I call soft skills, like being compassionate, being able to critically think, and doing all of these other things. When somebody tells me they don’t have time, what they think is they need more time. What I think is, “No, you need to get trained and developed in the organization and delegation.”

We all have the same amount of time. I’ve also learned everything. Everything is training and development, from learning how to put a task in your calendar to tying your shoes to everything. I say that because we run a national organization that trains people to become real estate investors. I have this mentality that, “People know how to schedule, follow up and manage a calendar.” Some people don’t. We can’t get wrong because I didn’t one day either, but I got trained and developed in this thing called managing the calendar. I’ve taken that on and helped people learn what they need to get trained in development so they can transform because into be cause.

The other thing that came to me as you were saying that is there are a lot of people out there that are very successful that don’t have these skills. If you’re one of those people, and I will say that I have been one of those people, understand that success is an ever-growing and evolution possibility. Even if you’re super successful now but don’t have these skills by growing those skills, success, bliss, and your capacity is limitless.

It’s always good to be in a constant state of learning and skill-building so that you reach the limitless place that you’re capable of. I tell people all the time, “I’m not as blissful today as I will be tomorrow.” It’s a never-ending upward spiral to the next level. It doesn’t mean that I never get to rest. I mean, who wants to rest from being blissful?

I was having this conversation when my brother got married. I was thinking about my marriage, the context of marriage, and it’s like, “That was the happiest day of my life.” I want to say, “No, it’s not. Have today be the happiest day of your life. Have tomorrow be even happier. I’m working on being happy.” It’s a never-ending game.

Have today be the happiest day of your life. Have tomorrow be even happier. Share on X

You can always be happier. My husband will say to me, “I don’t understand how I’m more in love with you now than I was many years ago. How is that even possible?” I’m the kind of person that I never have anything in my life for long periods of time. My relationships, yes. Even when I was dating, people would last 3 or 6 months in my life. I don’t know how he’s managed to stay that long and I’m still bonkers about him. It’s because we have this expansive it-keeps-getting-better attitude about our relationship, the desire and the priority of keeping that as the context of our relationship.

You’re intentional about it, “I’m very intentional about me being happy.” If we are not intentional about it, we fall for the wind.

“Hope it works.” Hope is not a plan.

We had a beautiful training down in Costa Rica, and one of my friends said, “Hope is horrible.” I was like, “What?” He’s like, “Let me tell you why hope is horrible.” He was going through some stuff in his business. He kept hoping. How he shared it is, “It’s external.”

It’s out of your control. You’re not a cause.

I was like, “This creates this thing that you don’t have control over.” Who wants to have that? You find something more internal.

Ladies, in the green room with Zach, we were talking a little bit about his Vision To Reality process, which he has shared with you a few times already on this show. I’m intrigued by it. I want to deep dive into that. Based on what he’s shared, with everybody in his company and in with himself, he reviews that, wouldn’t you like to know more about it? I certainly would. We’re going to do that in EXTRA. We’re going to talk about the actual process. He’s going to take us through it so that they can help you to create your vision of reality. Did you want to add anything, Zach, before we move into the next pieces of this show about the Vision To Reality?

What I’ve learned is this process we called success or wealth is simply a process. It’s a replicable process if you can follow the process. The challenge that I have had is in this world of everyone wants your attention and everyone has something for you, I’ve learned to narrow it down and know what I need to do so I know what not to do. I’m at a different level now, but I’m still facing those challenges, “What to do with my time? Who should I hire? How should I use resources for this new level?” Creating that plan and having a bulletproof plan is critical. You’re not going to know how to do it because if you did, you would.

You’re not going to the next level if you already know how to do it. You have to learn to go to the next level by definition.

People can talk to and guide you. I recommend getting someone that’s been down the road you want to go down. Get some wisdom and direction from them on how to do it and stick to it. Don’t get another person that tells you something else because you’re going to be all over the place. Stay at it. Here’s what most of it looks like. If you’re starting to this, it’s going to be talking to people. You’re going to be selling something. You’re going to be either buying or selling deals, sneakers, or whatever. Stick to it until you’re a professional at that then deviate and make it your own. Don’t try deviating and make it your own until you have success because you don’t know.

We’re going to be doing this in EXTRA and diving deep into the Vision To Reality process that Zach is great at helping people get through. Is there a way that people can reach you? Could you tell us a little bit about that and your free gift?

Our main thing is real estate. We do have a Facebook Group. The best way to reach me is my website, ValleyInvestmentClub.com. That is where we have a lot of our meeting schedules and you guys can schedule training. We have free training every week. That’s the entry point. We have a free gift. It’s discounted access to our deals mastermind. I’ve learned the challenge for most people in getting into real estate is they’ll say, “I need money and I need deals.” I’m like, “That’s all of it.”

We sell some very advanced masterminds and not everyone’s ready for that. What we did is we started a super entry-level, but at the same time, high value. We have people in there that are full-time real estate investors all the way down to people that are working at a job and are brand new to real estate. It is $97 a month. You get a discounted price if you use the promo that Moneeka is going to share.

What we do is we have software. It’s Patent Pending. It’s from a dear friend of mine, and it helps you find properties on the MLS. It does a lot of the analysis for you to tell you what not to look at, “Don’t look at these 300 properties over here. Focus on these 5 because they meet the parameters that have the potential to be a good investment.” It gets rid of the noise.

We help you if you have questions. We have a Facebook group. We do weekly training and have ten-day challenges. We show you how to use the software, and then we do have access to some capital or lenders if you’re ready to do that. It’s something for everyone, whether you’re brand new and you want to get your dip your toes in with high value, low cost, or if you’re experienced and the only thing you need is looking for deals, an entry-level mastermind is great for that.

To get that, go to BlissfulInvestor.com/Deals. In order to get 20% off of the Facebook group, use the code, ZACHO. Thank you for that, Zach.

It’s my pleasure. The key is getting started. Whatever we can help you guys do to get started and continue that conversation, we’re here to do.

Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?

I am.

Give us one super tip on getting started as a real estate investor.

Surround yourself with real estate investors and find a place where they hang out and be around that conversation of real estate.

 

What is one strategy to be successful as a real estate investor?

Cashflow. I look at the properties that I fixed and flipped and what they’re worth now. They served a purpose at that time, but there is nothing like cashflow. Understand what cashflow is and how to generate cashflow because you can generate cashflow with none of your own money if you know how.

What is one daily practice you would say contributes to your personal success?

Miracle Morning. Have you ever read the book?

I’ve had Hal on the show.

He shares, “These are all the things that successful people do.” If I do all of them, I should have a pretty good shot of being successful. The biggest one for me is that vision because there are days I do not want to wake up, get out of bed, or I do not want to have to deal with whatever it is I got to deal with, but then I get that glimpse of, “Thailand’s coming up. Let’s deal with this so I can get to Thailand. I want to go ride my Can-Am, but I’ve got to deal with this first. Let’s go deal with it and I can go do my fun stuff.” It keeps that fire in you burning bright so you don’t forget why you’re doing this.

Thank you so much for everything you’ve offered in this portion of the show. It’s been phenomenal.

Thank you for the opportunity. I feel we have a responsibility, at least I do. How many people can we bring with us to this world of bliss? You call it bliss, I call it amazing life because somebody did it for us. Thank you for the opportunity and for your commitment to helping all these amazing ladies out there because I listened to your story and it’s inspiring. It is having the choice to do whatever you want in your life. Thank you for continuing the mission.

It is my pleasure. Thank you. I feel like we’re aligned. Ladies, thank you for joining us for this portion of this show. We do have more. We’re going to do the Vision To Reality in EXTRA. If you’re already subscribed, we’ve got that coming. If you’re not but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com, and you can check out this Vision To Reality portion that we’re going to be doing.

For those of you that are leaving Zach and me now, thank you so much for joining us. You know how much I appreciate you. Have a great week. I’ll see you next time. Until then, remember goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life your heart deeply desires. I’ll see you soon.

 

Important Links

• Zach Oehlman
• Choose Bliss
• Facebook Group – Valley Investment Club
• BlissfulInvestor.com/Deals
• Miracle Morning
• Hal Elrod – Past Episode
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

Get Dr. Shaler’s free EBook: “How to Spot a Hijackal”  at https://www.forrelationshiphelp.com/help-handling-hijackals-spot-signup/

To listen to the EXTRA portion of this show go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

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Learn how to create a consistent income stream by only working 5 hours a month the Blissful Investor Way.

Grab my FREE guide at http://www.BlissfulInvestor.com

 

 

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SOULMAPPIN: The 10 Essential Alignments For A Blissful Life With Cary Jack – Real Estate For Women

 

What if there was a way for you to quantify how close you are to your vision of a successful life? Today’s guest shares the ten essential alignments that you should measure to see which areas in your lifestyle need some tweaking. Joining host Moneeka Sawyer is Cary Jack, a lifestyle entrepreneur, podcast host, author, and Founder of The Happy Hustle. Cary breaks down the ten alignments that will help you in your path to achieving a blissful life. He has coined these alignments as SOULMAPPIN: selfless service, optimized health, unplug digitally, loving relationships, mindful spirituality, abundance financially, personal development, passionate hobbies, impactful work, and nature connection. Understand each one, be inspired, and start the course on your journey to a successful life by tuning in to this episode!

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

SOULMAPPIN: The 10 Essential Alignments For A Blissful Life With Cary Jack – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome Cary Jack to the show. He is a Lifestyle Entrepreneur, Author, Podcast Host, Professional Actor, Model, Biohacker, Eco Warrior, and Martial Artist. He’s a humanitarian striving to make a positive impact on the planet. After experiencing entrepreneurial burnout, he then founded The Happy Hustle. His mission is to educate, inspire and entertain while reminding you to enjoy the journey, not just the destination, as you happy hustle for a life of passion and purpose.

You guys can see why I have him on the show. For successful entrepreneurs to spiritual masters, he interviews an array of powerful guests, including myself, The Happy Hustle Podcast, to help you transform your dreams into a reality. His book The Happy Hustle is coming out in 2021, and he couldn’t be more excited at the opportunity to share his message of Happy Hustlin’, a way to balance your life and your love. Cary, how are you?

I’m fantastic, Moneeka. It’s always a pleasure to connect with you and I’m honored to be here.

Thank you for coming. Ladies, I had to share Cary with you for a couple of reasons. First of all, I was on his show. He’s an amazing host. Go check that out at Happy Hustle Podcast, and then also he runs a mastermind that I’m a part of. As podcasters, we share a lot of ideas and he always shows up super consistently as the happy hustle guy. One of the things that you know I put a lot of emphasis on in life is about living bliss consistently.

You want to develop those bliss muscles and habits so that no matter where you go emotionally in your life, you’re always able to come back to this baseline of bliss. Consistency is the key. The people that I have on my show talking about bliss, it makes a difference if they themselves are showing up for their lives and for the people around them consistently and Cary is one of those people. I’m excited to share him with you and for this conversation. Cary, thank you again.

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Thank you for having me. When I think of bliss, I think of you. I just tried to keep up.

Give us a little bit about your background and start with what brought you to where you are.

It started with growing up half in Sarasota, Florida, and then half in Red Lodge, Montana. I was basically surf and skate half the year, then camping, fishing, hunting and hiking. The other half was playing cowboy, and I reside in Big Sky Country, Montana. I’ve always been an entrepreneur since an early age and just valuing the dollar and having to earn every penny for myself.

My dad and mom are both entrepreneurs and they always instilled in us that you had to basically go out and hunt for it if you want to eat, and so I have that blue-collar work mentality and I think that’s served me. I did experience entrepreneurial burnout along the journey and that’s what led me to Happy Hustlin’.

