WS1456: Achieving Financial Success | #Highlights

EPISODE 1456

[INTRODUCTION]

Whitney Sewell (WS): This is your Daily Real Estate Syndication Show and I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today we have packed a number of shows together to give you some highlights. I know you’re going to enjoy this show. Thank you for being with us today.

 

[INTERVIEW 1]

WS: Our guest is John Rickgarn. Thanks for being on the show John.

 

John Rickgarn (JR): Thank you. Great to be here. 

 

WS: Yeah. Great to have you on the show. Having lost both his parents to cancer in their 50s, John realized a deferred retirement plan might not work for everyone. John started real estate investing in 2016, for the fourplex by pulling money out of his Roth IRA, five years later, he owned several properties across four states and is involved in dozens of other investments and syndication. 

 

John, welcome to the show. What are you paying a little more of a picture there for us so we can understand a little more of your background and let’s jump into your expertise and some of the things that you’re doing with your own personal finances; I think that could help us as well.

 

JR: Sure. Yeah, you already mentioned in my bio, just kind of a quick upbringing of mine, like you said, both my parents passed away of cancer, and my dad when I was 11 years old, and then my mom when I was 16 and… Ironically, it wasn’t till years later, I kinda had my awakening moment, so to speak. I remember in 2014, my wife had just decided to walk away from her job and was looking to go back for a doctorate and become a teacher, she had always dreamed of being a college professor. 

 

So at that time, I was thinking, okay, we’re down to one income. At the time I was in sales, so you think, okay, gonna sell more, work more hours, work longer to work harder, and just was kind of thinking like, well, financially, we’re sitting pretty good, we have a lot of money in our IRAs and 401Ks. And it just kinda hit me right there, I remember I was just sitting on my couch and I was thinking, well, what if I don’t make it to age 65? And I was thinking about my parents, they passed away in their 50s, and then I was thinking, well, what’s the point of saving all this money to a deferred lifestyle later on that necessarily isn’t guaranteed.

 

And at the time, I was thinking, okay, I’m 31. If I was to essentially relive my entire life all that time period, then I’d be 62, that’d be 40, 50, 60 hours a week, and I still wanna be at the arbitrary retirement age that everyone says you should do. So it was kind of at that point like, Okay, I need to do something different, I need to find something else that works. Other than just working at a job 40, 50, 60 hours a week for the rest of my life.

 

WS: What were some of the first steps that you took, I believe we all have to have almost that aha moment at some point, right, and see that something’s gonna have to change. We gotta do something different that maybe everyone around us at that time anyways, doing or things that we should do often. So what were some of the first things there that helped you to say, okay, I’ve got to change the way I’m thinking about my finances? And what did you do? 

 

JR: Yeah. At the time, it was kind of the old adage, you don’t know what you don’t know at that point. So just random Google searches, how to make extra money in, and initially it was kind of, Well, this is a side hustle. Here’s something you do in your spare time, and which isn’t bad, but you’re still training time for dollars. Somewhere along the line, I came across a podcast, and at the time, like I said, I was in sales, so it wasn’t uncommon to put 150-250 miles a day on the road, so I started just downloading podcasts. 

 

I know there was one by Mac Theriot that I first came across and then get rich education with Keith Winehold, then just kinda start building there for learning about real estate, really like the buy-in, holon got introduced to passive income where you’re not trading time for dollars, you have money coming in from rents and dividends and interest on a monthly basis.

 

WS: Tell the listener a little about how you view what we were talking about before we started recording a little bit, but elaborating a little bit on instead of having this dollar amount per month for passive and how you have your stepping stones to cover expenses.

 

JR: I can’t remember where I first heard it, but several podcast webinars, I’ve listened to, 10,000 dollars a month seems to be the quote and quote magic number that everybody goes for passive income, and I first heard that. It’s like, okay, 10,000 dollars a month, 120,000 a year. That’s about when I make working 60 hours a week. So it just kind of seemed impossible to get that for, you know, from a passive income standpoint. 

 

Later on, I started working on an Excel sheet and looked at, Okay, what are my fixed monthly expenses every single month, not food, not gas, not the ones that change for a month, a month, but your rent, your mortgage, your car insurance, ones that typically are the same month to month, and I noticed, okay, the smallest one is my Netflix bill, so 13 bucks a month. Can I get an asset that would provide 13 bucks a month passive income, and basically take care of that monthly expense. 

