WS776: How To Study Successful Entrepreneurs with Dan Rochon

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:00.0] 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.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:24.4] WS: This is your daily real estate syndication show. I’m your host Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Dan Rochon, thanks for being on the show Dan.

[0:00:32.7] DR: My pleasure Whitney, thank you for having me.

[0:00:35.1] WS: Dan is an entrepreneur, a real estate broker and the author of real estate evolution. Dan has been in business for almost 15 years and has succeeded and fallen flat on his face, either way, he hast been all in. Dan, thank you for your time, grateful to meet you and looking forward to hearing about some of these studies that you’ve been doing on successful entrepreneurs and how that’s helped you and how you’re going to help us today and the listeners as well. But give us a little more about what you’re doing currently in real estate, what your focus is and let’s jump into your superpower.

[0:01:10.4] DR: Whitney, thank you for reminding me that the first thing in my morning of the times that I had fallen on my face. I really appreciate that and I was excited for the day today.

[0:01:21.4] WS: Awesome.

[0:01:22.7] DR: Yes sir. I’ve been in real estate sales, real estate investing for more than 20 years, real estate sales for 15 plus years, I’ve gotten large brokerage, I’ve done all kinds of things. I mean, I look at myself as though as I’m an entrepreneur and I really started about 15 years ago when I – prior to – I was investing in a time of prior to becoming real estate agent, I was a waiter at a really high end steak house in Washington DC and I really wanted to gain more out of life, I want to have significance, I wanted to help people, solve their problems, achieve their goals and I was an alcoholic, it was an act of alcoholic at the time.

I had a really – like this, I reimagine my life and what I created from that was from a drunk waiter to an entrepreneur, successful entrepreneur. Over the last 15 years, I ‘ve had some fun, I’ve taken some knocks and bruises, I’ve had some successes and I say, as long as you get 51% success, you’re doing okay.

[0:02:25.6] WS: Nice. 51% success, you’re doing okay, that’s an interesting thought right there. But no, congratulations on making that lifestyle change and I mean, doing that is so hard for most who come out of something like that. Grateful that you did and you’re making it happen and helping so many others do the same thing now but let’s dive into what you’ve been studying and how that’s helped you recently and get us started a little bit on this superpower that you have?

[0:02:57.1] DR: My superpower is that I study success and I study it to the core and that I emulate it as best as possible. What I mean by study to the core is I will look at what their environment is. First off, I’ll pick somebody that I believe is successful and the definition of success is that each of us makes it our own definition of success and so it’s my perception of success.

Once I identify that individual, it doesn’t matter if I know them or not, many of the people that I’ve identified as mentors, I identify them as mentors long before I met them and then I just position myself to be able to meet them so I’ve gotten close to you, some others I’ve just casually met and I’m going to take a look at what do they do on a daily basis, who do they surround themselves with?

What is their physical environment when they’re working or they’re standing up or they’re sitting down, do they drink water, do they drink diet coke, what do they read if they do read, what podcast do they listen to? I want to understand, not only what they do and I believe more importantly, I want to understand who are they being, the foundation of life is who are you going to choose to be and then as you understand that and study that and then emulate that, then you do what they do, then you’ll have what they have. That’s been the blueprint to what I’ve done over the last several years.

[0:4:25:0] WS: No, that’s so smart . Here is something like this often but we don’t’ really take time to do it and to figure out who these people are, right? I wanted to go back just a little bit, like finding that person, I mean, would  you say, ultimately, that can be somebody that is like they’re where you want to be and when you see, kind of like you did, you know, you looked ahead  and imagined who Dan could be, you found somebody that looked like that I think, is that right?

[0:04:55.0] DR: Yes, it is. Not only did I find somebody that looked like that today, I also found people in the past as well. Walt Disney is one of my mentors, Benjamin Franklin is one of my mentors, Adam Hurry Author is one of my mentors, though he doesn’t know that, he’s alive today and he has a huge business in Vermont and that is a business that we are growing into. Now, the reality of it is, it doesn’t matter if these individuals, it doesn’t matter what poor qualities that they may have, it doesn’t matter who they actually are, what matters is what can I envision them doing.