I was a fancy tech entrepreneur with my big data tech startup in New York City, wearing the fancy suit and tie. My brother and business partner and I were soliciting this seven-figure VC funding deal, and we ink partnerships with Microsoft, IBM and all of the things. We work 100-plus hours a week, and I just burnt out. At that point, I sacrificed everything to get that deal and those partnerships. My faith, family, fitness and fun all went to the gutter.

It wasn’t until I achieved the profit and success that I realized this isn’t worth it. I flew to Bangkok, Thailand, lived there for ten months. I figured out a better way to work and live and that’s where The Happy Hustle was born. Now I’m focused on being a lifestyle entrepreneur, investing my hard-earned fruits of my labor wisely into different assets, businesses and people. What I found is that you can achieve blissful balance if you just measure yourself in each of these ten alignments. I just scratched my own itch first, which was going from burnout to bliss and now I’m helping others do the same.

I love that you are so comfortable using the word bliss. People usually come on this show, and they’re like, “What is that?” I’m delighted that you’re so comfortable with that, and I see you living that lifestyle. Talk to us a little bit about these ten alignments that create that blissful balance for you and for everybody.

S – Selfless Service

This applies to everybody. It’s an acronym. I’ve found that it’s difficult to remember ten alignments in my tribe. I made it an acronym. It’s SOUL MAPPIN. S stands for Selfless Service because, as Tony Robbins says, “The secret to living is giving.” I think it’s very important to focus on giving back to others. Giving your time, money and expertise.

As I go through these, I urge your audience to measure 1 to 5 where you rank at each of these ten alignments. This is a practice that my tribe I do every Sunday. It’s very important that what you measure you can manage. You have to know where you may be out of balance. If you’re feeling stressed, unfulfilled or burnout, in any capacity, you may be lacking in one of these ten alignments and it’s important to recognize it first. Awareness is the first step. As I go through these, feel free to interject anytime as well, but basically, measure five would be an A. You’re crushing it. You’re happy hustling.

 

One is an F. You’re failing. Selfless service, that’s the first step. How often are you volunteering? How often are you giving back? How often are you not just thinking for yourself? If every day, that’s a five. You’re crushing it. If it’s a one and you’re never helping others, you need to prioritize change maybe because that’s a big component to happiness and fulfillment.

O – Optimized Health

The next one is O, Optimize health. Health is wealth. You have to have your health if you’re going to be happy hustling in any capacity, if you’re going to live a blissful life. For me, I think a lot of people complicate it. I used to run a high-end biohacking company. We worked with pro-athletes and Fortune 500 CEOs. I learned a lot from what the top 1% of high performers are doing and I think a lot of people complicate it.

U – Unplug Digitally

For me, it’s moving the body minimum of 25 minutes every single day. Drinking a gallon of water and just eating healthy, all-natural organic foods, no processed crap. Measure right now where you’re at 1 to 5 in each of the ten alignments and specifically for O. U is Unplug digitally. A lot of people are plugged in so much to their devices now, on their smart TVs, smartphones and tablets, and we’re so disconnected from our present moment, mother nature and even the people right beside us.

It’s very important to disconnect to reconnect. I’ll put it in a little sprinkle of tips throughout each of these, but even just 60 minutes of undivided no device time in the mornings when you wake up can go so far. I even doubled down in the evening time 60 minutes before bed, no devices. Those two simple happy hustle hacks can make a big difference and that’s you. Measure where you’re at. If you’re always plugged in and you’re never disconnected, that’s a one. You need to prioritize change.

I do want to highlight this a little bit because this is something that we don’t realize when. When I hold my choose bliss retreat, which is called the Bliss Retreat, this is one of the very first things we talk about. Your mind is most vulnerable and highest capacity just when you wake up and just before going to sleep.

Those are not times you want to be looking at social media, which can be highly negative or overly positive making you feel bad about your life. You don’t want to be looking at the news. You don’t want to be susceptible to the subconscious messages of advertising. You don’t want any of those things and now our phones are not just a phone. They’re all of those things.

It’s important not even to check texts because when you check a text, you’re now plugging into somebody else’s agenda. You want to make sure that you start the day and end the day focused on your own agenda, life, bliss and gratitude. That’s the first thing. I just love this because people don’t talk about this as much. The other thing about that is before you go to sleep, if you have screen time, your eyes have a physical reaction to the screen.

The toxic blue light.

It takes time to decompress from that for your eyes to settle in to be able to go into REM sleep. It’s not just the mental activity of looking at that screen. It’s a physical reaction that our bodies have. In the morning, it’s hugely important to start your day off. Do not start with other people’s agenda, advertising bad news, and at night you don’t want to have all of those things you’re going to dream about at night. You don’t want to be dreaming about other people’s agendas, bad news and advertising. You also want to make sure that your body has the time to decompress and relax so that you sleep blissfully. I love that the hour on either side gives you just the space to prioritize yourself for long enough to set yourself up for bliss.

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I’ll take it a step further. What our devices I meant is a toxic frequency. It’s EMS, electromagnetic frequency. It’s basically radiation. Whether you’re on your Bluetooth headset or you got your smartphone in your pocket zapping you with EMS, these have shown to break down ourselves on a DNA level.

If you’re wondering why your mitochondria are not functioning properly, also known as your energy powerhouse cells, you need to check your screen time. You need to check your device usage. This is a huge factor and a lot of people are missing it, and especially now with the rollout of 5G. I don’t want to go down the woo-woo train here of like, “Tinfoil hat guy.”

It’s a factor. You have to use technology wisely and if you are going to use your devices past dark, put on some blue blockers. Those help your eyes. That affects your retina and your cornea, and it does take time to compensate for that toxic blue light. It’s an important factor both physically, mentally and emotionally. Watching social media and the news, that stuff is oftentimes other people’s agendas and priorities, not yours. Those are important steps there.

L is Love and relationships. This is an essential part and just living the happy hustle, blissful life. You have to have love in your life. What’s it all for? What’s all the investing, money and the accumulation of wealth for if you don’t have people to share it with? I’ve found that a lot of my fellow entrepreneurs sacrifice specifically their loved ones to get to the cliché top of the mountain, and then they look around, “The view’s bad,” and they’re isolated. No one’s there.

The view is gorgeous, but there’s nobody there with them.

Hopefully, the view is gorgeous, but oftentimes I see people don’t even like the view. They’re like, “I should be on that mountain. That mountain looks a lot better.”

It’s cloudy and cold.

That’s the truth. For me, I have a fiancée. We’re getting married soon. We have date night every week. We have a Sunday beer talk. We have a love calendar where we measure where we rank in our relationship. Every single day I ask her. This could be something that you implement with your lover. It’s the simple whiteboard calendar. It sits in our room. I ask her every night, “What’s your love day?” She’s like, “It was an eight.”

We had lots of passion, love and maybe even intercourse. Measures up, and then she asked me, “Mine was a six. This was why.” We average that out a seven. I’ll put it on the calendar for that day. I put a heart around it, and then we move on to the next day. At the end of the month, you can see where you rank because oftentimes, we as humans have this negativity bias and we focus on the negative, that nitpicking and nagging. She didn’t do the dishes or I didn’t do the laundry.

L – Loving Relationships

This is a way to calculate and you want to be 90% love days. Hopefully, that’s the goal of 10%. There are going to be some mess-ups, but if you start dropping down below 80% love days, then you might need to reassess and reevaluate. Is this a healthy relationship for you? That’s just one happy hustle hack for you, but loving relationships both with your family and friends is a really important piece. I would say measure 1 to 5 where you rank, and that’s L. Now we got the Soul part of SOUL MAPPIN.

M – Mindful Spirituality

M is for mindful spirituality. I know you’re big into meditation and breathwork and just being spiritual in whatever capacity. I don’t necessarily care if you believe in one God or another. I just think you have to have faith in a higher power. Get still ten minutes minimum a day, focusing on my breath and gratitude and doing my gratitude practice. I’m doing my I am incantations on my rebounder, just training my subconscious. That is the central part of mindful spirituality.

Meditation oftentimes gets complicated, but all you have to do is focus on your breath in a quiet place. Just enjoy the given moment, feel, use your different senses, but measure where you rank right now, 1 to 5 in each of these ten alignments and, specifically, mindful spirituality. You see the highest performers at every level. From the real estate game to the business game to any high performer in the sports field, they are using mindful spirituality. If you’re not, maybe this is a wake-up call. That’s M.

I ask the three rapid-fire questions at the end for every single guest that’s been on here. We’ve had 250 guests on the show, and I will say the two biggest things that people say are some forms of meditation or exercise. It’s so interesting because you don’t think those aren’t business-related things. I get up and I block time and every week, I do this. It’s none of that. It’s taking care of the human element first of you so that you can then go out there and be your very best self in the world. Meditation is huge and there are a million different kinds of meditation and you can complicate it. You can do what Cary just said, but choose something.

Especially as entrepreneurs, we have a monkey mind. Get settling into that. At least at first, it feels like a challenge. You can push through and just keep doing it until you’ve trained your mind to do it, or you can pick something else that will keep you going until you can get there, for instance, a walking meditation. I do a dancing meditation because I’m a dancer. There are different ways that we can engage in meditation, but find something that helps you to heal and nourish your mind.

It’s a great way to just get out of our heads and into our hearts. We spend a lot of time at the monkey brain, just overthinking and overanalyzing and just that anxiety and stress. It’s a great way to just take a step back, and it’s clinically proven that six deep breaths change your state. Just six deep breaths can do wonders.

In EXTRA, we are going to talk about his box breath. Stay tuned for that because that’s a really good fast technique to get you back into your body creativity, to relax the mind and the body so that you perform better. We are going to cover that in EXTRA. I’m excited.

A – Abundance Financially

We’re moving on to A. A is Abundance financially. If you want to invest in real estate, if you want to invest in yourself and if you want to invest in a business, you have to have money. I look at money as a tool. It’s energy and you essentially need money to use this energy. One thing that was the difference-maker in my financial wellbeing was financial literacy. Knowing how to invest, save and spend wisely.

It wasn’t until I took financial literacy seriously, then everything started to transpire positively for me in terms of money. There are sometimes some negative connotations around money. It’s okay if you want money if you want to be rich and if you want a big life, go for it, but you have to change your money story first and foremost, and you have to educate yourself. In the real estate market, you have to be educated in order to make quality buying and selling decisions.

The same goes with investing in stocks or bonds, with investing in crypto, investing in yourself, and in business and partnerships. It’s very important to have abundance financially so we can live the happy hustle, blissful lifestyle and take care of those who we care about. Let’s face it. We’re all out here working for freedom.

Freedom both financially, creativity and time are three forms of freedom. Money can oftentimes truly help you provide that, but not at the expense of your time. A lot of people trade their time for money. I really very much focus on getting paid for value delivered, not time spent. I think that’s an important correlation or an important distinction to make, but money is a tool and it’s very important. One thing I’ll just say, “Get good at sales.” Sales are the lifeblood of any business. I love selling. It maybe the hunter in me, but sales is just extremely important.

I do the majority of my sales on Zoom, which is hilarious. I learned a lot selling over $1 million, working very little, to be honest with you, over Zoom calls. It’s all emotional intelligence and how to read body language. I don’t say that to brag or anything. I have experience in this niche of selling over digital Zoom calls and very awesome/important techniques to utilize. I think whether you’re selling on the phone or you’re selling one-to-one in person or you’re selling over video calls, you have to learn sales in order to achieve abundance financially. Measure where you’re at right now in terms of abundance financially. Five is you’re crushing it. One is living paycheck to paycheck.