 

Soon after, Fundraise, it’s a crowd funded real estate syndication platform for non-accredit investors, started investing in that and then I actually came to 30, 40, 50 bucks a month eventually, so then that took care of Netflix and a couple other bills, and just kind of worked it from there. I would identify a bill, take the monthly amount and figure it out from an annual standpoint and okay, what’s an investment that could pay this bill coming up next? 

 

WS: I think it’s interesting to think about it that way. And you know, checking those bills off. Okay, this one’s covered by passive… Now, this one’s covered by passive income, or what’s my next investment that can cover this next bill here and even some goal setting there thinking through it like that. What were some of your first investments possibly? You talked about Fundrise, now maybe you’ve invested in some syndications, what were some of your thought processes there as far as getting started passively investing?

 

JR:  Yeah. The biggest thing was just for me, just kind of starting small and building up from there, also, it isn’t available now by Lending Club, used to be a platform that investors could pool their money together, and then for as low as 25 dollars, you would actually buy a portion of a note or a portion of a promissory note, and then it would give monthly and come from there. Fortunately, that’s phased out, but there’s a couple other platforms that are still available. 

 

I started working on just like I said, the smaller ones from Fundrise. Realty Mogul and then dive into, like you said, my first four plex in 2016, this kind of two steps with that one of my mentors mentioned, hey, you’ve been putting a lot of money in your 401k, why don’t you just cut that back down to what you get for the match? So I cut that back from about 15% down to 6, and that allowed for some extra funds for investing, and after listening to podcast it’s thinking, Okay, I wanna look for a newer property in 1990s are newer, newer roof, newer citing 1% rule, etcetera, etcetera.

 

My wife even said, Yeah, you’re never gonna find that. And ironically, we did. But it happened to be a four-plex. And initially I was thinking, Okay, there’s no way I can afford this. And I remember a quote from Robert Kiyosaki, he always said, Don’t say I can’t afford this. Ask, how can I afford this? And just put my thinking cap, I was doing some research, and our advisor at the time said, you know, you’ve had your Roth IRA since you were 19, you can take your contributions outright. 

 

Which I didn’t know, I thought you just kept that until you were retired, so what the inner Dave Ramsey and… Susy Ormand just screaming, do not touch your IRA. I actually took the money out of my Roth IRA and that was the down payment for my fourplex and… Yeah, that was five years ago and just a built on that ever since. 

 

WS: Nice, well, what was the change in mindset from or why not to just continue buying more four plexes, maybe you are, but instead of thinking more towards just being passive or investing in syndication…

 

JR:  Yeah, the fourplex who just kinda fell into… We have worked with the real estate major at the time. Like I said, the numbers worked out good, pretty new property, and back in 2016, the inventory was a little bit higher and prices weren’t quite out of, quite as out of control as they are today. From there… Got wind of a duplex, it was for sale, that was an off-market one that we decided to go after two years later. And back in 2019, then we did a road trip, learned about what’s called turnkey investing, where you buy a single family property from a company where it’s fixed up, got a tenant in it, ready to go. 

 

And we kinda did things in reverse, we started with the fourplex, so I went to single family versus single family than going building up to a fourplex. 

 

WS: Yeah. So what are your thoughts now on buying more smaller multi-family or things like that versus passive investing?

 

JR: Yeah, I’ve looked at a couple… I’m actually just last week, I was on a road trip down at Iowa, checked out a couple of markets down there, tend to go after the boring market, so to speak, where cash flow comes in consistently. I’m not an appreciation investor, I’d figure that’s more of icing on the cake versus trying to chase some double digit year after year return like a Dallas Fort Worth or a Tampa Bay or some of the other crazy markets, so the other investors are going after, and since my goal is to have bills paid for by passive income appreciation equity isn’t gonna pay those bills… 

 

WS: Yeah. Well, I know a big part of something you like to do is the networking component, tell me about how you’re doing that. Networking with other investors.

 

JR: Yeah, it started with a real estate conference in Indianapolis back in 2018, ironically networked with some investors that were in Fargo, North Dakota, just about four hours north of where I live, I’m actually invested with them on a couple of projects, listen to their podcast. They had some people that they were interviewing reached out to them, and it just kind of snowballed from there where… From LinkedIn invites, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. I think the old adage, we’re all six degrees separation from everyone else on this planet. 

 

And kinda more you network, then you hear more of other people and come across recommended connections, if you have 16, 20, 50 connections and common… And just kind of snowballs from there. And I’d like to bounce off ideas with other investors and others reach out to me as well. 