In the case of that on my vision and I’m a couple times, I actually know what he does and so that’s a little bit easier with Benjamin Franklin and Walt Disney then I have to imagine who would they be, I read books about them, I will envision to say, if that individual is in this situation right now, what would they do and it allows for me to be able to act as if, which is a very powerful statement that I think doesn’t, I haven’t heard that talk about as often as perhaps it could be.

When you act as if, you are that successful person, whether you’re successful today or not, you will become that successful person, if your poxes and you have a challenge with your spouse, you know, maybe you’re arguing today because this works in relationships, it works in everything and this doesn’t – I don’t want to say that, let’s say that you’re in a relationship or you’re not getting along with your partner.

When you choose to act as if, that relationship is passionate, that relationship is one that you’re partnering and helping each other succeed. What will happen is it will evolve into a more successful relationship.

[0:06:47.9] WS: Wow, you know, let’s jump in to maybe one of those mentors that you know, you were talking about and you picked the one and maybe we can talk about some of the ways that – or let me back up too, it’s interesting you talk about just studying them, even somebody like walt Disney, maybe somebody you’ve never met, right?

There’s going to be lots of people out there that we could probably find but you know, how are you studying someone like that is this – biographies or what is it that you’re going to find to really know what they would do or how they would think.

[0:07:21.7] DR: Some of it’s imagination and so sometimes it doesn’t really matter what they actually would do and imagine if you can imagine what they would do, that is something that’s empowering, something that will allow for you to think at a higher level, then in that in itself is driving you  forward. Now, for example, Adam who is real life today, Benjamin Franklin and Walt Disney were real life yesterday.

Adam, I’ve actually studied him more intimately because it’s easier to do. What I learned was Adam runs the iron man and so two years ago, I began doing triathlons. Now, I have that yet, work my way up to iron man and quite frankly, I don’t anticipate that I don’t have that desire. Maybe a half iron man and so I chose to do that because again, look, I look at the success and I’m going to do everything as closely as possible as what they do.

Now that doesn’t mean that I’m a broker person, I have to be somebody else, it’s not that at all, it’s about finding the good qualities that you want to take and leave in the back. Walt Disney had a ton of that body. So did Benjamin Franklin, okay? Both of them had tons of bad qualities and so, it’s just leave that aside and then just find the good things. Going back to Adam, for example, health is a big priority as him, fitness is a big priority for him.

He wakes up early.  I was – right now, it’s the morning right now, I was up four hours ago, I’ve already been to the gym this morning, okay? I’ve already meditated this morning; I’ve already read this morning. I’ll have times when people hear that, they’re sort of like, whatever, you know, because that seems hard and it could be because I don’t do it every morning.

Yet, if I could only, if I could endeavor to do it more often, then you know, you’re going to be further along than if you don’t.

[0:09:24.3] WS: No doubt about it and I find that quality right there, getting up early and having a structured morning is extremely common amongst successful entrepreneurs. Not that all of them do that because they don’t and it’s not a requirement but I do find that’s a very common thing. You know, anything else, you said like you study what they do on a daily basis, what are a few things that stood out about these three mentors that they do on a daily basis kind of like getting up early?

[0:09:52.0] DR: They surround themselves with the right people, they define who is that right person, they design their lives rather than living their life by default. Early in my life, I needed – I didn’t surround myself with people intentionally. Today, I have a very clear picture in my mind of who I want to be around. I want to be around people that are going to push me up, that are going to encourage me, that are going to pull me up and allow for me to push them up and pull them up so that we could partner together and benefit from each other’s strengths. I’m not looking for somebody that’s a copy of me.

I’m looking at somebody that could compliment me, that may mean that we have 60% of really likeness and 40% where man, that person, my director of operations is Joline, my goodness, we’re like – we’re in sync where we are thinking the same thought at the same time and yet there’s enough of an overlap that we could dance together, we’re in rapport together and there’s enough of a difference where seek and do all those things that I hate doing, if I asked  her right now to tell me to talk to you on this show, Whitney, she would probably want to turn around four times, barf in a bag outside of her office and say no, okay?