 

You ran a business where you gave it everything. You were doing the 100-hour week, you were doing all of that stuff and now you have a very successful business, much more passive. I want people to think about this. This is a very important point. If you’re trading time for hours, your capacity to earn is very limited to your capacity to work.

If you go on vacation, all the money stops. What you want is passive income, and this is why real estate is so amazing. You want your money out there doing this little thing. You want it doing its hustle and you’re on vacation. Make your money hustle for you. You don’t hustle. That’s the thing and it’s amazing with real estate. You can do it in a lot of different vehicles.

The very rich invest in stock portfolios, real estate and businesses, those are the top three. You’re welcome to do all of those and I do all of those, but for me, it’s a very passive experience. The most time that I spend on my business is in the podcast business or my coaching business, and that restricts me from taking my vacations, but my real estate business does not.

Now I’m trying to move towards making this business a little bit more passive and conducive to my lifestyle. It’s a really important point, ladies, and notice, I mentioned my own transition. We are all at some place in that spectrum of fully passive to trading time for money. Sometimes we have to trade time for money in order to get the money to create the passive income. That’s okay, but have that as your goal because there’s a journey that we go through to get to that place, to where your money is working for you and you’re now off on vacation.

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It’s so true. I’m still on my journey. I’m still figuring it out. I know you are as well. There’s a delicate dance between trading your time for money and having passive residual income. One strategy that I’ll just throw out to your audience that I’ve seen effective in my life is affiliate relationships. Affiliate relationships leverage your time most effectively because you can promote a product or service that you believe in, but not have to focus on delivering.

I have some very lucrative affiliate relationships in my business. They pay me nice $5,000, $10,000 every month and it’s beautiful. There are some that require a little more time, maybe a little more content creation, connection and touchpoints, but it’s important to think about how you can leverage your time most effectively, so you can spend it more doing what you love.

P – Personal Development

The first P, that is Personal development. If you’re not growing and evolving, you’re shrinking and dissolving. You have to focus on growing every single day in some way, and we can learn from anyone. We can learn from the garbage man on the street to the high-rise female boss entrepreneur in the office. There’s a lesson in each interaction. What I like to focus on is 90 minutes of personal growth every single day.

I’ll do 30 minutes of reading something inspirational and educational in the morning, 30 minutes of listening to something inspirational and educational in the afternoon and then 30 minutes of watching something inspirational and educational. I find I draw a lot of inspiration from these different forms of content and people learn in different ways. That’s why I recommend three different mediums.

If that sounds a little like a lot to start, start with fifteen minutes in the morning, fifteen in the afternoon and fifteen in the evening, but just start focusing on your personal development and make things relatable to where you’re at right now. In your business, life and investing portfolio, make those things relatable of what you’re learning.

P – Passionate Hobbies

If you’re not doing these things, measure where you rank or where you are. That way, we can course correct. At the end of this interview, you should know where you’re ranking in each of these, and it’s just important to measure. That’s the first P, Personal development. Next P is Passionate hobbies. This is one that I think a lot of people miss big time. They’re working their tail off, they’re grinding and they’re hustling, but they’re not happy hustling.

This is where you fill your cup with passionate hobbies or doing things you love. Fun things regularly that you might even have to pay for. Maybe you’re big into art or dancing. For me, I love fly fishing. I love martial arts. I go camping, hiking and horseback riding. It’s important to fill your cup so you can give from your overflow. Here is one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle. If you want to achieve blissful balance, if you want to create your dream reality, you must prioritize each separate calendar engagement with the same priority.

Your passionate hobbies, like maybe Moneeka loves to go belly dancing, that get the same priorities as this interview with me. It’s the same priority with the date night with her husband, gets the same priority as her workout and that’s how you create the blissful balance in your life, both personally and professionally. If you’re lacking in passionate hobbies, I highly recommend scheduling two fun things right now on your calendar and holding yourself to them as if they are just as important as your meeting with your next potential big partnership or whatnot. That’s the second P.

I want to add something to that. I do all of those things. I have a date night every single week with my husband. That’s one of the big things and that counts as one of the fun things that I love to do. Here’s an interesting thing that I just want to point out that you may not be thinking about as you’re out there building your life. First of all, I don’t know, all work, no play makes Jack a very boring boy. That’s one of those things that people would tell us as younger people, and it’s not emphasized anymore.

Just being single-dimensional, intellectual, workaholic and mom or dad to the kids makes you feel bored in your own heart and makes you boring to others. Being boring to others is its own thing. It’s subjective. What happens is through life, if you have not developed your passions, if you are not paying attention to the things that make you happy, what are you going to do when you have all that money and you retire? You’re probably going to fall into a huge depression. I know so many people fully identify as a software engineer as their job. That’s who they are. I think my husband is one of these people. We’re dealing with this now.

My husband has well-developed hobbies, but they’re not enough of a passion that they would engage him if he had 24 hours to himself, and he was no longer working his 50-hour week. For me, I’m in transition to retirement. What does that mean and who am I going to get to be in that? That person has been developed my whole life.

I’ve been a dancer since I was five. I sing. I like walks. We do fine dining. We love to travel. I read books. There are a lot of things in my life that engage my passion. When I retire, I’m excited because there are about 10,000 things I could do with every single day, but if you only work, you suddenly lose your identity and instead of being full of joy, you’re now really depressed because you don’t know who you are. You don’t know how to fill your time, all of those things.

For some of you, ladies, I know there are like 21-year-olds reading this. They’re like, “What in the world?” Just understand that who you are growing to be is who you are going to amplify and become more as you get older, and that’s what’s going to be amplified when you’re wealthy. Do you want to give back to people? Do you want to be a passionate, joyful person or are you going to be grumpy and a hoarder?

What are you going to do? What’s going to make your life blissful when you’re not so focused on the day-to-day? That helps to raise your bliss factor also. To feel that passion every day in some way or have something really joyful to look forward to every week or every day. We just love this. We are complete people. We’re not just mom, wife and employees. Explore. We are these multidimensional beings and we don’t allow ourselves to focus on all the amazingness inside of us and what we can do with our lives and our time.

I resonate with all of it and I think it’s sustainable, happy hustling. It’s sustainable investing and the accumulation of knowledge, resources and wealth. Sacrifice everything and you get everything that you thought you wanted and you realize that’s not what brings joy and fulfillment. You will become depressed and have to start over and re-find yourself.

I – Impactful Work

You are better off to do it from the beginning a little bit at a time. That’s the second P in SOUL MAPPIN, and now we’re on to I, which is Impactful work. We spend the majority of our lives either working or thinking of work. In The Happy Hustle, we focus on the three pillars. It’s a little cliché, but passion, purpose and positive impact, and passion for me is inward-facing. It’s my calling. It’s what problem I truly feel called to solve.

Then purpose is outward serving. It’s who exactly do I feel called to solve that problem for? It’s very important that it makes a positive impact. Your passion and purpose don’t exploit the earth’s resources negatively or hurts others. It’s very important that it makes a positive impact. I would ask yourself, is your work right now giving you passion, purpose and making a positive impact? If not, it’s time to make a change because life is short. We got to live this to the fullest. I just think there are a lot of people sacrificing out there and I hope that’s not you, but if it is, make a change and infuse that passion, purpose and the positive impact. That’s I.

N – Nature Connection

Nature connection. We’re living like zoo animals. We’re inside our offices getting recycled air, toxic blue light and EMS. We go commute in our cage on wheels with recycled air and manufactured light, and then we go home and then we have the more of the same. I think it’s so important that we get back to being human beings and being outside, connecting with Pachamama, this beautiful planet, and then protecting it in the process.

Climate change is real and I have a company with my brother called Ecopreneur Evolution. That’s fighting the plastic pollution epidemic. That’s creating positive solutions to climate change. We invest in social entrepreneurs essentially in third world developing countries. It’s very important to me to solve this problem, not just for my generation but for future generations or at least be a part of the solution. It’s a big problem to solve. I do believe that just getting outside, walking even just ten minutes a day barefoot in some nice grass or swimming in a natural body of water or just sitting in a park can do wonders for your soul. That is the SOUL MAPPIN framework. Measure 1 to 5.

G is for go. Go happy, hustle your dream reality. I’ll make it easy for everyone. If you just want to measure yourself in each of these ten alignments, I have a simple quiz. It’s completely free. It takes maybe 60 seconds. You just go through CaryJack.com/quiz, and you’ll just measure 1 to 5 in each of these where you need to prioritize change. That’s the ten alignments of being a happy hustler.

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Thank you so much, Cary. It’s so concise and has such good tips. That was amazing.

Thank you for allowing me just to rattle them off.

We are going to have Cary give us some stuff in EXTRA. We’re going to talk in a little bit more detail about some of his happy hustle hustling hacks. We are going to do that. In particular, I wanted him to share the box breathing breath. We’ve heard that in EXTRA ones before, but he’s got a little bit of a different take. This is the thing about breathing. There are so many different ways to do it and some resonate with us and some don’t.

He’s got another technique. We do this at his mastermind every couple of weeks. I’m going to have him share that with you, and then he’s got some other stuff he wanted to share with you too. We are going to be talking about that in EXTRA, so stay tuned for that. Cary, could you tell everybody how they can get in touch with you?

Pretty simple. Just CaryJack.com is the place where everything lives. The Happy Hustle Podcast, if you went on to listen to Moneeka on there. That’s a great episode. She rocked the mic and crushed it. We have something special set up for your audience. I don’t know if you want to talk about that.

Tell us about that right now.

That is The Journey: 10 Days to Become a Happy Hustler. This is probably one of the best digital course products I’ve ever put out in my life. It’s essentially walking you through those ten alignments that we just went through, how to create blissful, balanced and healthy habits in each of those ten alignments. You just go to TheHappyHustle.com and then we have code Bliss set up, where you save 20% off.

Basically, you could just start happy hustling and it’s super simple. If you can allocate an hour a day to just going through the content and implementing, you are going to become a happy hustler. That’s something we got set up specifically for your lovely ladies out there, but specifically your tribe. Click on the Yes, I Want In page and then it’ll take you to the checkout page. You just basically plugin code Bliss and there you go. You get your discount.

 

Cary, are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?

I am born ready.

Tell us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate?

Financial literacy. Read, first and foremost. I love this book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Great read. That book will educate you in so many different ways.

What is one strategy for being successful as a real estate investor?

I would say sales because whether you’re buying, selling or investing, there’s some form of a deal and there’s some form of selling. Either you’re selling yourself as a buyer or you’re selling yourself in your property. Get good at the psychology behind what makes humans buy.

What would you say is one daily practice? I know you’ve got a ton of these, but one daily practice that contributes to your personal success.

Ice baths. I get cold every day.

That sounds horrible.

They are. They’re never fun. I never look forward to it, but ice baths do wonders for the body, getting in a tub of water that’s somewhere between 38 and 52 degrees. It decreases the inflammation in the body, from which a lot of disease stems from. It increases blood flow circulation. It basically is just a supercharger for your immune system, and it builds mental fortitude because doing hard things regularly will build discipline and mental fortitude itself.

Who you are growing to be today is who you are going to amplify and become more and more of as you get older. Share on X

I learned this from a biohacking friend of mine. We’re at the end of a shower. The last 30 seconds, I do cold water. Is that good?

There you go. Yes. You get in cold.

I don’t think I could do the ice bath, but I can do the cold water for 30 seconds. Cary, this has been an amazing first part of our show. Thank you so much for all you’ve offered.

Thank you for having me. This has been my honor.