 

WS: Speak to the… Just the infinite returns thought, tax deferred stuff. Maybe you can elaborate a little more on that. 

 

JR: So it was a book of Andy Tanners, introduced me to infinite returns, kind of on a basic level. About 100 dollars into an investment. You earn 10 on the investment. That’s a 10% return on your money. If you put in 50 and you borrow 50, still gained 10%. That’s a 10% return on that investment, but it’s a 20% return on your money or what you’ve put into the deal. The rest of it is borrowed, and if you get down to the point where you’ve invested money. 

 

If someone in my Roth IRA, you take out the contributions, you’re just investing with the earnings, or if you’re a poker player, you’re playing with house money, since you have none of your money in that deal, that’s what’s called an infinite return that you really can’t factor in a return of that money. You have none of your own money in that, and that’s how I built some of my investment streams over the years, back to the Lending Club, and example, I would take out a 0% transfer offer from my credit card, invest those notes, pay the moment payments, roll that over 12 months later. 

 

Just kept compounding it. Early 2018, I took out my contributions and basically everything that was left in there was borrowed money from my transfer offers, fast forward to 2019, I paid off that loan and now it’s just a residual income stream for me of infinite returns with none of my own money in it.

 

WS: Wow. Okay, what about your just outlook for financial freedom for yourself, do you have a timeline? Is you’re thinking about those bills, are you thinking about different ways you’re investing or some thoughts on how you’re investing to get there as fast as possible.

 

JR: I wouldn’t say fast as possible, I’m kind of at tortoise versus the hair, the tortoise eventually wins. Slow and steady wins the race… My goal though, is to be financially free by 2030, obviously if it comes sooner, even better, had to take a little step back with… Last year we had the covid 2020 that impacted us all, and inventory for rental real estate is a little tight right now, as much as I’d like to keep building up my round portfolio, I’m not gonna buy something just for the sake of buying… 

 

It still has to meet my criteria, so whether that takes an extra six months or a year, so be it. I’d rather get something that, it’s my criteria versus us buying something for the sake of buying and are hoping for appreciation.

 

[INTERVIEW 2]

 

DAVID ROBINSON (DR): Our guest is Bryce Robertson. Bryce, how’re you doing today? 

 

0:00:49

BRYCE ROBERTSON (BR): I’m fantastic, Dave. Thanks, mate. 

 

0:00:51

DR: Yeah. Bryce, also known as “Your Real Estate Mate”, is an Aussie-born real estate investing entrepreneur, number one international best-selling author, world traveler, and adventurer. He has raised millions of dollars and a culmination of success in mobile home park investing. Bryce lives the freedom trinity of financial, time, and location freedom. Bryce is also the host of the YouTube channel and video podcast, Freedom Hack Radio, co-author of “10000 Miles to the American Dream”, writes weekly articles for BiggerPockets, and has the number one top-selling mobile home park investing and capital-raising home study courses. So, Bryce, obviously, you’ve accomplished a lot in the world of real estate, and we’re excited to get into your story and to your unique ability.

 

Many people get stuck in that zone of learning and educating, and learning and educating, and they never take enough action to get that first deal on a contract. What helped you to break through that?

DR: Just determination, man. Really the main motivating drive is these two — what I started off with and that was that I had a day job and I didn’t wanna have a day job anymore. I didn’t enjoy it anymore. I’d been in that career for about 20 years, I want it out. I felt like a slave. I wanted freedom. So that drove me really, really hard, so that meant that I had to work even harder to work myself out of that situation. So I was very driven. I really didn’t know all of the steps that I needed to take. I went out there, I dropped $30,000 on a mentoring and education program, which ended up being essentially pretty useless. We didn’t really learn anywhere near or get that much value out of it. But I suppose essentially, we did in some other capacities out of a mentor, that was my on-speed mentor, ready for me for any real estate challenges. So I had found a park, I wanted to put it on a contract, and I told you what my circumstances are — I had a negative net worth, $2000 in the bank, unseasoned credit.

BR: So I called up my mentor, no answer. Kept calling, no answer. So I called the people from the organization and said, “Hey, I need my mentor”. So finally a day later, he gets back to me. He says, “Hey, what do you wanna do? You wanna put this park on the contract? You got a negative net worth, $2000 in the bank, unseasoned credit.” He said, “You’re dreaming kiddo. It’s never gonna happen. You’re not gonna do it. Why don’t you just come back down to the club and do a little single-family deal like everybody else?”

