WS780: This Is Stopping You From Getting What They Want with Nicholas Lee

[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 Nicholas Lee. Thanks for being on the show, Nicholas.

[0:00:32.5] NL: Hi, Whitney. Thanks for the introduction.

[0:00:35.9] WS: Yeah. Nicholas enables business owners to double their profits without using any outside resources. His podcast, Master Your Mind Master Your Life with Nicholas was ranked number one only four days after launch. He believes that setting goals and finding motivation are the two reasons why 92% of the world don’t get what they want in life.

Nicholas, welcome to the show, look forward to diving in to that. I know the listener’s ears are perked up at the moment because we all want to know how to do that, right? You know, in setting those goals, finding that motivation, want you to help us with that today. Give us a little bit more about you know, who Nicholas is, and let’s dive in.

[0:01:13.4] NL: Yeah, sure. Nicholas, I was born in Mauritius, a small island in the Indian ocean so I’m African, I might look Chinese but I’m African, and yeah, from the journey, I came to England to start. Got out of uni and get started with getting a job and as many people have encountered, job might not be what we’re good for so then started my journey to build my own business, along the way, learn quite a few things about how our mind works and yeah, because challenges are just part of life.

It’s just how we see them and how we kind of counter them that really helps us for life. At the same time, I’ve tried a few things from public speaking, internet marketing to acquiring companies and I think this is where maybe I can add some value to your listeners with some of the things I’ve done in terms of finding sellers, finding finance and all of those different parts of the job, really.

[0:02:13.3] WS: Yeah, I know you are – you’ve become an expect and you’ve done a little research on mindset and just goal setting those things. Why don’t we dive in there just a little bit and talk about that, you know? Your body says, you believe goal setting, finding motivation two reasons while 92% of the world don’t get what they want in life. Could we talk about that a little bit?

[0:02:32.1] NL: Yeah, sure. Along the journey, I’ve taken many courses, right? Because I wanted to learn so many different skills like we need to get to become good at marketing, selling, public speaking, more of those different skills, therefore, I paid quite a lot of money to different mentors and coaching courses about how to learn all of these different skills, right? What happen usually on these courses, they give you the step by step, they say, do those steps and then you get the results.

I would do them for example, the one had the most, I guess struggle with was when I left my job, I used to work at Deloitte as an accountant. I really struggled with sales because you never learn how to sell when you’re working in corporate.

Started doing it and very quickly I realized that I couldn’t sell. I was really bad at it, I was really bad at it. I was always nervous when I had to talk about the money side, tried to get someone to buy something from me, and therefore I was very depressed, very disappointed, and therefore had to find more ways to learn. Kept on buying new courses and I kept on going through this phase and maybe many of your listeners might have been for that phase where you keep on finding new courses.

Maybe the shiny object syndrome, you still try to find other ways of getting better at it but nothing changes. You keep getting the same issues and then one day, actually, with my apartment here, I had a leak, there was water pipe failures, there was a leak and therefore they had to kick me out of my room for 14 days. When they do that, they said, they would get me to a hotel for 14 days or give me 50 pounds a day to compensate for it, right?

What happened was, I had just found out, you know, people tell us, you need to push yourself, right? Have bigger goals that you need to and one of the goals I had was to stay in a very expensive hotel. This is where my mind was okay, they’re going to pay me about two grand to stay in a hotel anyway, for 14 days, how about I find a way to get in the nicer one. I went back to the insurance guy and I’m like yeah, I want this hotel, it’s twice the price as the one you wanted me to go to. Tell me, what should happen for estimate this happen?

Therefore we had a few back and forth, he gave me a few reasons why that would work, kept on kind of just negotiating the way through it and in the end, I got it, he said, because we need to pay you two grand anyway, what we can do is give you eight days in that beautiful hotel you want to, the rest of the days, just stay somewhere else, just go to your mom’s, just go to your friend’s place and we can make it happen. Then, after that, had an amazing time in one of the nicest hotels in London at the O2 then if you’ve heard of the O2 in London.

It was amazing. It was at that point that I realized that just putting goals, I came up with I guess I could when I say, you know, if you write goals, goals will get you somewhere so you plan on doing a few steps to achieve certain goals. You will do the actions, you might achieve it but I just need to research recently and I realized, 90% of the people or if you make it more it more exact 92% of the people don’t actually achieve those goals and then I forward back to it and I fall back to this particular thing. I realized that I have become a safe person.