Ladies, thank you for joining Cary and me for this portion of the show. We’ve got EXTRA coming up for some deep dives, a new breathing technique, some other information on how to live a happy hustle life, so stay tuned for that. If you are not subscribed but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. You get this out for seven days for free. Check it out.

For those of you that are leaving Cary and me, thank you so much for joining us for this portion of the show. I so appreciate you and I look forward to seeing you next time, and until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. Take care. See you soon.

 

Important Links

• The Happy Hustle
• The Happy Hustle Podcast
• Happy Hustle Podcast – Retire Rich and Live Your Bliss with Real Estate Investor and Millionaire Moneeka Sawyer
• Ecopreneur Evolution
• CaryJack.com/quiz
• CaryJack.com
• The Journey: 10 Days to Become a Happy Hustler
• I Will Teach You to Be Rich
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com

 

About Cary Jack

I grew up splitting time on the beaches of Sarasota, Florida and in the mountains of Red Lodge, Montana. The son of two entrepreneurial parents, I knew from an early age that I would forge my own path. So I set out to do so, while living a life of passion and purpose. I am so grateful for the adversity for it has made me stronger as it wasn’t always peaches and cream…

Coming from a divorced home, filled with hostility, I fostered problems of my own at an early age. I had an extreme stutter, OCD, and anger problems. I turned to self-abuse and used to bang my head into walls (which probably explains a lot lol). I went to years of counseling and got kicked out of multiple schools. I moved homes 24 times as a kid due to my mother’s sickness and was far from stable.

I got involved in plenty of mischief while growing up, most of which I’ll leave off this site, but I learned many lessons the hard way. I ultimately failed forward and decided to trade my life of hustlin’ for a life of happy hustlin’ where I vowed to use my powers for good.

 

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Growing Your Wealth With The Investor Mindset With Steven Pesavento – Real Estate For Women

 

Surround yourself with people who align with your values. Moneeka Sawyer’s guest in this episode is Steven Pesavento, President of VonFinch and host of the Inventor Mindset Podcast. Steven talks with Moneeka about how he turned from failure at 27 to flipping 200 houses in less than three years. His secret? He changed his mindset from not valuing coaches, to going out of his way to connect with them. Be around mentors who’ve been where you want to go. With their guidance, you’ll skyrocket your way to unprecedented success. Tune in!

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Growing Your Wealth With The Investor Mindset With Steven Pesavento

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome to the show, Steven Pesavento. Steven is a real estate entrepreneur and expert relationship direct response marketer. He’s a Managing Partner of VonFinch Capital and investing full-time since 2016. He’s completed over 200 transactions, renovated nearly 100 houses, and transacted over $26 million in residential investment real estate. Steven’s investors have entrusted him with over $10 million of investor capital, delivering solid, consistent returns. Steven is the host of the top-rated show, The Investor Mindset and he interviews some of the smartest investing minds and authors like Chris Voss from Never Split The Difference, Jay Papasan from The ONE Thing and we had his wife on the show, which was amazing, then also Joe Fairless from Best Ever Podcast and many others.

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Steven, welcome to the show.

I’m so excited to be here. I love your energy. That’s what energy everybody should be bringing to their life.

We talk a lot about this on the show and you are a mindset guy so we will cover this too but our attitude is everything in our businesses, our lives and for our bliss. Wouldn’t you agree?

I agree absolutely.

Surround yourself with mentors who’ve been where you want to be. Share on X

You’ve got this awesome story. I can’t wait to know about it where you went basically from a failure at 27 to 200 flips in less than three years. Could you tell us your story at a high level?

When I’ve got started in real estate, I had some of the same feelings a lot of you feel and almost every new operator has gone through this at some point. You have that desire. You want real estate to be your thing. You are excited about what it can do for you. The financial freedom bug has bitten you but there’s something that seemed to hold me back from taking action. I started my career back in management consulting and I thought that I had it all figured out.

I thought that if I go this traditional path, go to university, graduated from a great school and get a killer job, I was making more money than I ever could have imagined and making more money than my parents growing up. As a kid, we didn’t grow up with a lot. There was one subject in our house that always caused pain and that came down to money. Always the focus was, how I can create more? How can I make sure that I don’t ever have to feel those feelings? I’ve got into the career and it didn’t solve all the problems.

I had the money but I didn’t have the answers. I started going on this journey where I’ve finally got down, ready to get started in real estate and a lot of false starts but the beliefs were what was really holding me back. It was that belief that I didn’t have enough experience, the family connections, the money and know people with lots of money. All these things were a wall in front of me wanting to get started. I can remember when I finally made that decision to move forward and dive in. I was sitting on the couch of my girlfriend’s home at that time, jumping up and I said, “I’m doing this, not another day, not another minute. I am going to make real estate my career.” That day, I decided that I was going to push all in. That’s my mentality. It’s 100% once I decide something, it’s done.

From there forward, I was able to scale up to over 200 houses in about two and a half years flipping in two different states. Out-of-state, I was able to do this all by building great systems, hiring a great team and most importantly, getting surrounded by mentors who had already been down the path. I’ve got some stories that I can share about exactly how I went about doing that but that was the key to my success. I made a decision after I had got clear on what I wanted, and then I found a way to get surrounded by other people who had already done it.

I talk a lot about finding a mentor in this show. How did you find your mentors? There are a lot of people out there talking about this stuff.

 

There are a lot of people who are real estate professionals. They maybe flip some houses, buying multifamily or some rentals. There are a lot of folks that you can look to but what you need to start and where I always advise all my clients, friends and audience. I’m the host of The Investor Mindset show. We dive into a lot of these types of conversations about thoughts and how those thoughts lead into action but it’s about figuring out what do you want first. What do you want and why is that important to you? It comes to the who and then once what that is, then you go and find somebody who already has been down that path and already done it.

For me, I found a local real estate investor event. It was the first action that I took. It was the same day that I made this decision. It’s what I recommend everyone else do. When they make a decision, they should immediately take some action. I committed myself to go to this event. One of the speakers happened to be a very well-experienced real estate flipper. I researched this person in depth. I listened to every show I could find. I tried to ask myself, “How could I be of value to this person? How could I make a difference in this person’s life? What skills, knowledge or frankly, the fact that I have time, how could I make an impact?” I thought of this plan, went to the event, listened, asked questions, engaged during the conversation, and then waited until everyone else had left and the conversations had died down, as all these people were going to go and talk to the speaker, that’s what often happens.

I made a pitch and my pitch was, “I will do this for you and build you this $10,000 to $15,000 website for free. All I’m asking is if I can be a part of your inner circle and if I might be able to follow you around at a property or ask you some questions from time to time.” Before I could even finish asking or making the offer, her hand was out in front, ready to shake it to lock it in it. It was because I found a way to be of value to her, to be able to help make her life easier and better. I thought to myself, “What are those skills that I could do?’

The reason that I went this route was that at that time, I had a lot more time than I did money. I had a lot of beliefs about coaching, training and spending money on these things. I didn’t know that that was only limiting my success. Fast forward, I ended up joining a Mastermind group that I was able to get surrounded by 50 other people who all had the same dream, many of who already were on that path and a few who already had that success. By being a part of that community, I was able to see the exact formula, the blueprint about how my business could look. That gave me the belief because I said, “If they can do it, then I can definitely do it.” I modeled my business that first year. We had flipped over 75 houses.

That’s another one of those things like there are a million masterminds. I probably get an invitation to a mastermind every single day. How did you pick the mastermind? Did you research everybody that was in it or what did you do?

The key to getting a part of a community is you have to one, it’s a little bit of luck but two, it’s mostly about showing up. I had committed myself to go to this event. It was the first conference that I have ever gone to. I ended up going to this conference and it was full of a ton of other people from the community who are also on that same path. There are many people who are friends of mine now because I met them at that first real estate conference. I had gone to many events and meetups. I had done plenty of free training but spending $1,000 to go to this conference for three days was a huge thing for me. Did I have the $1,000? No. Was I committed to going and finding even more people who I could get surrounded by? The answer is, absolutely.

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By getting into this community, I ended up going to the event. I did not join a mastermind and pay for any training as a result of going to that event. What I did was I’ve got connected to some amazing people. Through those amazing people, I ended up getting my mindset shifted on paying for coaching and mentorship. It was because of a business partner of mine that I, again, was trading my time to be able to do a bunch of services within his business to get access to some more training. Through that conversation, it ended up leading to a partnership and through his lessons, I ended up realizing the value of joining this mastermind. I thought, “I’m splitting with my partner. It seems like it’s a no-brainer,” and within about 24 hours of joining that group, I had already received enough value that directly led to paying for that whole $25,000 or $30,000 ticket price.

The lesson for me was, it was costing me money to be sitting on the sidelines and not taking action, not joining something. That’s not saying, “Go, fire off,” and buy any program but it’s about getting an experience with the people who are going to be a part of that program. It’s going to a webinar and training. It’s getting on a coaching call or strategy call with somebody who can talk through and help you gain clarity so that you know this is absolutely the direction I want to go. It seems like it’s a no-brainer for me to head down this path with you than to go but to try to go through the forest on my own without a map about exactly how I’m going to get where I need to go.

Steven, I love how incredibly concise you are, articulate and how you went boom. Thank you so much for that. I want to talk to you a little bit about this whole idea of building your business based on your clients. This is how I have always built my business so I love to know your perspective on what this is, first of all, because we all see things differently, how you have done it and advice around that.

It goes back to what we were talking about. I went from this place of this mindset and this belief that I can’t spend money on coaching. Otherwise, I’m a fool. I met people who had spent $30,000 or $40,000 on some program. I had thought to myself, “Those guys got hoodwinked.” I remember I can think of a couple of couples that I had met at the events and those people are complete idiots. Now, I realize that I’m an idiot but through that process and doing lots of coaching, mentorship, different programs and personal development, all these things, I ended up learning what was most important to me. I’ve got clear on who I was, what was important to me and what I was good at. Through that process of building my business, VonFinch flipping all of those properties, managing a team of fifteen people in two different states, and spending over $1 million in marketing in about a year and a half, I learned a lot about what I loved about the business and what I wasn’t in love with.

I came to this point where I thought to myself, “Is this the business that I want to be building for the next twenty years?” The answer was no. If you do the old rocking chair task or in this case, I better not be in a rocking chair at 50 but I was envisioning in this position in this place where I was going to keep running this house flipping business, this high-volume, a low-margin machine that was turning out deals and was making us great money. I realized this wasn’t where I wanted to be or what I wanted to be doing. Part of the reason was that the people that I was surrounded with weren’t in alignment with my values. I didn’t feel like I was serving on the level that I could and people weren’t open to these ideas that were so important to me.

I had been enlightened by the idea that mindset is the core of all success. When you can change your thoughts and beliefs, then you end up changing the actions you take and therefore, the outcomes that you experience in your life. Having this belief and realization, I wanted to share this with people around me. Fortunately, in my business, I was able to share that with my team, members of my mastermind community and certain clients but not all of them. As I looked at the flipping business, we are buying houses directly from homeowners, $0.60 to $0.70 on the dollar. We are doing that at volume and making a huge change in these people’s lives. We are changing their day-to-day. We are taking them out of a difficult situation and the majority of the people are absolutely thrilled but it wasn’t enough for me.

 

What I ended up doing was I started searching for some answers. As I was sitting, after learning and being reminded about the importance of this idea of an ideal client, I started thinking through how I could change my business to start serving these clients. I came back and started taking some action because that’s what I do, making some shifts to start focusing on the investor first and making our business about serving them. I also realized there’s something that’s still in alignment. It’s not quite there.