I literally just hung up the phone and I never called that guy back ever again. And that was my second motivation. I was like: Yeah, dude, you’re gonna tell me, I can’t do that? Watch me. Right now, I’m gonna do it. So I ended up calling on one of my other mobile home park, I suppose, mentor,  someone who had a lot of success in the mobile home space. He said, “What? You’ve got a park? But under any circumstances, do you have it on a contract?” I’m like, “No.” “Dude, you need to put that under a contract. I’m gonna send you a contract right now.” Boom! I put it on a contract. All I knew was what the next step was. I didn’t know how I was gonna raise the capital. I didn’t know how I was gonna do all the due diligence. I just knew that I needed to get it on a contract. So I did that. And then once I got on the contract, I’m like: Alright, what’s the next step? I need to do inspections. I need to take a deeper dive there.

BR: We do need to do that. Boom! But there — and we need to get financing. We need to raise capital. And I just took it step by step. If I had a setback and thought about how I was gonna do all of those steps, I probably would have just said the same thing as my mentor and told myself I was dreaming. But I didn’t wanna do that. And so I just took it step by step.

DR: Yeah, and thanks for sharing that because there are so many that get stuck in this analysis paralysis phase because they look at the entire project. It’s daunting to think about everything that goes into taking down one of these bigger deals. I’ve found a thread of consistency among those that really take massive action early on, and it’s just that — it’s focusing on the one step that’s in front of them, and then the next step after that, not getting overwhelmed by the entire complexity of the deal. I love that you mentioned early on that after you got this first deal under your belt, anything was possible. You were standing 10-feet tall. Talk to us about that moment in your life and in this journey for you. And what kind of impact it had on your trajectory moving forward?

BR: There’s a monumental shift. It busted any myths or doubts that I had about myself, about what was possible. Because even though my determination on the inside of me was saying: Screw you to my previous mentor and that I was gonna go out there and prove it, I still don’t know how I was gonna do it.

BR: And when I actually did it and I achieved it, I looked back and I was like: Wow! That wasn’t even that hard, especially if I compare the, I suppose the slavery that I went through for the 20 years before and how hard I had to work in a career just to earn money to live essentially paycheck to paycheck. And then I looked at what I did in a short few-month period and how much that changed my life financially. And that if I could compound that and do a couple of deals like that a year and just like, the possibilities are endless. So fast forward, I kept on going. I kept on syndicating deals. And then after two and a half years, my wife and I were fortunate enough to be able to retire ourselves and become financially free. I looked at that and I’m just like: Wow, two and a half years compared to 20 years? And it was much easier to do it in real estate and business. Even though culture or our mind would tell us that it’s so much harder, but it’s actually significantly easier to do these entrepreneurial things, in my opinion, than it is to wake up at 5:30 in the morning.

 

BR: Go to the daily grind. Do something you don’t really wanna do. You have to ask your boss for time off and then just have the thought of doing that for the rest of your life. It was just an absolute no-brainer to me. So that when we became financially free, I then became very, very compelled to share my experience so other people could replicate it. They don’t necessarily have to do it in the mobile home park space, but just: Hey! Here’s what I did in two and a half years. It wasn’t actually that hard compared to what all of you are doing there on a daily basis, and just kind of screaming from the treetops that you can live free. I truly believe that anybody listening to this podcast or watching this on video, you can absolutely have financial freedom and live free.

DR: Love that. And that’s a great segue into this topic of what you call the freedom trinity: financial, time, and location freedom. Maybe you could just talk to us about what that means to you.

BR: Yeah. So essentially, that was something that I was trying to achieve in the beginning before I was even an entrepreneur. Traveling around the world is to have time and location freedom and just be anywhere. Do what I wanna do and enjoy my life. I never had the financial aspect nailed. So when we were focusing on getting all of this started in America, that was the focus. It was the financial component. But once we became financially free, now a massive weight was lifted off our shoulders. And I realized I don’t have to work anymore. I can work if I want to work. I can do what I wanna do. And then, now I have free time. 

See, a lot of people, they might be financially successful, but they don’t have any spare time to do anything. They’re essentially slaves to their business, slaves to creating wealth. In my opinion, that’s not freedom. Sometimes we have to do that for a short condensed period of time to get to the next level. Sometimes I still do that and I obsess with work for a short period of time. But I know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel because I want time freedom as well. Because ultimately, what’s the point of making all of this money? It’s not about things we can buy, it’s about the experiences we can have or what we can do because money is no longer an issue or a limitation.

