WS1547: Ways To Become A Successful Entrepreneur | #Highlights

EPISODE 1547

[INTRODUCTION]

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

[INTERVIEW]

WS: Our guest is Dan Rochon, thanks for being on the show Dan.

Dan Rochon (DR): My pleasure Whitney, thank you for having me.

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.

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.

WS: Awesome.

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, a 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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

WS: Wow, you know, let’s jump into 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.

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

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?

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. These are some of the things that I’ve learned from many of my mentors.

[INTERVIEW 2]

WS: Our guest is Todd Palmer. Thanks for being on the show again Todd.

Todd Palmer (TP): Whitney, thanks for tripping me back on.

WS: Yeah, honored to have you back. Todd shared that he received a great response from being on the show before, and I appreciate the listeners being involved and reaching out to guests if you didn’t hear him before, that was show WS 284 Bator not… It came out in August 1st of 2019. It’s hard to blame. It’s been that long ago, but I encourage you to go back and learn a little more about Todd by listening to that show and looking at him up.

But Todd is an executive coach, he’s a keynote speaker, renowned thought leader, author and CEO who is committed to helping business owners tackle their obstacles and clear their path to success. Todd is also the author of the number one international Amazon best seller from suck to success, a guy for extraordinary entrepreneurship. He specialized in helping the Join the mission statement of the organization with their personal core values while addressing fear, self-doubts and impostor syndrome. 

He’s here today to share his story, what he’s learning along the way and his proven framework to helping business owners achieve success. So Todd, welcome again to the show and we’re gonna cover a few specific things today, ’cause you got many, many things I could help our listeners and myself about any updates, just about anything you’re seeing and you’re long of work things that entrepreneurs are really struggling with, maybe just in the current market or anything like that before we dive in.

TP: Sure, well again, thanks so much for having me back on the program, it’s always good to see you and to kinda go with the question that you’re asking, the most successful entrepreneurs I’ve seen in the last 12 to 15 months. We’re recording this in April of 2021, are those are entrepreneurs that have been able to embrace the suck of covid who’ve been able to recognize and realize that if they’re savvy and they’re willing to pivot.

A lot of people, believe it or not, that have been able to pivot into covid and their businesses have actually grown exponentially, for example, you’re talking about my coaching practice, my coaching practice in the last 12 months, month has grown 300%, and I got my book done and I spent more days at home. Now, if you ask my family, that last one, it can be pros or cons, depending on the topic, depending about the homework situation, but it’s really been interesting ’cause I lost six stages in three countries within two weeks.

My main business model of client acquisition was to go and speak from stage to show up in rooms and talk to entrepreneurs and leaders within organizations to help them get on stock around their … Committee and their mindset issues, and their internal struggles with imposter syndrome as well as execution, lost all those… I always tell people, the reality is, I had my own ad bitty shitty committee party for about 48 hours to, I’m like, What am I gonna do? 

But then I doubled down on my purpose, so what I’ve seen, is entrepreneurs would do a really good job as they put their purpose and in an active learning cycle, which we talk about in the book, where they’re able to get themselves unstuck through some self-coaching if they can’t if they don’t have a culture that they can’t afford a coach, and those are the entrepreneurs who’ve done well, like I said, my business has grown 300% because I started volunteering everywhere I could to help leaders get unstuck. 

I talk to 42 CEOS and 67 days. They need to admit this, but it’s true, I got zero clients from it, but what they did is I got 42 salespeople, and those 42 salespeople then evangelize the work we did in 30-minute sessions, and from that I’ve added a dozen clients, literally over that period time due to them, the that the same great things about the work we’ve done together and the work was done for free in a very short compressed period of time.

And is working with a leader last week, for example, we’ve been stuck on a topic for four years, and we got her unstuck in less than three hours. So if we show up as leaders, as we show up as entrepreneurs and we see where we can be of service to others, it may not be exactly like I thought on stage, but with my purpose of improving lives, I was able to do that from screen and be there for other people is those entrepreneurs who recognize that they can do their jobs, they can provide their services in a multitude of different platforms that I’ve seen pivot out of these situations, most successful.

WS: No. That’s incredible. We can learn so much from what you just said, just embracing that, I mean, covid really planted so many entrepreneurs and they just halted not knowing what to do, but those that have just embraced it and figured out a way like yourself, I mean, 300. That’s incredible. Congratulations by the way.

TP: Oh, thank you very much. It’s been joyful to do purposeful work for me is what we’re working at. 12 hours yesterday, and it felt like I only worked six, it was really enjoyable to work helping… This, the leader, I was working with a brand new client, she goes, Yeah, I said, What do you wanna get out of your session today? And she was let… I’d have a couple of epiphanies, we got through the four hours, she’s like, oh my gosh, I’ve unpacked so much, I’ve had a dozen up it and… 

And now I have a plan. I’m now more excited. Kind of keep… call low energy, and now I’m excited to do the work I need to do. To one girl, my… And her business is doing great, what she wanted to do is create work-life integration to grow herself as a leader, the business could then continue to ride the wave of her success, so… Yeah, I’ve got so many positive stories of people coming out of covid, and I think it’s important to spread that message that it’s not just dominoes.