After getting to this point where I had already made this decision that it was time for a change, I ended up stumbling upon the power of multifamily real estate and frankly, commercial investment. As I started getting more familiar with that, I saw a lot of the attributes of things that I like. The ability to scale, to have economies of scale that can happen by buying multiple units at one given time and the professionalism that is true within the industry. What ended up leading me to was this idea that this could be a great place for our business to grow into. What ended up doing it for me was that I knew that at the end of the day, I wanted to be surrounded and working with people who are like me, who were success-minded, successful, have been earning a great income and want to figure out how can they create freedom flexibility and the ability to be able to make an impact in the world. You can do that directly by investing.

If you can start getting the money that you are making from hours worked or from companies that you own working in real estate, you can start to see massive growth happen. For me, the reason why that was so critically important was that the people that I’m surrounded with are the people that I ended up becoming like. I wanted to make sure, I am surrounded by people who are working at a high level and I’m able to make a direct impact.

The second big piece for me was thinking about one-time sales versus long-term continuous relationships. I’m a guy who likes to move fast, talk and I sometimes can be curt from moment to moment but when people know me, they know that I’ve got a big heart, I’m here to support them and I do care about their success. By building these relationships, I knew that this is a business that I would be thrilled to be in for the long-term. That’s what ended up leading to the shift of deciding that this is the path we needed to go. We completely changed our business a few years ago to help be able to support and move in this direction.

When you look at your clients that you are building this business around, from my perspective, we have three different clients. We have the client that we are buying from and hopefully, you build a relationship with because many of these clients that may have several properties or maybe they want to let go of an entire portfolio. There are the people that you are buying from, you sell to and the people that you work with. What is your biggest focus or do you focus on all three? Your team is also they are your clients, too.

At the core, we are clear on what our values are and we value the idea of partnering with experts throughout everything we do. We hire, partner and bring experts internally onto our team because we know that everyone has a unique ability. It’s something that they are amazing at. It’s their superpower. I know mine. You know yours. Our team members each know theirs. By being able to partner with experts, we can leverage what we are good at while leveraging a track record of years of experience in the business so that we have been able to scale quickly to be able to make a direct impact without necessarily having to go and do everything ourselves.

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We believe that we are putting our clients as well as our business, which is built upon our team, in a much better place by doing this because sometimes people get stuck in this idea that I need to get everything for myself. We are not like that. We truly believe that it’s all about when we do better, we all do better. We want to make sure that our limited partners and our investors are supported that they are going to do great in these deals. We want to make sure that our operating team on the ground is going to be well-supported and their experiences are going to help support all of us to be able to go out and do the things that matter most. In our real estate business, that’s our key focus. We know that we’ve got operators, people that we are purchasing deals from on the ground and investors. Throughout that experience, there’s a track record of who we are, how we show up, what’s important to us and all of those things end up coming true. Over time, we have developed into having a reputation that stands for exactly what I have been describing.

I love the way that you talk about your operators being in their genius zone. I’m doing a construction project and we have these balconies. We’ve got all this rod iron stuff and it was hideous. I walked upstairs to look at it up close and I was like, “This is horrible.” My contractors came out and they were like, “We agree with you.” I was like, “Thank goodness.” They worked hard to find this for me. We are looking for something different and one of the things that I have noticed is that I love working with exceptional people. He is an exceptional contractor. He makes my life and my business so much better. That’s so true that who we work with, those vendors and operators, all of those people are such a key piece to running a business that’s aligned with our values, that feels good and is sustainable over time. Thank you so much for mentioning that.

It has made such a big difference. We have clients on our investor side who, from time to time, will ask, “Why don’t you operate directly? You are in the market and have a good understanding, why don’t you put the team in place?” It’s asset management. It’s this and it’s that. The answer is, “You are absolutely right. We definitely could. We can hire internally and bring on people that are on a payroll that means that we get to make more money. The thought is that if we were to do that, we would be going against what we believe in, and then second, that we truly do believe that by going and partnering with somebody who is in their genius zone, their unique ability that’s good and has that track record, we are setting ourselves up to make a lot more money as a result.” Rather than doing the things that we don’t like doing, don’t fill us up and aren’t our unique ability than we are taking away from time that could be spent growing, making an impact and difference.

This conversation has been awesome. Tell everybody how they can reach you.

The best place to reach us is, if you have liked the conversation we have had, I encourage you to go subscribe to The Investor Mindset Podcast. If you liked what we talk about, we talk about this twice a week on the show. If you feel like this has been valuable and you enjoy the mindset stuff that I encourage you, we put together a great free resource at TheInvestorMindset.com/success where we are diving into the Top 5 Success Principles of a Successful Investor and lessons that have been learned over hundreds of interviews with some very impressive people. You can grab a copy of that. If you read and like what we are talking about, you can hit me up on any of the social media platforms, shoot a little DM over, let me know that you read about this show and I would love to connect with you.

Thank you so much for that. I love free gifts, too. That sounds amazing. It was a 5 Principles of Success of a Successful Investor, right?

 

Yes, that’s exactly it.

Thank you for that. Steven, are you ready for three rapid-fire questions?

Let’s do it.

Give us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.

The most important tip when you are getting started real estate investing is to get clear on what you want, why you want it and then figure out who is going to help you get there. The reason why I have repeated this three times is that repetition is the mother of skill and the father of learning. If you are going to do this and you haven’t done it already, I encourage you to sit down and get clear on what is that thing that you want? What does life look like on the other side?

Once you get that clear, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that you are going to take the action to get there because you are going to be able to feel it. Sometimes people want that freedom, flexibility and independence but they don’t take this time upfront getting clear, and then you will end up where I was, where you built a successful business and made a huge impact, and then where you would say, “It’s time to pivot.” Even though I was clear on what I want, it wasn’t what I was going after. You might be able to save time by going directly to go rather than around the way. It’s just the way things go.

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That’s very aligned with how I teach people, too. Always start with you, build around the business around the truth of who you are and where you are headed. Talk to us a little bit about a strategy on how to be a successful real estate investor.

It starts with the exact same thing but when it comes down to investing, you want to be in a position where once you know those two things, then it’s time to take action and figure out who you are going to partner with, work with and help support you within your business. That might be employees, coaches, masterminds and training. Whatever those things are for you, you’ve got to get clear on who’s going to help get you there. That might mean going out to your network and saying, “This is what I’m doing and what I want to accomplish. Would you happen to know anyone who might be able to give me a lead or make a connection?” By going directly to people who already know, like and trust you that are in the space, they will be able to connect you to someone else and so on. It’s that power of your network that when you combine getting super crystal clear with going out and building phenomenal relationships and you bring those two pieces together, you will be in a strong position to not only scale but to do it in the right way.

What would you say is one daily practice you do personally that contributes to your success?

There’s a set of practices that I consider my one practice. Every single day I wake up with a movement, meditation, mapping and mindset. What I mean by that is I get up and I move for at least ten minutes. It’s often quite long but I will go for a great run. I get that blood flowing and I start to get my brain in a place where I’m ready to step into my day. I’m a lot smarter when I’m moving so will you? I encourage you all to do that. Meditation is a great way to slow down, especially if you are a driver type A person like me but even if you are not, we can start to see our thoughts and be able to catch ourselves when we are thinking something or we have a set of beliefs that aren’t serving us at that moment. I listen to some mindset. I love reading obviously great shows like the one you are reading, as well as other content that’s going to help enrich my brain and start putting me in the right state of mind for the day. Finally, I always start my day with a map with a very specific plan of what actions I’m going to take and what’s most important for me that day. When I do all four of these things, I end up operating and frankly, working from a much happier place.

How long does that whole process take for you normally?

It could take as little as 30 minutes or as long as an hour or hour and a half. It depends on the day but by committing just 5 minutes of breathing, 10 minutes of running, a quick 5-minute process of mapping out the day and while you are running, you can throw on a little something to motivate you to put in some of those thoughts and beliefs that you know are important. You can put that altogether or you can separate it out depending on what works best for you on each given day.

 

That’s so actionable. This has been awesome, Steven. Thank you for everything that you have offered in this portion of the show.

It has been amazing being here and the biggest thing that I want you to take away from this is that in every single conversation, everything that you listen to, every time you read about the show, listen to The Investor Mindset, read a book, go to a conference or open up some course that you are diving into, there is always something that you can take away but the most important thing is that you take some action on it. Decide what’s one thing from this episode that you can do, who is one person you can reach out to, and what’s one show you can follow that’s going to end up setting you up to be in a much better place. I encourage you to figure out what that is and take that action. I look forward to being able to serve you in the future.

Ladies, you can do that. I love the way Steven does that. I made a decision and that day, I met this person. Most of us don’t act that quickly on decisions that we make. One of the biggest determining factors for success is our ability to make quick good decisions. That means you have to be aligned and intuitive about what feels right, what feels wrong and what’s settling with your gut but you have to be able to make decisions fast and take action on them. That’s a huge characteristic of successful people. Thank you so much for highlighting that.

When you hear the story of me taking action, immediately deciding, and a week later being at an event and a few days later, having a mentor and a year later having 75 flips under my belt was that it took me ten years to get to the point of making that decision. It took a long time. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad when I was 17 and I was 27 by the time that I had bought my first property as an investment. It goes to show that in that moment I decided and everything great happened from there. Why wait ten years? Why not decide now?

We do have more in EXTRA. We are going to be talking about scaling a business remotely. Ladies, you know that for me, freedom of choice and freedom of time are the biggest things that I strive for. That’s how I define blessed. I want to be able to travel. I want to be able to spend time with my aging parents. Time is my thing. Systems, processes and your team allow you to create that freedom. Since Steven is an expert in this, I asked him to please share with us how he’s done it so we are going to be doing that in EXTRA. Definitely stay tuned for EXTRA for that. It’s going to be awesome. If you are not subscribed to EXTRA, you should get subscribed for this one.

Go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenExtra.com. The first seven days are free so you can try it out. Get this EXTRA and as many as you can download. If you love it, you stay and if you don’t, no obligation but check it out. For those of you that are leaving us now, thank you so much for joining Steven and me for this portion of the show. I look forward to seeing you next time and until then, always remember goals without action are just dreams so get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires. I will see you soon. Bye.

 

Important links

• VonFinch Capital
• The Investor Mindset
• Chris Voss – The Investor Mindset Past Episode
• Never Split The Difference
• Jay Papasan – The Investor Mindset Past Episode
• The ONE Thing
• Best Ever Podcast
• Joe Fairless – The Investor Mindset Past Episode
• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• TheInvestorMindset.com/success

 

About Steven Pesavento

Steven Pesavento is a real estate entrepreneur and Managing Partner of VonFinch Capital. Investing full time since 2016, he’s completed over 200 transactions, renovated nearly 100 houses and transacted over $26,000,000 in residential investment real estate. Steven’s investors have entrusted him with over $11 million of investor capital, delivering solid consistent returns.

A former Management Consultant for some of the Fortune 500’s top companies, he brings his years of process improvement, marketing and sales experiences to every project. Steven graduated with honors from prestigious St. John’s University in 2011 and is active in multiple charities including working with youth teaching business with Junior Achievement.

Host of the top ranked podcast the Investor Mindset he interviews some of the smartest minds & authors like Chris Voss – Never Split The Difference, Jay Papasan – One Thing, Joe Fairless – Best Ever Podcast, Mark Manson – Subtle Art of Not Giving A F&#k and many others.