Then it became: Well, okay, I’ve got the time to do what I wanna do, and I’ve got the financial freedom to have the capacity to do things financially. Now I wanna be able to do this from wherever I wanna be. And so the next step was to set up so they didn’t have to be dependent on being somewhere in a specific location. Let me give an example of the Freedom Trinity and how this worked in my life. So in the beginning of 2019, my wife and I were going to a surfing trip down in Costa Rica. It was meant to be for three weeks. We’re gonna go down there. Do a little bit of surfing, check out some properties, maybe open up some kind of backpackers hostel or something like that, check out some real estate. We’ve got about 10 days into it. We’re like, now the opportunity that we thought, it is in the vibe we’re looking for. And so my wife said, “Well, let’s go down to Chile”. We’re gonna go down South America. So we got a plane ticket. We went down to South America. We started hiking in Patagonia. We went to Argentina. 

Next thing you know, we spent three months in South America and had an absolutely amazing time. We’re in the Amazon jungle trekking. It was phenomenal. And then after about three months being in South America, my wife says, “Hey, you know it’s really cool, and we could stay in South America, but I’d really love to go to Europe right now. I just found some kick-ass plane tickets to France. You can surf over there, let’s go over there.” She got me hooked on that, “Hey-you-can-go-surfing-over-there”. Funny thing is, we got there, I never even went up surfing. But we ended up spending three months in Europe, traveling around wineries, eating at Michelin-star restaurants, staying in castles, have an absolutely amazing time. And the interesting thing was, when we started out, we were gonna spend three weeks. We ended up spending six months. We went to 20 countries. While we did that, I launched my book, I launched new investments, I was building my business as I was away. I was probably working somewhere between half of a day to two days a week and traveling all over the world having these amazing thing experiences, but yet still growing my business at the same time. And so that was a real-life example of how the Freedom Trinity showed up for us in our life. 

DR: That’s great. And I want to bridge the gap a little bit, or maybe just give the listeners some context. When you first started focusing on mobile home parks, got yourself educated, and took down that first deal, give us some context as far as the time frame. How long ago was that when you took on your first mobile home park deal?

 

BR: That was 2015.

 

DR: Okay, perfect. So, look at this, here we are two years into it. So, by roughly 2017, you’re financially free. In 2019, you have yourself in a position to be able to take a trip that was supposed to be three weeks, turns into six months and your business didn’t skip a beat. What a wonderful example of what this business can do for those that really want to put their head down and make it happen. I’m wondering, in the time that we have left, if you wouldn’t mind just sharing some practical strategies or tactics that you’ve used in your business that’s helped you achieve what you’ve been able to achieve.

 

BR: Everything revolves around self-development. It’s not that I have the skills of understanding how to do transactional deals like, yeah, that helps, but it’s only like 20% of what we need to know. It’s in understanding how to solve problems. It’s understanding how to be the man you need to be or the woman you need to be to communicate what you need to communicate to effectively achieve what you need to achieve. It’s all about self-development. So really, for me, I’m on a continuous path of peeling layers of an onion to get over my own shortcomings, to continue working through that.  I mean, it’s something that’s probably gonna continue for the entire rest of my life. And it’s really just spending a lot of time — I like to read books, I like to meditate, I do take a lot of courses. I like to have conversations with friends on these kinds of topics. I search a lot on the internet and I watch a lot of videos. I’m just always continuously learning, and we instinctively know what’s the biggest block for us right now. What’s the one thing that if we change in this given moment right now that would have the biggest compound effect of positivity in our life. And if any of us are honest with ourselves, we can just stop, close our eyes and breathe for a couple of minutes and we all know what that is. And so that’s what we need to work on.

 

BR: That’s what we need to change. That’s what we need to shift, and as soon as we nail that, we move on to the next thing. In the beginning, I came from Australia where we have tons of slang in Australia. So my communication was completely off. I would be telling jokes to people when I first got to America. I’d get to the punch line, I thought it was awesome. And then people will be looking at me googly-eyed, “Dude, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. You’ve lost me like five minutes ago.” So I had to literally change my whole vocabulary. Then I had to learn all the business and investing language. So, there’s just a lot to learn, a lot that we need to do. 

 

But these stories about some… Donald Trump, for example, became a billionaire and then he went to zero, became bankrupt, and then he went to a billionaire like that overnight because he’d already built the connections. He’d already established who he is as a business person, so he had the capacity to communicate. Have the resources to do all of these things, and that’s really what makes us successful entrepreneurs. It’s building that foundation of who we are, how we communicate, how we can handle stress, how we can handle things, how we can solve problems, and continually growing to be better people.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

 

[OUTRO]

 

Whitney Sewell: Thank you for being with us again today. I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. I hope you’re telling your friends about Real Estate Syndication Show and how they can also build wealth in real estate. You can also go to LifeBridgeCapital.com and start investing today. 

