WS700: Self-Discipline Equals Real Estate Success with Whitney Sewell

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:23] WS: 700 shows. Can you believe that? Over the last two years, we’ve recorded over 700 shows. Today, I want to share it with you some behind-the-scene struggles and successes that you may not know about. If you’re a passive investor, or you’re an operator, I hope you will gain a value of just a few things today. It’d be a shorter show, but I wanted to share some things with you. As a listener, first I want to say just thank you for your dedication and just listening, being with me on this ride of 700 shows.

It’s definitely not come easy. On that thought, I get the question often. Maybe you’ve wondered this, “Whitney, is it worth it? Has it been worth it to do a daily show for two years?” I wanted to answer that question and I wanted to share with you some things that helped me to get to where we’re at now and just so you can see. I’ve been told I was crazy by so many people. Some of these people said, “Don’t do it.” There were a couple people I had dinner with at a couple different conferences, who everyone listening would know, very well-known in this industry and I was talking to them about doing a daily podcast and both of them said, “Whitney, you don’t do that. Don’t do it. That’s crazy.”

I went to my mentor, who it’s a whole another subject, but I encourage you to have a mentor, numerous. My mentor said, “Whitney, that’s why you have to do it, because no one else is going to do it,” because it’s too much work. I was still working full-time, at the time, at a full-time family. We were going through our third adoption process, moving to another house amongst everything else that’s going on. You know what? I said, “Okay. I’ve seen this work. I’m going to make it happen and we’re going to jump in.”

Most of you have heard different parts of that story, but I just like to stress, I was told by numerous people that I was crazy and not to do that. Some would still say I’m crazy, but I just said, “Okay. If that’s what it’s going to take, where do we get started? How do I get started?” Instead of thinking about the workload. All that to say, it has been very worth it. It has not been easy, but been well worth it.

Just a few of those struggles; over the last two years or two and a half years, I guess, getting up at 4:30 every morning and taking investor calls from 5 to 7 a.m. before I would go to my day job and then being at work, getting home, say 4:30, running through the house and running down to the basement where I had an office set up at that time and trying to record interviews. I would record four or five most afternoons, many afternoons and then even take investor calls after that as well, or vice versa, or mixed in between.

Very full days. I had to keep that going for two and a half years. My thought though behind that was as long as it took. It was as long as it took. I would get into that just a little bit. I had to make many sacrifices. My whole family did. It wasn’t just I. I just like to stress the importance of my wife, Chelsea, and her support and just how the Lord gave us strength through the entire time. It was just a lot to endure. I try not to minimize the sacrifice for not just myself, but the entire family; missing most meals with the family for over two years, except for maybe weekends, even most Saturdays at that.

It was that level of commitment that took us to where we’re at now and I did not do that alone, by no means. I love to just say, it took a family and it took a team for the podcast, specifically. If you can imagine, if you have a podcast, then you understand how much work goes into producing just a weekly show, much less a daily show, seven times more. I knew from the beginning that there’s no way that I would have time to edit all the shows, video, audio, all those things. I had to build a team from the beginning and that’s what I did.

I had four or five VA’s from all over the world that were doing different parts of the show. Then I had an assistant that would help manage those things. That worked for a long time and I have a different team now and we’ve grown and hired different people. It looks a little different now, but it’s still the same, ultimately. I have personally I’ve never edited the first piece of audio, or video. Most people can’t believe that, but I’ve not. I knew from the beginning I would not have time to focus on that and didn’t want to. It wouldn’t have been done well and it’s just not the best use of my time. I hired that from the very beginning, found different people that had those special qualities that I didn’t have.

One thing through this, I just like to stress, it hasn’t been easy. I’d watch the kids playing outside and wishing I could be out there with them. We just had to remember our long-term vision of where we’re going, our goal and what we were accomplishing and just had to help paint that picture for them as well, because that’s difficult and it’s difficult when dad has to work that much and the kids don’t see you, or you’re not there to help in many ways that most are. We had to all remember long-term where we’re headed.

Ultimately, a few months ago I did leave the day job. I was a federal agent. I did leave. I probably could have left before then, but there were some other things too I wanted to get done before I made that leave. It was managing the seven-day-a-week podcast, a full-time job, full-time family, adoptions, moving, all those things. I say that just to encourage you and to say, you know what? You can do it. If there’s a will, there’s a way. You will find the time if you want to make it happen. I’m going to go into that just a little bit more as well.

Really, what changed it all was a few years ago, changing my habits, having more self-discipline, just being willing to sacrifice in the short-term and understanding the vision for the long-term as well. As far as a daily routine, a few years ago, I read the book The Miracle Morning. In that book, if nothing else helped me to think through how I structured my morning; am I getting up early? Am I being consistent? What am I doing with that time? I was just not educating myself well. I was not spending time reading and just thinking through long-term goals and things like that, or even what I wanted to accomplish that day, much less 10 years from now.

That helped me just to start a better habit in the morning. Once I started doing that, now I have read so many books and each of those books have helped me in one way or the other. Just that alone, I would have not accomplished, if not for reading that book, changing my habits and having a purpose to my time in the mornings, but then also, throughout the rest of my day. Just have to remember, it’s so important that the first thing that has to change ultimately is you. Just remember, it was my habits. It was self-discipline and being willing to sacrifice in the short-term.

Since that time, I mean, we’ve closed on almost a 100 million dollars of real estate just in the last, say 12 to 15 months. All that, I contribute to the Lord, but then to the podcast and just the daily consistent dedication to the business and to our investors who have been very faithful, many to invest in every deal that we’ve done, which I’m so thankful for.