I wasn’t trying to do things that the safest person would do. I was just using it in my own life like every day so even at the shop, you try to get the better deal, you try to negotiate anything you can, I realized, it should not be something that a step that you take just in business. Once you realize that anything you learn and the skill you learn is something to do every day of the week. One, you get better, faster because you’re practicing it more but, two, once you understand that part, your mind, your forwards changes so the way you look at a specific situation, changes massively.

Because now, instead of thinking. So for example, maybe for your listeners, maybe right now, they are looking to raise finance and they might be thinking, okay, maybe your course, Whitney, I’m not sure if you got a course on that, but maybe they got a course about raising finance and they take a few steps towards it and then it doesn’t work and then they maybe, people either give up or they get on other course because they think okay, that course doesn’t work for me.

But how about they started to think differently? Think like a fund raiser, you know? You become that person, therefore even if you encounter those challenges, you always find a solution. And yeah, that was the main reason that to me, people that – taught to why goals and people who tend to think right, I’m going to wrap my goals if I don’t hit the goals, that means I’m a failure, I’ve not done it. You know, all of those body motions comes to it and then most of the time, people give up about it.

But if you understand that by becoming that person and understanding that those problems and challenges are always going to come up, you do realize that it’s not about the goals, it’s about becoming the person and therefore you’re going to have these skills for the rest of your life anyway. I think those are the things I tend to share.,

[0:07:57.2] WS: Yeah, it’s interesting about even thinking about goal setting for the type oof hotel that you want and I don’t think that way, I don’t goal set about things like that but it’s interesting if you did, how that would change the way you think. Just in having that goal mentally like even just saying that out loud, I’m going to do this thing even if it – I think most people feel like setting a goal or something you’re doing, at least three months from now or six months or a year from now, things like that.

Not the day-to-day decisions, you know, that we’re having to make or even just not even a weekly basis, sometimes but most people I don’t think do that but that is an interesting thought, how that would change the way you think about things if you set a goal for even things like that.

How is this affected your business or the way you’re acquiring companies or the way you do real estate stuff?

[0:08:47.1] NL: If I take a step back, when I realize this kind of thing, then I started using it in other parts of my life. For example, creating my podcast, that was an idea I had maybe one and a half months ago and as most people have, you know, negative values come up. As soon as you want to do something new, something outside of your comfort zone so I had the things like, what would people listen to me, one value to have to share, what will my parents say. All of those things came up to me and I’m like okay, you want a goal about those or do I change my thoughts about them?

I went back and I’ve kind of came up with like a five step system where if you follow those five steps, you can change those force that come to your head. I took that step for my podcast and one of the main things is to then use it in practice so the more you say it, the more it becomes to you, is that okay if I ask you a question about, there’s something I like to teach which comes with a question. Maybe your listeners might benefit from that.

[0:09:46.9] WS: Okay.

[0:09:47.8] NL: I ask you the question, very simple, you might think it’s a silly question but if I said to you, what is two plus two?

Four. Exactly. Usually, the number four would come to your head even before I say the last two, right? Why is that? It’s because throughout our lives, we’ve been conditioned or we’ve been told two plus two is equal to four. Now, let’s say I was born in Mars and I came to earth and I spoke to you and to me, they told me that two plus two is equal to five in mars.

What would be my answer to you and how quickly would it come to me?

[0:10:20.7] WS: The same?

[0:10:22.9] NL: I would say five.

[0:10:23.5] WS: If they told you, yeah.

[0:10:25.4] NL: If they told me two plus two was five, I would say to you five and you would say no, you can’t be right because I’ve learned it four. In the same way, the beliefs that we have, the beliefs I had around podcasting, what are people going to say. Am I good enough, my voice, I’ve got a very strong accent because I’m from Mauritius for example.

What are people going to say, those thoughts sometimes are more beliefs that were created back then, I like to use school to me, I hated school, given that many of the things around failures, especially to me, comes from being conditioned that if you fail your exams, you can’t move ahead. If you fail your exam, you might be looked at as a dumb person so people keep that and when they get in business, they think, I can’t fail, I need to make everything perfect and nothing happens at the end.

In the same way, what I’ve been doing is I’ve been working on changing those thoughts in my head so those language that comes up in my head and practicing saying them until it becomes you and until it becomes your own faults that you now use on a daily basis.