 

[END]

ntry, making it difficult to do it early in the morning, right? We do it at 10:00 AM Eastern time, so that way, everybody else, if you know the one that’s on a specific time, is not always in the Pacific. Sometimes they’re in the mountain, sometimes in central, so their time fluctuates between seven and 8:00 AM depending on where they’re at. But everybody else, it’s like 8:00 AM or 9:00 AM or 10:00 AM, right? The earlier, the better if everybody’s in eastern time, where everybody’s in the same time zone. And it would make this a lot easier, but either way, get it done, right? Try not to have more than 15 people per huddle. If you have a large organization, start doing them. Tightening it down, right? Per division or couple divisions. Spin on how large they are, right? So do it, zoom. As we’re all having so many Zoom meetings, I encourage you that the video needs to be on. Like it’s a rule in our organization. Hey, the video needs to be on. It would help if you came prepared. And you need to be dressed and prepared as well. You’re not there in your bathrobe. Your day is started, and you are ready to go. All right? 

WS: So, the purpose of this meeting, there are many purposes, but it’s going to be quick, right? Or everybody’s going to share three things. Everybody’s going to be done like the entire meeting will be done within 15, maybe 20 minutes. In the beginning, you’re going to start tightening that down more and more. You’re going to figure out, in the beginning, yes, it’s, you know, people are learning, your team’s learning the agenda and how to flow through it. But over some time, it’s going to speed up, and you’re going to start seeing some benefits, and your entire team is going to start seeing some benefits. Some are gonna push against it in the beginning. Another meeting, are you kidding? We’ve all heard that, right? We’ve thoughted of ourselves like I was talking about earlier. However, it’s crucial. I found this meeting to be very beneficial.

WS: All right, so here are the three things that you’re going to talk about. Everybody individually is going to talk about these three things. All right? So number one, you’re going to share a success. What is the success from maybe the day before? Or, if it’s Monday morning, what was the weekend’s success? And it would be best if you even encouraged your team members to share personal successes. That is fine, all right? It just encourages better culture and caring about each other’s families and what they’re up to with their children. And it encourages or helps you as a leader to know more about what they care about, right? And who they are. It allows you to follow up later during another one-on-one meeting. Hey, how did that go over the weekend? Tell me more about that. Or how’s little Johnny’s soccer game going? Or whatever, right? It shows you care about them, and I hope you do care about them, right? But you want to note those important things to your team, right? No doubt. They have to know you care about them. If you don’t care, they’re not going to care about you either, okay? And they’re going to go somewhere else. So I hope you do actually care about your team. All right, so a success. What is something that happened? And I’ll return to that a little more in just a moment. 

WS: But then you’re going to share, and right after that, you’re going to share your focus for the day. What’s your focus? All right? And so then, guess what? Tomorrow you could even follow up on what your focus was yesterday. That could be your success for tomorrow or the next day, right? But it may be something different, which is fine, right? But it could just get your groove going, right? You get to tell everybody about a success that you had. And again, It could be something personal, it could be something that doesn’t have to be business, but it could be either one. All right.

WS: So then, that next thing is that focus. What are you focused on today? What is the main thing that’s going to make today a success? If you get that done, what is that? Do you know? I hope that you know what it is. Remember, not just the meeting, but it’s made you and each of your team members think about that, Right? Which doesn’t often enough and is something I’ve started doing again. I’ve done it in the past for years and got away from it. It’s journaling, and I’ll do another show on that soon because I’ve also changed the way I’m doing that. Again, if you would like to hear more things like this, I would love to hear from you. Email us info@LifeBridgeCapital. Please tell us what you would like me to talk about on the podcast. Or any ways that we’re growing or organizing our business or operating, I’d love to share it with you. What are you struggling with right now? And let us know so I can help you with how we’re doing it. I may not be an expert in it, but I will do my best. So focus, man. They’re sharing their focus, right? It helps them to think ahead of the meeting. What is my focus for today? Most likely, they’ve even written it. In preparing for the meeting, I hope they have. Right? And it allows you, as a leader, to hear those things, right? You can hear what each team member is focused on. 