Just for you the listeners as well who have been with me in every show, hundreds and hundreds of shows now, I hope that you have learned so much and are moving forward. On the note of self-discipline, I wanted to tell you about a book that I recently read called The Power of Self-Discipline. No Excuses by Brian Tracy. I read this quite a while back, but it came up recently and I wanted to share just a few things and this is just out of the introduction. In the introduction is called the miracle of self-discipline. He has a quote there. It says, there are a thousand excuses for failure, but never one good reason and that’s by Mark Twain.

He’s just going into why some people have success, some people make things happen and some don’t and ultimately, it’s what you do every day. It’s self-discipline. He says, losers make excuses, winners make progress. Is there anyone else who has my same excuse, who is successful anyway? Well, probably not. I just say some of these things to help you to think through where you could be more disciplined right now. Is it what you’re doing first thing in the morning? Is it how much time you’re spending on your phone? He just goes on and on about how self-discipline changed his life.

You just ultimately have to pay the price and have – it says, perhaps the most important insight of all with regard to success is that to achieve greatly. You must become a different person. It is not the material things you accomplish, or acquire that matter so much, as it is the quality of the person you must become to accomplish well above the average. The development of self-discipline is the high road that makes everything possible for you. Then this book goes into many, many different aspects of self-discipline, but this alone is just in the introduction.

Another quote he uses is, “Self-discipline is the ability to do what you should do when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.” I go back to even my military time to think about when – that’s when I was first probably made to do many things that I didn’t want to do and when I didn’t want to do them. That was a great experience that helped my mind shift to really be more motivated, to be able to get things done, whether I feel like it or not, even if it’s not the time that I want to do it.

So many times in business, there’s tons of things that have to get done. You don’t always feel like it, but you have to be self-disciplined enough to keep pushing forward. I’m still working on this. Every day, I’ve not accomplished this. I’m not trying to say that I have, but I want you to think about this and think about your daily habits, because you always think about consistency over intensity. We’ve been very intense for a very consistent time period, very long time.

Now my schedule’s changed a lot. Obviously, I can be at home now more with the family, which is amazing. It’s exploded our network. It’s brought so many great people in our path, the podcast and just putting ourselves out there. It’s meant being very disciplined and very consistent and having a great team. Just want to leave you with a couple things.

I want you to know that you have to change yourself first and you have to be willing to do what others are not willing to do. Most likely, your network, or your people you’re hanging around will have to change if you want success in any business and you’re not coming from that already. You have to think about who you’re taking advice from. I know I did. I gave you one example earlier for the podcast specifically, but that’s happened many times. People thought we were crazy.

I had a whole another business and we had a farm and we sold our farm and everything related to that and downsized, so we could afford to just commit to one, our adoption. Two, the syndication business. We were just completely in. We burned that bridge and said, we are not turning back. I think that helped me mentally as well to just keep pushing forward. There wasn’t a way to go back and choose a different option. I had to make this happen.

I want to say, reach out to others. Every time I’m interviewing on a show, I put my phone number out there. I put my e-mail out there and so many other guys are doing that as well. Call people. Reach out through e-mail. Why people do not take advantage of that? I have no idea. If you’re getting started in this business, whether you’re an investor, a very experienced investor or a newer operator, you’re trying to get to your first deal, or trying to learn to raise capital, trying to whatever it may be, or even in a different industry, so many things in business can go across so many industries.

Reach out and ask for help. Reach out. Send me an e-mail and then I’ll see if I can help you in any way. If I can’t, hopefully I can connect you to somebody who can. Ask questions. Also, we are hiring. I don’t normally put stuff like that on the podcast, but I thought what a great platform too. I wanted to let that we are hiring and I wanted to give you the opportunity. Right now, we’re hiring for an executive assistant for myself. We’ve created a great position and opportunity for someone and we really want someone who’s extremely motivated, obviously, and just very committed, but that will stay with us for a long time and be a part of our family really, so of our team.

Just wanted to put that out there. If you are interested in that, I would encourage you to e-mail [email protected] and where you can just submit your name and some information and then we’ll respond with a full job application and a place where you can get a lot more information and some next steps as well. Send us an e-mail at [email protected] and we’ll give you some information on that. I look forward to anyone that’s looking to pursue something like that.

Also, I hope you have a blessed day. I hope you are enjoying the podcast. Again, if you want to be a guest and you haven’t been a guest, or you know somebody that would be, you can always go to the website and there’s a button on the podcast page where you can actually apply to be a guest and you could also put somebody else’s e-mail in there, but you could just tell somebody else too, “Hey, here’s a place you can get on the show.”

Send that to people who you would like to be interviewed, or let us know. You can send an e-mail also to info@lifebridge capital and you can suggest people to be on the show. You can suggest questions you would like me to ask. I would love more feedback from you, the listener, and how I can better assist you personally, but even also just through the show, so I can ask better questions, questions that you want to have asked of these operators and different people that are in our business, in our industry that can help.

I hope you’re taking advantage of that opportunity, that offer to connect with us, so we can provide better support and better information and improve the podcast as well. Hope you have a blessed day and we will talk to you tomorrow.

[END OF EPISODE]

[00:15:25] WS: Don’t go yet, thank you for listening to today’s episode. I would love it if you would go to iTunes right now and leave a rating and written review. I want to hear your feedback. It makes a big difference in getting the podcast out there. You can also go to the Real Estate Syndication Show on Facebook so you can connect with me and we can also receive feedback and your questions there that you want me to answer on the show.

Subscribe too so you can get the latest episodes. Lastly, I want to keep you updated so head over to lifebridgecapital.com and sign up for the newsletter. If you are interested in partnering with me, sign up on the contact us page so you can talk to me directly. Have a blessed day and I will talk to you tomorrow.

[OUTRO]

[00:16:06] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Life Bridge Capital. Life Bridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Life Bridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]