WS1044: How Having A Mission Bigger Than Yourself Can Help You Scale with Whitney Sewell | #MindsetMonday

EPISODE 1044

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:0.0] 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]

0:00:24.6 

Whitney Sewell: This is your Daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Recently, I was speaking at a conference just with some amazing entrepreneurs who are doing big things, and I was sharing some things that I think maybe I have never shared on the show, and I wanted to share with you our listeners help you in your syndication business and I wanna share a secret with you today, and you’re gonna, well, that seems so simple once I share it with you, but I want you to think through it for yourself, and I want you to think about how have you done this in your business, and I’ll give you a couple of things to just contemplate think about over the next few days,I would love to hear from you one way or the other, you can leave a comment on YouTube or on Facebook, or email us even that [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

But I’m gonna share a secret with you today, and that has helped us to raise a lot of capital, it has helped us to move very fast going from $250,000 on our first raise just a few years later, raising tens of millions in a few hours. It’s something you have to do, it’s something you have to be doing. It doesn’t happen overnight. But it seems like there are many people have not thought about this, I ask clients that I’m working with and other people outside the industry often this question, and they cannot articulate it, they cannot give it an answer, and I just think if you do not know the answer to this, you need to figure it out. And it’s gonna change not only the way you do business, but it’s going to change everything about your business, it’s gonna change the way you interact with your team members, it’s gonna change the way you hire people, it’s gonna change the way that you interact with your family, it’s gonna change the way that your family interacts with you and your business and all those things, right. 

before I get to some of that, some of the secret or just the things that I want to ensure that you are aware of. There are some questions I want you to think through. First, I get this question all the time about what helped us to scale so fast, and there’s so many things, there’s so many pieces to that, I wanted to back up a little bit before we get into any of that, obviously it’s the second to integrity and just being a top-notch operator, working just for your investors, for your team, all of that is crucially important if you’re not operating with just the highest level of integrity at all times, please do not bother trying to start a syndication business or a commercial real estate business and working with investors and taking other people’s hard earned money, I just want you to think through that if you are not operating with just an extreme integrity and pushing that even when it’s uncomfortable, this is not for you, this is not the business for you. And it’s always in any business too, especially in hours, you gotta keep the long game in mind, you have to think long-term, if you’re not thinking long-term, you’re just not gonna last, you’re not gonna last ’cause none of this happens overnight. None of it happens without us, so many hours I am. 

And so one thing I wanna share too is just a little bit of a story, if you listen to show 1,000, 1,001, 1,007, 1,008, where my amazing bride, Chelsea and I talk about our path from no real estate to our first piece of real estate, and what was just into real estate and just many things the Lord to through that process in our marriage and our family, you’re gonna hear part of that, a part of the story, but there’s a few pieces in our business here that I wanna share today that will go along with that, but we shared a story about how we’ve probably been married a year or so roughly, and I had our biggest fight that we had ever had, didn’t thankfully, probably still our biggest fight. And I say, You know what, I came home and I found a deal, and I found a deal and I made a purchase, and ultimately Chelsea was upset, I had spent her money, and there’s different things we share, and I encourage you go back and listen to that series with her and I ’cause it’s comical now, thank the Lord, it’s comical. But I encourage you to go back and listen to part of that so you understand more about that specific story, but one of the main parts is that we were not on the same mission, we were not going the same direction. And that changes everything, right? Have you had those discussions and thinking through where you’re going a year from now, and even two years from now, or three years from now, what is your plan and how you’re getting there? And even deeper than that, like, why are you doing it? Right, what is your mission? 

And Chelsea and I at that time, we’re not on the same mission, we had not discussed those things, and that big fight. It was amongst lots of other things that were happening, it was a police officer working the worst schedule you can imagine, and then also we bought a couple of Tri-flexes in what were self-managing, there’s lots of stress and just brain damage around that, lots of learning as well, but that was a difficult time, but also, we were living in a house that I was remodeling while living there, and often said Chelsea had to watch the dishes in the bathtub for a lot longer than I like to admit. There’s just a lot of stress, right? On a new marriage, and we got through it and learn so much about each other and are a lot stronger because of it, but that purchase that I made, and it comes from two different backgrounds, it, hers and mine, and the way we were raised and teachings around finances, and even the way we buy things, and just no education really, and no thought process of what we should communicate about. How big of a purchase should we talk about? And hadn’t really felt that.

But, this purchase was a $250 weed eater. However, it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Amongst all this other stress that I ultimately put on us and just trying to go as hard as we could go, but it wasn’t the right time for most of that, however, we learned a lot, right. And I look back, reflecting on that, and I think we were not on the same mission, and it wasn’t until we were, that things really started to take off, right? 

And if we were on the same mission, none of this would have happened over the last four or five years in our commercial real estate business. And I wanna give you another piece of that puzzle as well though today, and thinking through just one piece of the foundation that helped us to scale really fast, and that is you must show up to give. It is almost that simple, but it is so in-depth, and you’ve probably heard that before, but I just wonder if you’ve thought about that, like every conversation. I don’t think so much about win-win, you think more about man showing up to give so that another person can win. Okay, and we’re gonna talk a little more about that, and I wanna hit on the mission component as well, ’cause that’s been so crucial as Chelsea and I push this business as we have moved forward.