WS: All right.  We’ve all heard about the ship analogy, right? Set off going down out in the ocean. Well, obviously, you can’t see. See very far where you can see a long way, but you can’t see land, right? For a long time. If you’re just going across the Atlantic or the Pacific or whatever. However, you have to be on track, right? You get off one degree, and it’s going to take days to get across the ocean. Do you think you’re going to hit your target? You’re not, okay? However, it’s only one degree. It’s a slight deviation from the target, but the faster you turn back on target, you have saved so much time. If you go for days that one degree off, well, suddenly, you are way off track. Way off track. But if you only go a day, maybe a half day, or maybe an hour, let’s say it’s one day. In this case, since we’re talking about that daily huddle, you suddenly realize, Oh, we are off track. Well, you have saved so much time. Course correcting right then as opposed to waiting another week, right? Or month. Okay. So think about your team’s focus. What is each one of them focused on that day? And it allows you to say, Wait a minute, I didn’t know. I knew John was focused on this. I thought he was focused on this. Or it allows you to make a mental note, or hopefully, you’re writing it down so you can follow up later with John and say, Hey, John, I noticed you said you were focused on this thing, but I really think that this is probably, should probably be your priority right now. Or is there to ask questions, right? Is there a reason you’re focused on that versus this other thing you and I discussed? Okay. Think about that. There’s so much value in that few seconds of your employees sharing what they’re focused on today.

WS: The next thing they’re going to share about it, you’ll share about the third thing. The final thing is what they’re stuck on, right? So you said success, focus, and stuck. What are you stuck on? Again, this allows you to share what you’re stuck on. Well, maybe somebody else on the team can speak up and say, Hey, I can help you with that. Right? Or I know how to do that. I have that thing you’re looking for. Oh, yeah. So I used to do that. There are all kinds of things that come up like that that you wouldn’t know otherwise that this individual’s stuck on, and immediately, hey, you can meet with them for five minutes after the meeting and say, hey, yes, this is how I used to do that. Or, oh, I have that thing, right? And then, all of a sudden, they’ve not stuck anymore. 

WS: Think about the momentum that’s being picked up by helping that individual move forward. Your team member is no longer stuck. They’re focused on the next thing now, right? So think about that. Where are you stuck? Every once in a while, we’ll share. Hey, I don’t feel stuck right now. Most likely, they’re probably somewhere we’re stuck, right? In some way. But I encourage you to push through and think about that. Where are you stuck? Okay? So just remember, and I’m reading this now out of the book. It’s page 182, the third paragraph after the headline, the daily huddle. I want to give Don credit for this. The purpose of the huddle is to quickly run through what is happening with each person, right? The simple format is that each person takes a turn reporting on there— he says two key numbers, so I’ll go through that another time talking about key numbers. But ultimately, what are they responsible for? And do they even know? Are they hitting those key numbers, right? And they’re going to talk about their successes, what they’re focused on today, and what they might be stuck on. 

WS: So Don lays that out, and it’s very simple, but it’s very impactful. Okay, to you, your team, the direction that you’re taking as a team. And what I found among our team members, we desire to have a better culture, as we desire to have better communication, right? That is the goal here, in a massive way, is better communication. And this meeting has helped with that in a big way. People get to see each other, right? Since we’re all virtual, I talked about that. We’re all over the country. We could barely see each other in person, right? My assistant, whom I’ve met in person twice. All right. And one time was just a couple of months ago at a conference where she and a few other team members and I met at the same conference. The time before that was I just happened to be in the state that she lived in, looking at a property like a week before we were hiring her. She’d already been through the hiring process, and I didn’t even know I was gonna be there when she was going through the hiring process. Think about that. When you’re all virtual, you’re all so segmented that you need some FaceTime, right? You don’t have that water cooler time because you’re all in the same office walking by, and you say, Hey, how are you doing? What happened to you over the. Right. You don’t. You don’t get that too often.

WS: Before we started some of the very structured meetings, we actually did a thing called a water cooler meeting every other week. We would get together as a team for like 30 minutes on Zoom, and there would be no agenda, okay? On purpose, no agenda. You just show up. Hey, what’s happening with you? How is your weekend? What’s going on? How is this going? Right? And started asking questions. I think that was helpful. It’s helpful not to have a business agenda, right? Professional agenda where we’re talking about the business. Cause we had other meetings for that. But just a time where you could just kind of talk about whatever, right? There’s no pressure. 