 

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Live A Limitless Life With Donavon Hunteman – Real Estate For Women

 

Life can put many roadblocks in our way. But as people, as humans, we can triumph past these obstacles and live a limitless life. Our host, Moneeka Sawyer is joined in this episode by content director, affiliate manager, and car-crash survivor, Donavon Hunteman. Donavon shares his life journey, triumphing over the physical limitations caused by a car crash, and what he learned he can do. Donavon also shares his four key principles that helped him recover and connect with people.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Live A Limitless Life With Donavon Hunteman – Real Estate For Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am so excited to welcome to the show my friend, Donavon Hunteman. As a car crash survivor which left Donavon with chronic pain for more than a decade, he chose to live a limitless life. In a short time, Donavon has interviewed many influencers including one of my favorites, Dr. Joe Vitale, from the movie, The Secret. He hangs out with Forbes Riley, a $2.5 billion cohost of the Home Shopping Network and many high caliber influencers. He has shared the stage with Henry Gold, Peter Wolfing, James Neville-Taylor to name a few. At a very young age, he served as the Content Director for Limitless Nation TV which is where I met him. Donavon lives his life based on the principle of serving. It is also the reason why his partners and clients love, respect and are willing to do whatever it takes to work with him. Donavon, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me here. I’m so excited.

Ladies, to give you a little perspective on how I met Donavon, I joined a program called something like Limitless Life with one of Donavon’s partners. One of the things that I got with that was I got to be on their show at LimitlessNationTV. We set up the interview. Finally, I meet this guy, the host. He’s Donavon Hunteman. He’s young and hip. It was one of the best interviews of my life. I felt so connected. His heart for service was there in so many ways. I wanted to share him with you. Part of what we connected on was both of us are car crash survivors. For me, I had a horrible car crash. I was a professional world-class dancer at the time. It took away my legs. They wanted to put me in a chair. I was a cripple for two years and didn’t recover for about ten. His and my story are so similar. I wanted him here to inspire you and show you what’s possible no matter what. Donavon, I’m so excited to share your story.

I’m excited to share with your audience and to be able to be around limitless people like yourself.

Tell us all about you. I want to know what happened.

A little bit of a backstory is the way I am now is nowhere near what I was before. When I was younger, I was raised with a lot of discipline. It wasn’t always an optional thing. Some people are told to go clean up the room. Me, it was clean up your room or get spanked. There were discipline and rules. It worked great until it didn’t because about 13 or 14, those are the rebellious years to some people, at least for me, it was. I changed my hairstyle into that of a mohawk, 12 inches tall. I had a product called that stuck it straight up. My parents were not that happy, but that was where my mindset was.

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Fast forward back in 2010, my sister and I had finished doing a unicycling parade, which at the time was exciting because everyone was looking at me and my Mohawk. It was crazy. Towards the end of that unicycle ride, it started to rain. The parade got done. We loaded up the unicycles and started the ride home. On the way back home, we were on some highway next to the Campbell River in Ohio which has a series of S curves. With it being a complete downpour, my mom driving went around one of the curves and the car hydroplanes. From that hydroplane, it went off the road, hit a ditch, hit a telephone pole and back into the ditch.

That’s good and bad. It’s good that it hit the ditch because if it had gone the other way, we would have gone off to the edge and into the river. The bad part was I was in this part of the car where the telephone pole decided to kiss it. That wasn’t fun for me. I blacked out on impact. My mom and sister were able to get out of the vehicle without any injuries whatsoever other than being shaken up and seatbelt burn. I’m stuck in this car. I’m unconscious. From what I’m told, I had to be cut out of the vehicle. When I was cut out of the vehicle, it was determined that I needed immediate medical attention. I got an $8,000 helicopter ride but I still don’t remember. I know it’s exciting.

I had what was called white lights which is you can view things around you but you can’t see anything. I don’t remember talking to any of the doctors. I don’t remember the CAT scans, MRI, any of that stuff. I do remember waking up. After asking a series of questions. I ask if I could get up, eat and leave. It’s funny because I’d answer all three of those questions with the resounding no. I had sustained massive trauma, multiple broken bones, the entire side of my face was bruised. What I didn’t know at the time was I had significant nerve damage as well as I was in a neck brace and a lot of other variables. That was crazy because everyone and even the nurses were telling me, “Normally, people in the car accident that I was in, they don’t make it out alive.”

The fact that I was even able to be there was much, in their terms, a miracle. After talking to the nurse and I spent the night there, no surprise to that, the nurse told me, “Essentially, we put all this effort into you to keep you alive because your life is worth something. You might as well do something with it. It’s going to make it even better.” From that point, I decided that I wanted to change everything. I decided that I don’t need to be in this rubble anymore. I want to turn everything around, start being productive, help people and have the mission to help my family. The next day, the helicopter pilot gives me a teddy bear. I still have it to this day but I had no idea who he was. He also shared with me that I should have been dead.

He’s a little bit politically correct when he said that but still, at this point, he made his way home there. From that point forward, I decided to do everything that I could to get out of the hospital and get better. As soon as I got out of the hospital, that day I had a new haircut, new hairstyle, changed my clothes, changed my friends, started exercising and got myself to a completely different level. What I didn’t know walking out was that I had nerve damage in my leg, what that exact nerve damage was the tibia in my left knee had moved enough to pinch my sciatic nerve which is a nerve that goes from your toe to the middle of your back. It’s excruciatingly painful. Some people have called it similar to that of childbirth. I can’t say that for sure because I’m not that. After a few months of my leg being completely numb, I found a way to alleviate some of the pain. I also found four principles that helped shape my life in such a way that I’m now living an impossible life. Would you like me to share with you those four principles?

I would love that.

 

The first principle is to have multiple goals. You can’t have one goal because if you do, you’re going to run into a standstill. The second principle is to have a why greater than yourself. If you’re doing something solely for yourself, it’s easy to get sidetracked or lose your motivation. The third principle is to master what’s called a B principle. It’s a creative way to balance, “Am I focusing so much on the past than I’m losing focus on people?” The fourth principle is to kick the ball forward which is in layman’s terms, if you want to score a goal, you have to kick the ball and have to move forward.

Using those four principles, I was able to recover 98% from my car accident and connect with people like Moneeka all around the world who have incredible energy, who are passionate about helping people. That was part of my mission after that point. I met Henry Gold and I discovered that when you take something that’s not all focused on yourself, you find someone else’s dream or someone else’s passion and what they’re doing in their world that can inspire somebody else, there’s no other feeling like that. To be able to share that story with somebody else to inspire somebody else to say, “No matter what’s going on in your life, somebody else has already had it or had it worse. You can bounce back from it, no matter what’s going on.”

You are a perfect example of that. I like how you told that story with a big smile on your face the entire time. That was horrifying.

I was rather terrified at the moment. From that experience, I don’t like being in hospitals. It wasn’t that fun because realizing that you have lost all control in an instant like this. The last thing I remember was sitting in a car and that we were going to go to a banquet because my brother and I had placed second in the state of Ohio for being the best chap shoes in the state. We were going forward with that career opportunity. Being in that car accident changed everything because now with broken bones in my hand, I wasn’t able to practice. I wasn’t able to get back to where I was as quickly as I needed to be. It changed the dynamics of what matters because when you’re in the middle of a hospital or better yet if you all of a sudden lose your breath, have shortness of breath, you’re not thinking about, “Is this person going to call me? Is this person going to text me? Is this deal going to close?”

All you’re focusing on is, “How do I get there and into me?” At the end of the day, going through that traumatic experience helps re-evaluate or re-align the paradigm to realize what matters in your life. If it’s something that only you want to focus on or something that other people can also get behind you on that you’re helping more than just yourself, where you can leave a legacy. Moneeka, you have an incredible legacy and you’re still working on it. You’ve written 2 or 3 books now. You’re impacting over 100 million people. That is a legacy that no one else can take away from you. You’re doing it because you care and want to share with other people.

Absolutely.

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Ladies, we’re about to know more about how to implement those four keys in EXTRA. Donavon, can you tell us a little bit about what you’re up to and how my ladies can reach you if they want to? 

The best way to reach me is through Facebook. Look up @DonavonHunteman. I’m on another passion project of helping business owners, marketers and as many people as possible because with everything going on in the world, I’m realizing that more people are suffering. As a result, more people need help. It’s not a shame to ask for help. What I do is help anyone and everyone who wants to grow their business, whether that’s an email list, an affiliate product or even a physical business. The best way to explain it is I am a solo ads provider. The best way to explain that is if you had a mall and you wanted to go shopping but you don’t know what store to shop in or better yet, if you’re a store owner and you have your store inside of this huge mall of millions of stores and you were just one small one, what I do is I get customers the number that you want.

If you want 750 customers to stand in front of your door, I get 750-plus people to stand in front of your storefront to see what you have in the windows. Most likely, more than half of them are going to walk into your store and buy something. That’s what I do because if you don’t have somebody at least even looking at your storefront, they’re not going to know you exist and you’re not going to make any money. You’re going to go out of business. What I do is helping business owners maintain and grow so that they can reach more people and provide even more value and even more service for other people.

How can people get more in touch with you and find out more about it? 

The best way is Facebook but in finding out more about solo ads, look up MyLimitlessTraffic.com.

Thank you so much for that. I’ve got one question for you to close the show. What is one daily practice that you would say contributes to your personal success?

 

I have two things. Because of my car accident and how I had to bounce back from that, the two things that I had to do, first of all, prior to the car accident, I could touch my toes with my legs fully extended. After that car accident, I could not even touch my knees. I was not that happy about it at the time but over time, I’ve learned to become grateful for it because it instilled a new level of discipline where I’m exercising daily, stretching. I’m working on my body. That way, I don’t have to experience that extreme pain anymore and I can become better than what I was yesterday. The second thing that I do almost every day is I read some books. To work on your body, you got to work on your mind. As Albert Einstein says, “Whatever type of problem that the thinking creates, you can’t use that same type of thinking to solve that problem.” Reading your books is a great way to solve a problem.

Donavon, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for everything you’ve shared on this portion of this show. 

You’re most welcome. I’m so thrilled to be here.

Ladies, we’ve got more coming from Donavan. He’s going to be talking about, in more depth, the four keys to living an impossible life. Impossibly amazing. He’s going to be talking about that in EXTRA. If you are already subscribed to EXTRA, stay tuned, we got more. If you’re not but would like to be, go to RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com. You can subscribe there. You get the first seven days for free so you can get this EXTRA and as many others as you can download in seven days. Either you can stay subscribed if you love it or not. No obligation. Thank you so much for reading. Remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action and create the life your heart deeply desires.

 

Important Links

• Donavon Hunteman – LinkedIn
• LimitlessNationTV
• @DonavonHunteman – Facebook
• MyLimitlessTraffic.com
• RealEstateInvestingForWomenEXTRA.com

 

About Donavon Hunteman

I am a serial entrepreneur at heart.

I’m self-motivated to achieve, be, and do more than I was yesterday; putting a heavy emphasis on personal development in mind, body, and spirit.

I love progress; especially progress in others, so your success is my success.

 

 

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Revive Your Dead Leads And Turn Your Trash Into Cash With Chris Craddock – Real Estate for Women

 

In real estate, sometimes all it takes is to look at the right places to discover the most exciting deals. For Chris Craddock, he took advantage of those dead leads that are mostly neglected and turned them into something profitable. Moneeka Sawyer talks to the mind behind the REI Revive program to discuss how to navigate such deals effectively and yield the most exciting results. Chris also talks about how important it is for an agent to think like an investor in order to perform well in the market and find the right partnerships that truly work. Finally, he shares the most helpful resources on the topic that he believes can up the game of every real estate professional today, especially when bringing back to life all those dying deals.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Revive Your Dead Leads And Turn Your Trash Into Cash With Chris Craddock – Real Estate for Women

Real Estate Investing For Women

I am excited to welcome to the show Chris Craddock. He is a nationally certified life coach and has a Doctorate in leadership. He is the host of The Uncommon Real Estate Podcast, a realtor and entrepreneur who runs multiple successful businesses in the Washington DC metro area. His team, The Redux Group, is ranked number twenty in all of Keller Williams and sold over $160 million in volume in 2020. Chris has been married for many years and is the proud father of six beautiful children.