WS: What are some of the differentiators that have really set you apart, or maybe setting apart other entrepreneurs that you’re helping to succeed and push three things like that?

TP: Well, one thing I mentioned to everybody is, there’s one common issue with every business, regardless of the niche, serve, regardless of whether your service-based, manufacturing-based real estate-based. There’s always one issue. And it’s always people. It’s always people. It comes back to people, when I was 600,000 dollars in debt, two months away from running out of or all of my money and losing my house back in 2006, it was a people issue, the people… The person was me. 

We are often the bottlenecks, and our businesses as the leaders and as the entrepreneurs and is the CEOs were often the bottlenecks in our lives, and often what we think it is, so we say it’s a cash issue, for example, well, as a coach, my job is to drill down and figure out, Is it really a cash issue or is it really the people who are spending the cash, is it really the people who didn’t go to the bank meeting, is it really the people who started giving away discounts is great to fighting for margin.

It’s 99-00 times it’s a people issue, and the other one time it’s pretty… more close to acts of God than anything else. I worked with an entrepreneur in the restaurant space, it’s a tough space right now, during covid at 4,000 square feet in San Francisco, very expensive real estate. He pivoted and he was shut down by the government, he couldn’t service customers, you do take out, but I don’t think anybody wants to 75 takeout steak here, it’s a very small market that wants that… 

He pivoted, he got out of that lease. You got in an 800 square foot space and we’re talking… I said, What made you pivot? He said, Well, I wanna serve customers with takeout. Okay, that’s all finding it. Why did you pick this specific area? He’s shocked. We went into high-end pizza, 40 dollars a pie… Nothing it cost like six bucks to me, the margins were off the charts, and he doubled down on his purpose. Did he double down on his Why? Why was I wanted to create a great dating experience for people, and I did that in my restaurant, now I’m just taking that mindset of creating a great dating experience, taking it, and putting it into your home through the Sign-In piece. 

You know, I went from a staff of 28 to a staff of 4, as I did three million dollars in pizza sales last year because people were stuck at home, but he had a learner’s mindset of failing forward mindset, he decided that covid was happening for him, not to him, so he spun out of that by looking within… Just to double down on his purpose, which got a month.

WS: Definitely comes back to people. I’ve learned that a lot, especially over the last couple of years, is what we’ve hired and our team has grown and is trying to figure out who these people should be, what are their talents, what are their skill sets, what are their personalities, who are they? Do they fit? Help us think through that a little bit, thinking through Who our employees are, so we can grow, we can scale. Everybody wants to scale.

Our body says probably one of their biggest problems, right, or things that they wanna scale well, there are so many things behind that, and you’ve talked about numerous of those, but how do we do that, how do we work with those employees, how do we know who they are and maybe you’ve helped numerous people probably with that, what are some keys that you’ve to see.

TP: Sure. So just to create a context for what I’m gonna share is in a recruiting service for 23 years, we had 600,000 dollars in debt and in the 506 times by making a pivot around the human capital space, so I have a little bit of experience for the listener, you breaking into two sections, you’ve got the challenge in acquiring people, locating people, recruiting people, so the current marketplace conditions, as we sit here in April of 2021, the unemployment rate is at 6%, the country is considered full employment when it reaches 4%.

Golden Sax put on a report two weeks ago where they indicated that by December of 2021 will be at 3.2%, so it will be at full employment by those benchmarks, it gets better if it gets worse. The second piece of that is millennials have the highest employment sector of any category measured at 11.2%, so for those people who are maybe in a space where we’ve got a retiring workforce, the gen X’s or baby boomers who are leaving, thinking millennials are gonna be coming in, that’s not gonna happen. 

Millennials work differently, they see the world differently, and a lot of them currently aren’t working, they need through along the labor participation rate, which is at a 52-year low… So 52 years ago, 1952, so before I was born, there are more people working in their area per capita, taking all that into consideration, what you have to do is you have to be unique in how you recruit in the number one source for your next great employee is your current great employee… 

So if you’re putting money out there, for example, for deed ads and recruiter ads, have you considered offering an incentive to your employees to refer their friends that they wanna work with… Now, people say, Well, you know, if I’ve got a terrible employee, do I really want… Here, her terrible friends. Well, of course not, if you have a rockstar employee, rockstars, hang with the rockstar, I was just like, Great doctor is golf with other great doctors, etcetera, etcetera. 

Go to those people, look at how you can attract talent that way, and you do that by being an employer of choice, that’s the key, that’s the secret formula. Why should someone work for you? Do they have a lot of choices right now? And so when we say, Why should someone work for you, what are your core values, and do you live by them, here’s how you know if you live by your core values, are you willing to hire and fire by them? Have you created a culture of psychological safety?

Google’s done a lot of work around this. Do your employees feel… Seen her to know psychological safety. That’s just getting them in the door. Then the next piece is you gotta make sure you take great care of them once you get them in the door, so we break it into two pieces, you gotta be able to recruit them and acquire them, but that’s only half the job once you get them. Then you have to take great care of them.

[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]