But it wasn’t until we really had clarity, we had clarity about our mission, our calls are why. And so, that helped my family to be going in the same direction, because Chelsea is not into, say real estate or entrepreneurship, however, she is 110% behind our mission. And that has helped me more than anything. Just for her support, I could not have done it if she was not on board as hard as we have pushed the last few years, I just would not have worked even though she’s not working in the real estate business every day, my goodness… She is my best teammate, right, but I just want to think through this mission, we’re gonna talk through it a little bit more, because I bet very few of you, if any of you can articulate what that is?

But we’re gonna help your family. It’s gonna help your team as well, and my team knows what our mission is now? Do you know? Can you articulate what that mission is? Does your spouse, your team know, but also, do your investors know? Have you thought about that? Like, do your investors know what your mission is? Is your mission just a monetary value? Is that your mission?

I would just encourage you to think through that, and it’d be something much deeper than just a monetary number, but just a few things that might help you there and just finding that mission that you’re connected to, but what does it cause or something that you are passionate about, and I just want you to think through working for something other than just financial gain, ’cause that’s gonna happen. That is going to happen and you are helping others when you have some kind of mission that’s bigger than yourself, man, it’s gonna happen. That financial gain, it is, but why are you in business? And I just think you have to exist for more than just money. And believe it or not, your investors want more than just to return, and they can get a return from so many operators, but they can get a return in so many different ways, just in different types of investments. But there are so many operators, and there’s so many great operators… Right. 

But what’s different about you? I get that question often. Right, and I’m sure if you’re an operator, you get that as well, about what stands out about you and what do you provide that no one else provides, and so your mission should inspire you, it should inspire your company, your family, it should inspire your investors, even as well. And I just, I hear often, our investors love partnering with us, not just because we’re finding great projects, we’re providing great returns, all those things, the tax benefits that come along with that, and just white glove experience for our investors, that is always our desire, we are improving the process of every touch that we have with investors, every chance that we get. 

And our team, I have pushed them all the time, let’s think about that process, how did it work? Unless, improve it. If you were an investor, what did that feel like? Was that smooth? Was that easy for them? And did they get all the information that they needed? How can we improve that? But that’s what we wanna portray, but they still want more than just that, or it’s just such a massive bonus when they can see that they’re playing a role in a mission that’s bigger than just financial gain. 

Okay, I want you to think about that. If you need to pause, I encourage you articulate what your mission is because it’s gonna inspire others, so I wanted to read a few quotes here to you, so your income is determined by how many people you serve, so you’ve heard that, I just want you to consider a few of these things, your compensation is directly related to how many lives you touch, your compensation is directly related to how many lives you touch, if you want more success, find a way to serve more people. I know some of them were some older quotes and some more Simon center and different people like that, but I just want you to think through that, that really hit home with me years ago. 

And I hope they’re hitting with you as well, but you must put your mission into words, and it must be ingrained in everything you do, so no one, including you can get behind your mission or your wife, if it’s not written down, you must write it down, so not only you can see it often, but so all those people write your family, your team, your investors, they need to be able to see it, it needs to be ingrained in your branding, like That’s what you represent, that’s just your big cause your mission, you’ve seen that in our branding most likely, or our investors definitely have, but even still as hard as we’re working to just push our mission, not just forward in Life BridgeCcapital about our mission, right. We want to see that mission succeed, and obviously that’s helping families adopt children, that is our mission, our family has been just touched on, the Lord has used adoption in a big way in our family, my wife and I and my children. So that’s something we are very passionate about, so we love helping these families, we started the Life Bridge Foundation that does that now, and it’s operating.

So it’s just amazing to see that happening. We wanna continue to grow that. So that’s our big push, right behind Life Bridge Capital, but I just encourage you, do all those people know what your mission is, if you even know what it is in that having that mission. It changes things, right? And we may all do another show on this, but it changes things, even if I’ve talked out… For sure, I’ve talked about it in the past, but I just wanna encourage you, when you can talk to an investor and you’re sharing about your mission, you’re sharing about something outside of real estate, it helps you to stand out. There’s a connection that’s made that is much deeper than just talking about real estate. If you’re at a conference, there’s 2,000 people there, those conversations, do you expect to remember a mess, those investors that are there that maybe you’re speaking to, how many people are they going to remember? And if every one of them were talking about real estate or this amazing deal, or maybe the market that they’re in, or most likely, they’re not going to remember who you are. It is not right. So what I started to notice years ago when I would start to share our mission, man, they would remember how it changes the dynamic of the conversation completely, it changes that. 

I’ll get into a little more of that in another show, maybe next week, but I just want you to think about today, what is your mission? Can you articulate it? How is it tied to your business? If you don’t know, I just encourage you to just get in a quiet place, maybe with your spouse as well, that would be amazing if both of you could be on board about what this is about, why you’re pushing this business why are you spending all this time? And if it is just for financial gain, I just encourage you to really think through that. 

Financial gain will come, right, it will come, but that will not keep you motivated time after time when you’re not down as an entrepreneur when things happen. Even just tired, not or lack of sleep effort, night after night after night, man, that’s not gonna keep you getting out of the bed, typically, very few people. I would say you have to have something bigger than that. And if you wanna scale fast,if you want to go from raising your quarter million dollars in your first deal a few years, a few years later, raising $5 to $10 million or more per deal in a very short period of time, you gotta have something more for you and your investors and your family than just financial gain. 

So, I hope that has encouraged you. I hope you’re thinking through that mission for you right now, and if you don’t know, I encourage you to go to Life Bridge Capital. I would love to connect with you, whether you’re an investor, whether you’re an operator, you’re trying to get started, we probably have some way to help you, I would love to help you personally, if at all possible. 

Have a blessed day. 

[OUTRO]

0:14:38.6 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.