That’s not her skillset and I would feel the same way if you ask me to put together a profit and loss statement. Now if you ask me to review that profit and loss statement and take from it, you know, the opportunity to increase profit, I’ll do that all day long, right? It’s just about being, one of the things that I’ve learned at my mentors have done is about being intentional with who you surround yourself with.  I think that’s a big priority, it’s also being intentional but intentional about how you program yourself. I’m actually going to the gym and meditating.

Well, that’s an actual, there’s a strategy there that’s called the self-coaching model that says that the programming which you can have hacks to the program about the books that you read, everything that I’m talking about today, the people you surround yourself with, exercising, meditations, affirmations. As you program yourself with empowering things, then you’re going to have empowering thoughts which will cause you to then have really empowering feelings.

Take their powering actions and have incredible empowering results and it’s in that pattern that it starts with the programming because our subconscious is what gets us our goals, the conscious level is the goal setter, the subconscious and the go getter and I think that we – as human beings, we don’t quite understand that because we live in our conscious sets. This is some of the things that I’ve learned for many of my mentors.

[0:12:49.9] WS: Nice, you know, it’s a very common thing that you know, we hear about who we surround yourself with, it’s so important, right? No doubt about it, we’ve seen that so often, most of us have experienced that. How did you find those people? It’s like okay, Dan discovered one day, these are the people that I want to emulate, it’s just who it is, you know? How do I get  around people like Adam or obviously, you can’t get around walt Disney or Benjamin Franklin but people that are – maybe you consider a mentor now that you really look up to, you want to emulate, you want to model after that you could get around right now, how do you do that?

[0:13:28.3] DR: Sure, I’m going to answer that question before I do so, I want to suggest that before you intend to meet somebody, define who you want to be to me, not as a person, yet as a behavior. For me, I have an acronym, it’s a horrible acronym. CLARK with a C. Worst acronym you could ever imagine, yet, it allows me to know exactly who I’m looking for in a relationship. What that stands for is competitive, learning base, assertive, relationship base, team players and self-starters.

When I find people like that with those behaviors and they have good morals and good values and that could be a relationship that could be incredible for me, that could be a great fit. In regards to Adam, what I did was I just put myself physically wherever he was going to be. He teaches often. I would go in and attend a class that he would teach and I would then ask them smart questions, at least I hope they were smart questions. I would be able to throw my interaction with it in the classroom setting, be able to then transition that into a conversation outside of the classroom and then we move on from there and quite candidly, he and I barely know each other, okay? We’ve only met each other a few times and that isn’t what matters. It’s not what matters that you actually know them, what matters is that you again, if you study and you take away the things that are valuable.

So if I was looking for you and you know I’m always looking for new relationships, just physically if you can put yourself in the world.

[0:15:02.3] WS: Nice. That’s awesome and I think that is a mental block too if you are thinking or if the listener is thinking that you have to spend time with that person every day or you have to be around them weekly or things like that. It is interesting if you can just learn a lot about them like you said, these other entrepreneurs you’re talking about even people like Walt Disney or Benjamin Franklin that’s no longer with us, you know you can still emulate things that they did to get them where they got.

You know as far as what we consider others consider successful. You know any other things? Before we have to move to a few final questions Dan, you know any other daily habits or daily things that you have learned from them that have helped you achieve success?

[0:15:44.3] DR: Well, first again I go back to successes of perception, right? So I don’t like to define that I have achieved success because in some areas of life, I perceive that I have than others. I perceive that I am still growing and that the number one thing that I have done to be able to create my life has been to be able to control my time. Yesterday, I was having lunch with my daughter. She’s 10 years old, Maggie and Maggie and I were sitting down.

She is eating Ramen noodles because that is all she eats is Ramen Noodles and I am having a salad and so my phone is ringing and I knew what phone – because I am a real estate agent and we were negotiating contracts. So I know who is calling me on the other line and the phone is ringing. I just simply turn it over and push a little button so that it stops buzzing and I continue having my conversation with my daughter because that is more important to me in the moment than answering that telephone.