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Chris, how are you? Welcome to the show.

Thanks for bringing me here. I’m so excited to be with you and spend some time with you.

Persistence breaks resistance every day. Share on X

I’m excited that we’re going to do it on your show too. This is going to be fun, Chris. Thank you. Let’s start by you sharing a little bit about your real estate story with my ladies.

Right out of college, I was a staff with an organization called Young Life. I loved it. It was amazing. I got paid $20,000 a year from Young Life, which was great but anybody in the DC area knows you cannot survive on $20,000 a year.

What is Young Life?

It’s a Christian ministry that works with high school kids. It was life-changing for me and I loved it. I was excited to be able to give back and be a part of it. I still volunteer now. It’s been awesome. With that said, I worked there and then, when my wife got pregnant, I knew I needed to do something to make a little bit more money. I went to the library because before Google, that’s the fountain of all information. I checked out every book they had on real estate investing. I knew nothing. I always say, “Imperfect action trumps perfect inaction any day of the week.” I read these books and did what they told me to do. That’s been a standard piece of my life. I did what they said and knocked on the doors of people in distress. In the next four months, I made twelve times what I made in a year. It was unreal and unbelievable.

What were you doing when you did that?

I found people that were going to foreclosure. I knocked on the door and said, “I’d love to buy your house.” The crazy thing was before the crash, I was able to buy stuff with 5% down. I begged and borrowed to get the 5% and brought me in a business partner. The other cool thing was when I was in college, I worked for a landscaping business mowing lawns. At one point, I was frustrated because I felt like it was poorly run. I offered to buy the business. I bought the business and ended up selling the business right before I graduated and got married. I made a little bit of money on the sale of the business, $40,000.

I flipped the landscaping business over a year. For me, as a college kid, selling it for $40,000 was awesome. I had some money there as well that I was able to use to flip the houses and parlayed that into two more deals. I kept doing ministry. I loved ministry. I stopped flipping for whatever reason. As I had more kids and the money started to disappear faster, I got back to it. During that time, I’d gone back to school. I got a Doctorate in Leadership because I loved leading people. In ministry, I led a lot of people, wherever it was. I started flipping houses again and I read Gary Keller’s MRA book, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent.

I saw how you could build a team in a serious amount of money. We looked at it again. I followed the directions, colored by numbers and started doing it. It was December 2014 when we launched that team. It took us a couple of years to grow some million. We got there through building that team, partnering with investors, being an investor myself, and all the other pieces there. That’s a convoluted way to get to where we are now.

It sounds like there’s a big focus on you building a team that then partner with investors. I recommend what most other real estate gurus will not recommend, which is work with an agent. You can buy things off MLS or if you have an agent that has access to off-market deals or whatever. In my business and in many years that I’ve been investing in real estate, my biggest asset has been my real estate agent. Without him, I would not be where I am now. I always recommend working with an agent. Nobody else does that. It sounds like you were doing it. Talk to me a little bit more about what you guys do, why you recommend that, how it works and any advice around that.

As a residential agent that also does investment work, I remember in year 2 to year 3, I did $40 million in volume one year, and then I worked so much harder. I clawed, scraped and got to $43 million that next year. I remember hearing from somebody. His story was the same. Right after that $40 million marks, he got caught. They still went ahead but worked so much harder and got less results. We said, “Here’s the deal, as the leader of the team, as that rainmaker, what you’ve got to do is stop working hard to get one more deal and figure out how you can bring in 5 or 10 more deals.”

I started thinking to myself, I’m like, “What can I do? Where are more deals?” I’m like, “Investors.” The first thing I did was go to other people that are flipping houses saying, “I’ll help you find deals.” You find one person. You help find five flips a year. You help them buy. You help them sell that ten transactions. If you find five people that are doing that, then you’re doing a massive amount of transactions. Let’s be honest, flipping houses, when you buy them and take them down, that’s a cash-intensive business, labor-intensive, and all the other stuff. You could make a lot of money without the liability and without all of the other issues coming with it. You do some of the nice ones and then sell the rest. Frankly, you have to build a massive team in order to do all of them.

Anybody that goes in business has to hit four criteria: happy, hungry, humble, and smart. Share on X

I started working with those investors and then I thought, “Who else has lots of leads?” There was a massive wholesaling organization in my market. I went to them and said, “What do you guys do with the leads that you don’t buy, fix and flip, and what do you do with the leads that you don’t wholesale?” They said, “We give them to an agent. We tried all these things. We tried to start in a brokerage. We’ve given them this agent. We gave her 1,000 leads in the last 8 months, and she’s closed like six of them. It’s not a big piece of our business. It’s not worth it.”

I said, “Why don’t you give me a shot?” They’re like, “We tried it. We’re going to keep the main thing, the main thing,” which I respect. Keeping the main thing the main thing is a good point, but what I said to him, “Have you ever looked at what Jim Collins says as the “Genius of the AND” in the Good to Great You’re already doing this. You’re already paying for these leads. They’re just dying on a vine. Why don’t you give me a crack at it? I kept going back and kept saying, “We’re good.” One of the things I’ve learned in life is persistence breaks resistance every day.

Finally, they gave me 150 leads and they said, “Here you go.” I called them all, and 70 of them were already listed or sold to an investor, 30 of them were out of my area, then I had 40 leads left. I thought, “If this other girl got six deals with 1,000 leads, I’m going to need to get six deals with these.” I did everything I could. I put on the best sales that I could ever muster. Somehow, I got six listings out of those other 40 leads. I called up the main guy running their operations. I told him and he’s like, “You got six deals out of that? I scraped up some leads that were five years old because you wouldn’t leave me alone and get you to stop bugging me. I gave you a bunch of old leads, and you got as many deals. I want you to come in. Let’s pull this thing up.”

Since then, we’ve started building it up. I have a class that I teach on this. We see everybody like brand new investors. I have a wholesaler who had five months of working the wholesale. He didn’t wholesale a deal and within 45 days of doing this, he had $10,000 in referral fees coming back to him. I see that and then you see another group that has a lot of business going on. A big organization where we’re seeing them bringing in over $60,000 a month for leads that they’ve already been paying for. Three-quarters of $1 million a year, what they were already paying for that was lying dead in their database somewhere because they couldn’t flip or wholesale it. It’s life-changing for brand new investors that have a massive organization going on.

There are people that come onto my show that can match my energy. I’m completely in awe.

 

Brendon Burchard says that, “The high-performers create energy.”

Why do you think other real estate agents haven’t already worked this market? Why are they not doing the partnership with the investor’s thing?

Agents and investors should go hand-in-hand, but the reality is it’s these two separate worlds where investors think agents are idiots. Let’s be honest, a lot of them are. A lot of agents feel like these investors are mavericks that do whatever they want and don’t understand the rules of the game. Frankly, some of them are. The bottom line is you go anywhere. When I was doing ministry, whenever I do premarital counseling, one of the first things I had to say to people is, “We’ve all got baggage. We’ve all got our own crazy. Can you handle this other person’s personal brand of crazy because we’ve all got it?”

You find the people that we’re going to partner with. They’re all going to have their own baggage and crazy. It’s like, “Can you handle the crazy that this person has?” That’s the way it is. Most people don’t. To me, that’s the crazy part. They’re leaving so much money on the table. Here’s the other thing. Most agents are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and that doesn’t work because when somebody is called an investor and wants to sell to an investor, you can’t send an agent out there and be like, “Do you want to talk to an agent?” Every single person knows 5,000 agents. Why are they going to talk to this agent? Their uncle is a hairdresser and an agent. Everybody is.

The agent has to also understand that these people called an investor for a reason and they don’t want to talk to some agent that’s going to walk out, break it, and open the listing presentation because that doesn’t work. That’s why across the country, all these investors tell me before we start a coaching program, “I tried that. It doesn’t work.” It doesn’t work when you send an agent that doesn’t understand the psychology of a person that is willing to call an investor.

Anybody that calls an investor instead of an agent wants certainty. Share on X

From the investor side, what do you think an investor should ask or look for in an agent that’s going to be investor-friendly?

There are a couple of things. One, if you’re going to work on a program like this, anybody that you ever go in business with has to hit four criteria, happy, hungry, humble and smart. They need to be happy. If they’re not happy, wherever you go, there you are. If you see somebody that’s complaining about splits, commissions, referrals or anything like that, it’s a matter of time before they’re going to complain about you. You want somebody that’s genuinely happy and hungry. If you rip open their chest, they need to have a heart of a lion. If you get somebody that you say no, and they’re like, “It probably wasn’t a good one anyway.” That’s not who you want. You want somebody that is so hungry that you close the door and they’re climbing the window.

Somebody that won’t stop like you call the investor and say, “Send me the leads.” You bug them so much in a nice way that they still like you enough to not tell you, “Stick it somewhere.” They don’t give you 150 old dead leads just to leave them alone. You need to have somebody that’s persistently passionate and hungry, wants to win, humble, willing to sit at other people’s feet, willing to color by numbers, doesn’t think they’ve all got it figured out. If you meet somebody that’s got it figured out, introduced me to that person because I’ve yet to meet that person, and then smart.

It’s not just somebody that gets into Harvard-MIT. It’s somebody that understands EQ as well, emotional intelligence, understands how to read somebody, and how to be personable with somebody. That’s what you’re looking for in an agent. I’m reading a book called Who Not How. It is a business partnership. If you pick the right person to partner with, all the other pieces can be figured out. If you don’t pick the right person, you can give them all the information in the world, and they’re still going to squat on it and waste your whole lot of time and money.

I talk a lot about finding real estate agents that are investors themselves because that’s a big factor too. You want to be in the mind of an investor to serve an investor. You don’t want to be somebody who’s away from it. These are great tips. Thank you so much for that. Tell me about your REI Revive program and how can we find out more about it?

 

My website, ChrisCraddock.com. You can also follow me on Instagram @CraddRock. I usually try to respond to any direct messages or DMs on Instagram. REI Revive is teaching people how to do what we’ve been doing. We’ve seen massive success. You’ve got to learn how to pick the right agent and how to hand off the leads because most people use the wrong script in handing off the leads. In the second part, you also need to learn how to sort your database because a lot of times, people are worried about cannibalizing their own leads, but they don’t realize that the reality is you had one lead followed up with for two years, but you had about 60 that would have closed with an agent and you would have made a whole heck of a lot more money.

The problem is oftentimes, emotionally, we remember that one deal where if we step back and look at it analytically, we’ll realize that we’re leaving a lot of money on the table for leads that are going to sell with somebody that might as well get paid for it. We teach that. The first half is teaching the investor. The second half is after we’ve taught the investor how to hand off everything and how to pick the right agent, we teach the agent how to close. That’s the whole thing. Agents think they know how to close, but the reality is they do their old tired listing presentation and it doesn’t work. You need to speak to an investor. Somebody that’s called an investor needs to be spoken to differently than somebody that calls a real estate agent.

Chris and I are talking about possibly creating some extra cool stuff for my ladies. Make sure that when you connect with him, you let him know you came from this show so that if we have worked something out that you can take advantage of that. Things are constantly evolving in the world and with our relationships. If you connect with anybody from this show, make sure they know you came from me, and who knows? You might get some fun surprises. ChrisCraddock.com and when you connect with him, say you came from Real Estate Investing For Women with Moneeka. We’ll see where that goes. What I love is that you first talk to and train the investor, and then you help to train the investor’s agent, which is like magic.