Right now, I see myself as a podcaster. I don’t mind having my accent are funny, quite often into making, it might sound sexy now. It makes me feel happy being on a podcast for example or on TV or sharing my knowledge to the people I need to. That’s how I’ve been using this in other parts of my life, in the same way, doing public speaking and recently, I’ve picked up juggling and I’ve used the same process where it kind of shortened the learning curve I had. Because now I still need to think more, what would a juggler do in that situation and started applying that in the way I was using the balls and juggling things.

How that answers the question, that you had there?

[0:12:15.5] WS: No, it’s just interesting just this change or just the way we think, I mean, the way we think about things on a daily basis,  all these seems small at the time but all these decisions that you’re making, I mean, they add up, right? That consistency of changing that behavior and just the way you think about things.

What about, are there things on a daily basis that you could just describe a little bit or help us with that have helped you to just continually think this way or to set goals daily and you know, just to help the listener and myself to think that way as well?

[0:12:46.0] NL: I mean, in terms of daily things, what I tend to do is if I’ve got, again, it’s more down to because I’m still in the learning phase, right? I’m always learning new skills, new ways of doing things and you know, so many good information out there. What I’ll do is to recently, I’ve been coaching with another business coach and I’ve been able to help many businesses grows the business and double their profits and stuff like that. But I’ve never done it for myself as me being the main guy of the company.

That’s been one of the main beliefs problem I had in the past couple of weeks, right? Therefore, what I’ve realize is, I need to become aware of those negative thoughts that I have or this negative beliefs that I have, then I need to choose, do I want them to be my reality or do I want to change them so that now I can have a more empowering, more positive one that I can use to then improve my business, grow my business, take myself to the next stage.

This is kind of the five steps, one, you need to become conscious of the issues that you might have on a day to day basis so the other thing I like to ask people is who is the person that you speak the most to every day. What would be your answer to that one actually?

[0:14:01.0] WS: The person I speak to the most, I would like to say is my wife but yeah, probably my wife.

[0:14:07.7] NL: Yeah, that’s a good answer but usually what I would say is, even if I don’t know you or maybe your listeners out there, I might give you another chance to think again, who is the person that you speak the most to every day, like right now.

[0:14:19.4] WS: You think yourself?

[0:14:20.5] NL: Yes, That’s the thing right? It’s so inside our head, ourself, that we don’t think that our thoughts are speaking to our service, and then what I think you ask people is okay, when you speak to yourself in your thoughts, what language do you use?

Is it English? Is it Spanish? Now in that language, is it the negative words are you using? Because in the language you use, you can choose negative disempowering words but you can also use positive and more empowering words that would mean the same but then determines what you do next or what you think about consistently and yeah, I mean that’s where I think you need to become aware of it because if you are not aware of it, you can’t change it.

But once you become aware of only the first C, conscious, once we become aware then you can choose because now you know there’s the difference. Once you choose, you need to change it and how do you change? You look for experts, you get someone who’s done what you wanted to do and learn from them and like you were saying, in terms of what we do on a day to day basis, you want to practice this. So for example, if I were to ask you not to brush your teeth today, you might feel a bit weird.

Because it is a habit that you have been doing that you might say, “But Nicholas, I might feel dirty if I don’t brush my teeth today.” In the same way those negative force that you had initially they would feel weird if you are not using them. If you change them to more positive one potentially, you need to condition your brain to think that you new way. So for the two plus two, change your brain so that you think two plus two is four and once that happens, then I call it the claim part.

So the more you do it, the easier it gets to do what you want because your brain just – your force just go like this right now and you just get what you want but as we know, that COVID can happen. So challenges has been always come to you. So you need to also be aware of how the world is, that you can’t control everything but for me the one thing you can control is what is going on in your mind and in your head and that is why the podcast is called Master Your Mind Master Your Life.

[0:16:25.9] WS: Do you believe, Nicholas, that like this, well, I mean exactly what you are talking about here, being able to control your thoughts and your mind, control what you are telling yourself, maybe even the goals that you are setting, some of those things are the biggest reason why entrepreneurs do not succeed in real estate?

[0:16:40.0] NL: Yeah. I would think like – I mean to be fair, this is normal, right? Like you do something, you do what someone said, someone who’s been successful and he kind of shortens your timeframe to achieve your goal then you do it but sometimes you don’t realize that those people that are successful have had those challenges, have had those obstacles that come in the way and then they had to push for it to become that better person who’s handled those problems and now they have bigger problems.