Now on the other side of it, I gave my daughter a kiss good morning this morning and I told her the affirmations I tell her every morning, which is I encourage you to be grateful today, to help somebody today, to make good choices and have the best day of your life and I share that with her every single morning for the last 10 years. I don’t think I’ve missed the morning and then I said, “Sweetie, I am going to be doing a conversation with Whitney this morning.”

“So I ask that you and your mom have breakfast together and you allow for me to be able to be focused on my conversation.” So it is about setting expectations, right? Because I wanted it right now to leave this conversation and be like, Dude, I got to go have breakfast with my daughter” right? That would be inappropriate and weird and unproductive and so it is about controlling your time and then focusing on what’s the most important thing to be able to put into the time that I have.

If it is business, it is probably going to be something like lead generation. That is going to be the foundation of business. It could also be building a new organization, recruiting and selecting the right talent, training, leading, motivating, reviewing finances, those could be some of the highest priority things of your business and when you are able to sit there and say, “Well, every week, every Monday morning I review my financials.”

Every Sunday, my wife helps and partners with me and she puts them together on a spreadsheet. I wake up Monday morning, there is a clipboard on top of the stairs, I take that because I wake up way earlier than her. I go in my office and I review them and I make notes on there to say, “Hey, we can move this money here, remove this money here” and I had the clipboard back to her and I do that every single week. That’s a large priority. I haven’t always done that in my business or my life.

Yet, that is something that’s pretty important because if you are not paying attention to the numbers, you cannot only go broke, you can go negative and I’ve been there as well. I’ve been less than zero and that is not a good place to be.

[0:18:46.0] WS: Dan, you know it sounds like you have a very high level at least now anyway of self-discipline. How did you gain that and is it from watching people like we have been talking about and what are a few of those things maybe that we haven’t talked about that you are very self-disciplined about?

[0:19:01.1] DR:Jocko Willink, a retired CEO Navy Seal says that discipline leads to freedom or freedom relies within the discipline and I am not sure but I don’t think I am getting that quote correct, the concept of getting it correct and so what I thought what most people would have found is that they get scared of the discipline because they believe it can be constraining. Yet, what I found is I got to have a beautiful lunch with my daughter yesterday.

And last evening, I got to go outside and play soccer with her, okay? Because I am able to focus on the highest priorities then I am able to be able to spend that time with my daughter and that is something that I know I have to cherish for the rest of my life. I am 47 years old. When I am 97, I know I am going to look back and I’d be like, “Yep, I am glad I did that.” I won’t remember the client that I have. I won’t remember that phone that was ringing on that table yesterday.

And the negotiation I was doing but I am going to remember the times that I was able to spend with her and that is what is the outcome of having that discipline.

[0:20:08.3] WS: Pivoting just a little bit Dan, what do you predict is going to happen in the real estate market over the next six to 12 months?

[0:20:15.0] DR: Well, right now we are going through okay recovery, which means that the lower price and the lower incomes are struggling. The higher price and the higher incomes are thriving and that is simply because the economy, the lower income are the ones that have been impacted from the economy, many have to take on employment and losing their jobs that is going to be the lower income and they’re the ones that are being impacted.

Also and I think it is the beginning of the second quarter 2021, many of the deferments will stop and then at that point they are either going to have to defer again or people are going to start paying their bank for mortgages. When that comes, I believe that that’s going to impact the market negatively. We have also seen over the past – since March, for March, April, May we saw 35% less inventory in my marketplace but I think it is pretty much true across the country.

35% less inventory at the beginning of the pandemic and 35% less buyers. So there is zero impact because it was proportional. In June and July what happened was what we saw was we saw that the buyers went up and the sellers stayed down. As a result of that, prices increased and so we’re at the end of that price increase right now maybe a little soon to continue. I believe we are at the end of that price increase because what I am seeing in the marketplace right now is I am seeing more homes coming into the market.

And as more homes come on the market that is going to either push down the prices or drive them downward. If you are looking at and so moving forward to next year, I believe that that is going to probably have a downward trend. If you are looking at commercial, one of the things that I wish I never bought was a commercial office building and that is probably wouldn’t be where I’d be looking for, for commercial right now because now we don’t need the offices like we used to.