People that make the most money are those that solve other people's problems. Share on X

That’s the whole thing. You can train one but not the other and it doesn’t work. It requires the investor to understand how to put together their system so that you do it and scale it. It requires the agent to follow the system once they’re in front of the people, everything from the precall before you get there. Even once you’re in front of the people, how to find out why they’re there. I’ll give a sneak peek of this. Anybody that calls an investor instead of an agent wants certainty. There are 1 of 5 reasons they do it. One, they want to avoid a commission. Two, they want to sell fast. Three, maybe they’re a hoarder and they don’t want their neighbors to see pictures or see the sign in the yard or anything else. Four, they feel like their house is too much of a mess to put on the MLS. Five, they don’t want people coming through their house at all hours.

If you can answer those objections, you can sell to anybody. It’s like a doctor. I played rugby in college and destroyed both of my shoulders. Every once in a while, I would go in and get my shoulders checked because I jack them up again. The doctor will do all of these things to find the pain, then once he finds the pain, he does this thing called a crank test where he comes around like this and it’s painful. When he hears me scream, he does it again. He presses the pain point and then he presses it again. He says, “Your shoulder is jacked up again. Here’s your prescription. I want you to do physical therapy. See the orthopedist.” It’s the same thing for us. The agent goes to the seller and finds out what their pain point is. You press it and then you press it again. You then say, “Here’s my prescription. Here’s how I can solve the pain point.” The people that make the most money are the people that solve other people’s problems.

Ladies, connect with Chris. I have never met anybody who will train the investor and then train the investor’s agent. If I’m trained and then I have to go train my agent, I’m still a beginner. I can train a little bit certainly but I train a lot better now after many years when I did my first deal. To be able to do both of those things, that’s magic.

I’m excited about seeing the results that we’ve had with many people from beginners to seasoned vets that have massive businesses. It’s been fun and I love it. For me, having a Doctorate in Leadership, it took a lot to go back and get that done, but I’ve loved helping people. Zig Ziglar says, “You can have everything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want in life.” What I’ve found is good leadership is helping people get what they want. That’s the fun part about opening this program and helping people understand like, “You’ve got hundreds of thousands of dollars in leads and CRM that you don’t realize are there.”

There’s another story that I love to share. These sawmills were milling wood but they were hardly making a profit at all, which I know a lot of investors are working their butts off, but they’re not making that much money. They’re like, “It’s around the corner.” The crazy thing is somebody got the idea with these sawmills. They’re like, “What if we were to repurpose the byproduct? What if we were to take the sawdust and be able to create candles, burn it, particleboard, all these other things you could do with sawdust?” They started selling the sawdust. They were sometimes making more money on the byproduct than they were on the wood they were milling. The same thing is true here. People are paying tens of thousands of dollars for leads but then the ones that they’re not able to fix and flip, wholesale, creative finance, or whatever they’re doing, they’re throwing it away. They’re leaving it in the CRM and they don’t realize they’re leaving mountains of cash in their CRM.

Do you recommend where people can find these leads? Let’s say they’re beginners. They don’t have the leads that they need to revive. They just need leads. Do you have resources to help people get leads and stuff too?

There are many different places. DM me and I’ll set you up with some classes. I know you’ve got a couple of questions for me that we’re going to jump into as far as some rapid-fire things, but one of them is find people that are going to help you. Find mentors because there’s no reason for you to reinvent the wheel. Find people that know the path and then followed their path. I’ve said this over and over to color by numbers. If you DM me, I’ll give you the names of some of the companies where you can find data and skip trace numbers, but here’s the easiest one. You either have money or you have time. You got to be able to invest one or the other.

If you don’t have either then don’t get into this business because you’re not going to succeed. Have time. We’ve all got 24 hours. When I got my real estate license to start the licensing piece, I got licensed in a week. I chose not to sleep that week. I stayed up late and decided to pay that price. I didn’t watch any Netflix and didn’t do anything. I did my normal job and then stayed up late and knocked out the other stuff. The bottom line is the fact that you don’t have any time is a myth. I’ll say one last thing on this. I ran a marathon a few years back. When I was training and we would have excuses why we wouldn’t train. At that time, George W. Bush was the president. He would run 5 miles every day. At some point, we were like, “If he is making the time to run 5 miles every day and he’s the president, my job is a lot less important than his. If he can figure it out, I can figure it out.”

The same thing is true for you. You decide your priorities. It’s not the lack of resources. It’s the lack of resourcefulness. A long way around, the question that you asked me originally is if you don’t have any money, it’s called driving for dollars. You drive around. You look for the ugliest houses you can find, and then you take a ping, put it in your phone, and put the address. You get 50 to 100 of those houses and then you go to any skip tracing program. You go into the data program. If you text me or DM me, I’ll give you the names of some of them that I recommend. If you go into a program, they’ll give you cell phone numbers, email addresses, everything for the people that live there. Some of them will be good, but then you can spend the next day. You take 1 or 2 hours, and you call through everybody. Your script is simple, “Are you looking to sell your house? If you’ve got the right price for it, I’d like to buy your house.” You offer to buy their house. They’ll say, “What do you want to sell for?”

Here’s another tip. There’s a book called Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss. It’s the best book on negotiating out there, in my opinion. One of the things he talks about is anchoring. You want them to give you the price. You say, “I’m interested in your neighborhood. I’m looking to see what you’d be willing to sell for. Do you have a number in mind that if me or a business partner of mine were able to buy your house that you’d be comfortable selling?” You asked in different ways until they give you a number. You don’t want to give them the number. You want them to give you the number. When they say yes, that’s great.

You get the number. You say, “Let me do my research.” Do your research, see if you can do it, you negotiate the number down, then you got your first house. Some of these other programs will teach you how to wholesale it or fix and flip, creative finance, and all the other stuff. There’s probably more than we can get into in this episode. That’s the easiest way to and the most cost-effective way to get started and find your first deal.

What do you do with them? In your program, what you focus on is building those relationships, but then you lead people to the next place, which is what they are going to do with those houses once they get them. There are a million things you can do with these houses once you’ve got one in a contract.

 

There’s a number of programs that I recommend that will teach you how to get those deals. DM me on Instagram and I’ll be happy to put you in touch with some people, then we can go from there. They’ll teach you how to bring in the deals. Let’s say you’re driving for dollars and somebody says, “I’ll sell my house for X dollars,” but you look at it and like, “I can’t buy or fix and flip this. My program teaches you how to partner with an agent who can go list it and get a commission there.

There are some rules about how agents can pay commissions and referral fees. You have to figure that out and everything else. Essentially, if you find somebody that’s willing to sell but they’re not willing to sell for $0.65 or $0.75 on a dollar, then there are other ways to monetize that. Most people aren’t doing that. That’s the whole thing. You got to figure out how you want to make money. You can do anything, but you can’t do everything. You find your niche, you dive in and you get it done. I know you have a unique niche that you’re in. If everybody can find their niche, go all in and make it happen, you can make a lot of money.

Chris, remind everybody how they can reach you.

ChrisCraddock.com is the website. On Instagram @CraddRock. I try to respond to every DM. My business page on Facebook is @ChrisCraddock.

Anytime you connect with Chris, make sure you let him know you came from me. Are you ready for our three rapid-fire questions?

Let’s do it.

Give us one super tip on getting started investing in real estate.

Find somebody that’s doing it well. Spend money, buy them a nice lunch and offer to buy them. I know we’re in the COVID world, so it’s harder to get together. If you want to shorten your learning curve, you find some people that are good and do it. If they’re not in your market and you can’t find them, find somebody you listened to in a podcast, reach out to them and ask their advice. People are so much more generous than you think they are with their time. I’m going to give 1.5 tips. Buy the coaching products. Everybody’s like, “I can find this online.” You can find all of these things online, but you want to find one that’s good, that’s going to walk you step-by-step how to get your first deal. Spend the money. It’s the best money you’ll ever spend if you do it.

Go spend the money and then sit on it. What is one strategy for being successful in real estate investing?

There are two pieces, activity and skill. You don’t even have to be that good if you talk to enough people. You don’t want to any secret about it. An awful salesperson who talks to 1,000 people a day is going to outperform a great salesperson that talks to three people a day. My whole thing is activity and skill. Figure out how to talk to more people. At first, if you have no money, you do it by driving for dollars and you call. As you earn money, then you can do more marketing where you’re sending out direct mail, voicemail drops, or all of the other options that you have to reach out to people. Talk to enough people and then skill up. The way you skill up is every single day, you should never have a day that goes by where you’re not doing at least 30 minutes of personal development.

You’re reading, listening to podcasts, listening to audible books, whatever it is. I recommend an hour. I’d usually do about at least an hour a day. If you don’t have that, your business will grow and your life will go to the extent you grow. If you want to grow, you need to bring stuff in to change your mindset and to be able to think bigger. Here’s the other side. I talked about meeting mentors. I have more mentors in my life that I’m never ever met because I’ve read and listened to everything they’ve ever said. Find those people and bring them into your life.

If everybody can find their niche, go all in and make it happen. You can definitely make a lot of money. Share on X

What is one daily practice that contributes to your success, other than reading and personal development? That was a great tip and I love that one.

Here’s the last piece, many of us had these yearly goals that we never hit. I always call this dialing it back to your irreducible minimums. If you want to win the year, you’ve got to win your quarter. If you want to win your quarter, you got to win your month. If you want to win your month, you got to win your week. If you want to win your week, you got to win your day. If you want to win your day, you’ve got to win your morning. Most people wake up in the mornings and play defense. They figure out, “What’s coming at me?” Handle that.

There’s a book called The ONE Thing. The way they define that is what is one thing that if I do this, all other things will become easier or unnecessary. If you figure out what your one thing is that you need to do that day that will move a rock, so that you win your day, so that every single day you do that one thing in the morning because if you get it later in the day, all just gets pushed to later. Do it in the morning. Win your morning, which wins your day, week, month, quarter and year.

I wrote a book many years ago called Choose Bliss. One of the very first after the intro is all about the morning routine. We all have a morning routine but most of us don’t have a morning routine that serves our day. We wake up playing defense instead of playing offense. If you plan it, you do it intentionally, and now you’ve set yourself up for what I call bliss, what you might call success, you’re setting yourself up to win the day. I love that. Thank you for that.

This has been awesome.

Chris, thank you so much for joining me on this show.

Thanks for having me. This is a lot of fun.

Ladies, thank you for joining Chris and me on the show. I look forward to seeing you next time. Until then, remember, goals without action are just dreams. Get out there, take action, and create the life you heart most deeply desires.

 

Important Links

• The Uncommon Real Estate Podcast
• The Redux Group
• The Millionaire Real Estate Agent
• Good to Great
• Who Not How
• REI Revive
• ChrisCraddock.com
• @CraddRock – Instagram
• Never Split The Difference
• @ChrisCraddock – Facebook
• The ONE Thing
• Choose Bliss

 

About Chris Craddock

Chris Craddock, the Redux Group Team Leader, is a Northern Virginia native and father of six who has been successfully investing in real estate for over a decade.

He is a licensed Realtor® in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. A Nationally Certified Life Coach, Chris is passionate about helping others achieve financial and personal success.

He is known for his relentless pursuit of the best deals for his clients.

 

 

• Here’s How »

• https://blissfulinvestor.com/
• LinkedIn
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• Facebook
• Instagram

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