Like for example, I am pretty sure when you have loads of bigger problems that you’ve had 10 years ago for example and by handling more bigger problems you are now better at what you do but people don’t really see those trench that goes like Russell Brunson and like you said, the arrows on your back you had, right? They just see you being the great guy that now we’re sharing this with them but I think everyone needs to understand that getting those high res will be part of the journey.

If you understand that part then you don’t consider those hours as a bad thing. You take them as a good thing, as a stepping stone to take you to the next level because you are not getting those hours and arrows on your back. That meant you’re not doing big enough things or you are not getting out of your comfort zone, right? That’s how I would see –

[0:17:54.0] WS: I like that. I like that a lot, yeah. That is an interesting thought especially if you think back where you are at even a year ago or two years ago and hopefully yes, you are growing in that way, right? You don’t have any struggles like that, you are probably not growing and Nicholas, I believe that anyone that is a successful entrepreneur has a high level of self-discipline. How did you gain such a high level of self-discipline?

[0:18:16.4] NL: I think this is where I am still kind of understanding the discipline part. So if I give you an example, maybe you can show me what’s your favorite sport or what is the thing that you love doing outside of work potentially?

[0:18:32.3] WS: Spending time with the family is my focus at the moment when I am not working but you know sport, you know it would probably be horse riding.

[0:18:40.7] NL: Horse riding, I see. Oh yeah, I see the horse behind you as well. So the way we look at it as well is if someone’s got a hobby and they love doing it and when they are not at work, potentially your hobbies work is like I like my work, I like what I am doing so I think about it all the time. So if you’re doing something that you love and you tend to think about it when you’re in bed, you think of them when you are with your family and this is what you love geeking about.

And you just think about it all the time, this is where I think that how much discipline do you actually need because it just happens to you. You love it so much that you just tend to do it again and again and say, “Okay, what is the next thing I need to do now to get good at this? What is the next good thing?” and you just do it because you don’t need that discipline and this is where again, I take it back to maybe school or getting a job.

Like for example, where I come from you need to become an accountant, a lawyer or a doctor and you’re seen as someone who is successful. So I became an accountant but I hated it. So I needed the discipline to go up and do the things that I needed to do but now that I am doing the things that I love, every day I wake up and I’m okay. So as soon as I wake up the first one is, “Okay, so what do I need to do to grow my business?” and I wake with that.

Surely, you get that as well. I am pretty sure where sometimes I wake up at half-five like somebody just woke up 12 minutes to seven on a Sunday. Okay, how do we want to read that book because I wanted to take the next step and do that thing and sometimes this is where I think maybe discipline gets lost as to what it is about. Well maybe I misunderstood the question, I don’t know.

[0:20:19.3] WS: No, it’s fine. I just wondered how you’ve gained such a high level of self-discipline but even just what you think about first thing in the morning I think it’s pretty important. So you know are there daily habits that you have that you are very disciplined about doing other than that?

[0:20:33.2] NL: To me, yeah I think the main thing I do is one, going back to the – I mean we call it affirmations, right? Where there is no negative thoughts you have. So, two things, every day in the morning, you want to make a list of the things that you are grateful for because being in the US, being in the UK and very what we call the lucky countries, we are lucky because there are people in Africa that are not having the best life and they’re still happy, right?

But here we tend to think, “Okay, how do I achieve my million pound or million dollar deal? How to achieve this and that?” and you feel crap but if you can take a step back and you think of the good things, you have a roof, you’ve got water, you’ve got food, what can you be grateful about and by being grateful about this, you’d changed the focus that’s going on in your head. So then you feel happy about it. So now you can focus on the things that you don’t have yet but you are working towards to have.

So, to me, the first habit I do is to think back to the things I have and then the next part like I said before, practice the new person that you want to be and practice having the thoughts that that new person should have so you can become that person and achieve the goals that that person would have.

[0:21:46.8] WS: You have to be intentional right? You have to be intentional and not just let things happen to you. What’s a way you’ve recently improved your business that we could apply to our business also?

[0:21:57.9] NL: One thing I’ve recently learned is people can’t see you if they can’t hear you because initially, I was – I mean what can we’ve – kind of a business coach was a coach like helping him and I thought, if I want to impact more people, I do need to create my own publishing platform, and that is where I started doing my podcasts. Now I am going to start doing my webinars and things to share more knowledge to more people so that they can hear me.