If I am looking at commercial investment, I am probably looking at industrial. I am looking at warehouse space, those types of things that are going to be more evergreen to the environment. I believe that you are always going to need some place to store granite. You know I believe that granite will most likely always be in demand and so because of that, that to me I feel more comfortable either with industrial or multi-family. I have not done multi-family but I think I would be comfortable with that if I was comfortable, I don’t know if that makes sense.

[0:22:47.5] WS: Dan what is a way you’ve recently improved your business that we could apply to our business?

[0:22:51.9] DR: A way that I’ve recently improve my business has been, I am in a fortunate place right now of leverage and so some may not be here, be there at this point. So you may have to take a step back and two years ago, I sold the brokerage and then I started my business over again as a sales agent. When I did that for the first year and a half or so, I had to focus on building the foundation of an operations team. I had the focus on lead generation.

I had to focus on the activities that are going to drive future success. Today, I am focusing on recruiting and selecting the right talent for that organization and what I’ve suggest that you could do today that I am doing today is to take a second and look down the pathway just to say, “Where do I want to be two years from now and what do I need to do to get there?” and imagine yourself two years from now and look backwards and what did I have to do the second before then when I achieved success.

But before you do that, you know envision that you did succeed and envision how you feel, what you are thinking, what you are seeing and then what did you do before that? What did you before that and what all the way back to today. Now, here is the second thing to that. The second thing is what will happen if I don’t succeed? And then place yourself two years down the road and then envision what you are seeing, feel what you’re feeling.

[0:24:23.8] WS: That will motivate you.

[0:24:25.0] DR: Right and be crystal clear with that and then backtrack what did you do the second before and backtrack that all the way to today. Now you’ve got two paths. That doesn’t mean that as you go down one journey or the other that it is going to be smooth sailing. It won’t be but yet you have a general direction to follow. So that would be the one thing that I would recommend for somebody to do today that would be the most impactful in our business. It’s just a look to the future.

[0:24:50.7] WS: What’s the number one thing that’s contributed to your success?

[0:24:54.2] DR: Time blocking. I already mentioned it, absolutely time blocking. Just being disciplined doing the most. What is the one thing I can do today such that by doing it, everything else will become either easier or unnecessary? That is the general premise of a book written by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan called The One Thing, and it is a very easy read. It is a very quick book and the concept has transformed my life. I ask that about everything.

Before, I ask that about my health, I ask that about my spirituality, my fitness, what I eat. I don’t always follow with what I eat and that is another opportunity for me but I do ask the question before I do or think of an activity.

[0:25:33.1] WS: And how do you like to give back?

[0:25:35.4] DR: By teaching. What I do is I hopefully will inspire others to live the greatness that they desire and my intention is to open doorways for others and I do so through my teaching, my mentorship, my writing and the interactions that I have with other people and I understand that if today, I just impact one person to strive harder and they smile, then they may invest into another person even if it is in a small way and through that, we don’t have to impact the world.

We can impact the world one person at a time and then make a difference for the world through a ripple effect of one to the next and so that is something that I consider on a daily basis, on almost a moment to moment basis.

[0:26:27.8] WS: Dan, I am grateful to have met you and have you on the show and I just think it’s just great for all of us to hear these details that you have been studying and things that we should be looking for and people was to mentor us whether they know that are not, you know we can learn from them and it is interesting how you’ve learned from even people that are deceased but that were successful and maybe how you determine them as successful.

That you study what they did so you can think like them and just to help us to think like that. So grateful to have met you and tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you.

[0:27:04.1] DR: You can find me on Facebook. That is always an easy place. You could join the CPI community, which is a group that provides consistent predictable income for sales people that people can come on and mastermind with some of the top people in the industry, in the world really and you could always, the easiest way is just go to my website, danrochon.com. www.danrochon.com. That’s the best way to be able to track me down and find out different things that we’re doing.

[0:27:36.4] WS: Awesome Dan, that’s a wrap. Thank you very much.

[0:27:39.3] DR: My pleasure, thank you.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:27:40.9] 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.

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[OUTRO]

[0:28:21.6] 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]