WS: And so we’re not doing that now because we’ve implemented a number of other meetings that are helping us as a team to communicate, get more face time, and build more relationships internally. So important, right? People get to know each other, their families and children, and what they’re up to. And this is just another way to do that. But remember, we stick to that agenda. And even as a leader, I encourage you to, and I did this initially. You always start it, so you go first. You kind of set the pace, right? Here’s my success. Here’s my focus. Here’s what I’m stuck on, and it takes like 30 seconds, roughly, maybe a minute if you really have something that you need to dive into, or maybe a minute and a half, but hopefully, you’re squeezing that down as you’re setting that example, right? And you may even share that. 

WS: Remind your team when the meeting starts. Hey, just remember we’re going through this quickly. Everybody should be done within 15 minutes. We’re going to succeed, focus stuck, and you’re going to be tempted. Remember, the leader and other team members will be tempted too to rush in and try to solve problems right now. And that is not the focus. That is not the intention of this meeting. There are other times to do that. It is not time to solve problems and have a massive discussion. An issue or somewhere where somebody’s stuck or focused. You could, as a leader, and I do this sometimes as somebody says, Oh, well, I’m stuck on this thing, and I’ll say, Hey, okay, John, you and I, let’s follow up right after this meeting for five minutes, okay? Or, Hey, make sure we talk about that today when you and I meet one-on-one. All right? Or, Hey, we three should meet about this. Thing after the meeting or tomorrow when we talk, let’s talk about that, right? Or, there could be something quick like that as the leader, right? So you don’t forget. Hopefully, you have an assistant that’s on there as well, and maybe they’re even taking some notes. 

WS: That’s something you can do. We do that during other meetings more so than the huddle. I may have a scribe, right? I may be leading the meeting, but I have a assistant. Really scribing and taking notes and to-dos. Things that people need. I need to follow up with other people or have meetings. 

WS: But remember that this huddle is just about connecting, right? And seeing what everybody’s focused on. Letting everybody talk about his success and get motivated about the day, but also sharing what they’re stuck on so they can get some help, right? Or you can help them as a leader. I hope that you are experiencing a lot of growth. I know I am, but I am constantly pushing towards that. I’m reading and seeing what other businesses are doing. What did they do to other businesses that have quickly experienced a large amount of growth like we are? And even some of the best, maybe they didn’t grow as fast, but right now, they’re very large, and they’ve had to instill ways to operate that keep the ball moving forward, right? For all the divisions, all the departments. And how do they do that? And so I’m trying to figure all that out. And so as you grow, you figure out, hey, your role as the leader, founder, CEO, President, whatever you call yourself, Hey, that changes. Initially, you were doing all those things and probably not very well. Okay? There may be one or two things that you’re really good at, and then the rest of you just kind of muddle through. 

WS: Well, guess what? As you grow, you’re finding people in those other things. Right? And even in the things you’re good at, you’re building that team, right? And you may still be in charge of that team, but most likely the other things. Hopefully, you have hired people that are a lot better at those things than you ever were, and it ever would be, right? I have. We have done that now. Sam and I have hired numerous people who are better at things than we ever were in numerous parts of the business, right? And then my role is changing, right? It’s changing into managing people, right? Hiring the right people and really thinking about, Hey, where’s LifeBridge going? What’s our vision for a year from now? Or three years from now? How are we going to get there? Right? That is a big part of my job now and in culture, right? Building culture. Caring about our people and ensuring that’s happening, right? And that we actually do care about them. Because we do, we do really care about our people.

WS: So I don’t want to keep hammering this. Still, man, it’s so important, again, as you’re growing and, and I hope even as a passive investor that you know about the people that you’re investing with, that they’re doing these things, that they care about their people, that they have figured out ways to communicate well and operate well, that they may not have it all figured out just yet. None of us really do. Right? All of it. However, I hope they’re striving. Right. Are they encouraging education for themselves and others on their team, and are they growing? How do they communicate? It’d be a good question as a passive investor before investing with somebody: Hey, what does your team communication look like, right? How does that work? Even with your management company, your different departments.  

WS: I hope that you have a blessed day. Again, I would love to hear from you. If there are other parts of this you would like me to talk about, please email us [email protected]. We would love to hear from you. I would love to share more things with you that I am learning. I would love to know what those specific things are for you so I can nail down on Just that. Have a blessed day. We’ll talk to you soon.

[OUTRO]

Whitney Sewell: Thank you for being with us again today. I hope that you have learned a lot from the show. Don’t forget to like and subscribe. I hope you’re telling your friends about the Real Estate Syndication Show and how they can also build wealth in real estate. You can also go to LifeBridgeCapital.com and start investing today.

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