And now, that’s why I am also getting on different people’s podcasting, more value to as many people as I can because there is so much going on in the world that, unless you share and you make sure people can hear what you have to share, no one is going to hear you. Everyone’s got their own problems, everyone’s got their own things that they are working towards. So unless you keep knocking on that door so for example, like I was saying to you just before in terms of –

One thing I was doing in the past few years is acquiring dental practices. So one of the things was to look for financing, which maybe your business might be in that phase as well where they are raising funding and again, if you call one bank once, they might pick up your call but if you stop there, you might run out of banks very quickly. So you need to come back to them again and again until they pick up the phone and they realize that you exist, right?

Because you are not the only person trying to get in touch getting their attention. So yeah, the one thing I have learned is really one, give content, share value and two, it is going to be we can call it a numbers game but you have to push hard, right? Along the way of course you are going to get those hours on the back and you are going to grow as a person.

[0:23:42.1] WS: Tell me the number one thing, Nicholas, that’s contributed to your success?

[0:23:46.7] NL: The one thing is really what’s going on in here. So, like COVID-19 would have caused many people so much struggle, so much problems, financially, everything right? And if you think about it, COVID-19, the virus has never had any bad kind of thoughts to bring destruction to the world and to the business. The COVID-19 is trying to survive. So coming from that place, you might think, “Okay, so if it wasn’t COVID-19 and it wasn’t doing it purposefully, it is not even his fault.”

Now what I mean by that is everything that happens to you is neutral, what is important is what you decide it be. Do you want to see it as a negative thing or do you want to see it as a positive thing and if you decide to see it as a positive thing, you are going to grow them and keep moving forward. So I will give you a quick example, before COVID-19 happened, I had three deals going on while I was going to complete three deals to acquire dental practices.

Two of them fell from before COVID and the last one I was still closing the deal, had the deal agreed and then after lockdown, the seller came back to me saying he won’t sell anymore. So at that point I was depressed, I was unhappy but it happened for like five seconds because I know how my mind works. So for five seconds I wasn’t happy but I am like, “Okay what is the story that I want this struggle to be like?” So therefore, from that day I decided maybe I was being selfish.

I was helping other people with their business and in value to their life with mindset and all of those things. So I thought maybe let me take that time whether it is the incomplete and the industry, the dental industry in the UK is not the best right now. Maybe it saved me as well because some of the practices maybe we’ll have to close down because they couldn’t provide the services. So let me turn this story into a nicer story where I thought, “Let me start a podcast.”

So now, I can share my value to more people and now, I would never have been on the show with you right now and having this great conversation if it wasn’t for me losing that deal. In the same way, maybe your business right now have had deals that fell through. Maybe they had bankers that changed their mind last minute because of COVID and again, those are neutral situations. It’s us that decide how we wanted to take the situation and how we want to move forward with it.

I mean just to finish off on that, along the way now I have built up like 10 new skills just because I had to go and be out there more and it made me realized I can’t be behind and in the shadows of my great friend and the business coach. I need to create my own run and build my run myself. So yeah that is always a good thing that can come.

[0:26:45.2] WS: Maybe you just answered this but I will ask anyway, how do you like to give back?

[0:26:48.5] NL: Yeah, so the way I am giving back right now is creating my podcast and on the podcast I am sharing, like, you know, I have shared with you maybe three mind tricks that, again, school never taught us, society doesn’t tell us, and I am sharing like 34 or more of those that you can take with you on every day. Again, you can become the person that you want to be. So that the actions you take get you there faster.

At the same time, I am starting to build my own coaching program because I have been helping many people and I want to help more and really get them to understand how it works here. So therefore life becomes effortless, right? You don’t need to struggle to achieve what you want. It just becomes part of what you do.

[0:27:30.0] WS: Now I appreciate you sharing that, Nicholas. Grateful for your time today and just helping us to think through how you have created success but just the daily things, the daily goal setting, decisions for things that we don’t typically probably think about setting goals for, how that’s changed your life and how it can change others, and just how you are giving back. Tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you?

[0:27:51.7] NL: Yeah, sure. I mean, right now, what I have is really just the podcast. If you want to listen to more and get some more of those tips and tricks about how you can use your mind to your advantage, it’s called Master Your Mind Master Your Life with Nicholas Lee. Make a quick search on Apple Podcast or Spotify or Stitcher and you get access to this.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:28:12.3] 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]

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