Episode 22 – Avoiding Stagnation, Maintaining Focus, Staying Hunters

 

What is up everybody? It is Friday doing another pints with Pat and we are getting consistent as hell with this and it feels good. So I’m live on Facebook right now to usually I go live halfway through but I want to go live this time right away because the cigar and whiskey knife that I’ve been talking about every Friday. 

 

It’s finally happening tonight. We got seven people coming. Seven people coming at 200 bucks of pop, so. Raising 1400 bucks for best buddies tonight and it’s gonna be really fun. Talked about it earlier this week and at best buddies in an interview. I know I’m kind of beating the dead horse with it, but while he’s strategic philanthropy thing. 

 

I’m doing stuff. I like doing and it’s fun and my wife can’t give me shit for drinking whiskey and smoke and cigars and talking real estate in the backyard because we’re doing it to raise money for a good cause. So looking forward to it, if you still have any interest in doing any of the events coming up both the cigar and whiskey tonight. 

 

S are completely packed out but we may be doing another surprise one on all these boat and if they go really well, I may do another one in my backyard. So if you have any interest in doing that shoot me a text or doing 200 bucks a pop and a hundred percent of it goes to best buddies and all the cigars and whiskey, the whiskey this time was donate donated by a manifest distillery in downtown. 

 

Jacksonville those guys are awesome. We’ve had a bunch of events there, they’re phenomenal. They donated a bottle of rye and a bottle of bourbon, so we’ll be drinking. Kind of drinking that showcasing them tonight. Caroline went out bought a bunch of cigars the sunsets have been awesome the past couple nights so tonight it’s gonna be awesome. 

 

Once again, if you have any interest in being a part of any of that or if you just want to donate straight up go for it, this is my first time doing a fundraising thing like this. So it’s been an experience going from a place of. Yeah I was talking in the the best buddies interview the other day, I would much rather just yellow bird just write a $5,000 check and kind of be done with it and that’s that’s our giving but this is forced me out of my comfort zone to a place that I’m not you know, I don’t feel great about which is asking people for money for charity but we’re we’re making it work in a cool way we’re getting people out and it’s it becomes a win-win-win because I’m doing stuff. 

 

I like to do smoking cigars and drinking whiskey talking real estate. The guys that paid to come. Tonight are going to get great insights from Kyle. Steve won’t be there tonight. Steve will be at the next one. So. They’re gonna get they’re gonna get a ton of value way more than 200 bucks worth of value and they’re gonna come to that and and best buddies gets money donated to him, so it really is a win-win when for everybody we got their D. 

 

Yeah I know I will hit you up for that date. I promise we’ll do a dinner our charcuterie board or something next time so yeah any other suggestions or if you want to get involved in these events anymore let me know but I’m gonna go off live now and we’re gonna continue on we’re gonna continue on with the podcast so I said I guess since there’s a few people watching right now kind of tell you the whole point of doing this podcast as I just it’s really just a kind of an audio log of what’s going on with us each week and Was really consistent within 2019 and then fell off a little bit but now we’re getting back into it and it’s really cool to go back to the ones I was doing in 2019 and really see like where my head was at and what our weaknesses were both at yellow bird how the week was what we bought any houses whether we you know did a good job or messed everything up and what I what I felt good or bad about so it’s really cool to look back through and and it forces progress to. 

 

You know, it forces forces you to not stay stagnant. 

 

So I got guys so thanks for watching and if you have any interest or any you know, any input on the podcast or anything, we’re where we met on the podcast is on it’s just on the podcast app and Apple right we should be on just about every single one out there, whether it be Amazon just I think has a podcast one they just released us on we’re on Google buzz sprout. 

 

Spotify cool iTunes, okay, so we’re on everything so you can find this place with that usually a drink beer today. I’m drinking coffee just. After tonight with some whiskey Jake  shoot Caroline a message Jake and we’ll get you on the next one if anyone has any interest just direct message. 

 

Caroline or me Caroline’s running the best buddies campaign and thanks everybody for watching if you want to listen listen in on any of those podcast apps talk to you soon. All right so this week what I want to talk about this week connect was last night had to talk with everybody in the office the paint everyone’s on the same page that it was a it was kind of a dud last night the first one with the new software kicked off really well and we had great momentum but I feel like we kind of got a little stagnant in our promotion of it and execution of it so last night also was kind of a done so we’re canceling connect. 

 

For now to focus focus internally on what we got going on. And try to fix some things and marketing and just put people in the right spot so what we talked about this morning was, you know more time management it has been an issue for me personally. I haven’t been able to give the attention and comments that I need to give to the stuff that goes on during the day, whether it be a deal that’s coming in or a how to talk on a phone call or connect because I’ve just been you know took last weekend. 

 

I went to Colorado and just, Missing two days put me so far behind it’s not an excuse but I I just need to get better with the time management so I can focus on the things that actually matter because the email and text message world win has just been pretty mayhem recently one thing me and Kyle talked about this morning that I then shared with everyone else is when you go from an organization of just you know, what it was forever for what Kyle was way before me and then when I came on in 2017, it was very much just. 

 

Me and Kyle hustling for deals and we still had the the hunting mentality and the fire to go out and really hustle and go that extra mile to find deals and the fire being on the phone all day we decided this morning that we you know, not decided but you know, it’s really Kyle kind of opened my eyes to the fact that when you go from. 

 

The person that’s finding all the deals to an organization and a system and a machine that’s finding deals that’s great the machine is working and everyone in the office is doing a phenomenal job as deals flow through but in a way we’ve kind of lost that fire and that fire and hunters mentality is a culture thing that I haven’t done a good job instilling at the same time. 

 

I’m very proud of the culture that has been instilled in there. I think we have a lot of good things going. I think that’s a missing piece of it. But at the same time we have way more good going than bad we have a culture of accountability we have a culture of growth personal development progress taking pride in what you do. 

 

I feel really good about that the only piece we’re missing right now are one a major piece we’re missing is that that hunters mentality fire culture of our you know, our hunter type people Monica Jana gave that culture of always being on the phone always being in front of people always talking to somebody. 

 

But that’s that’s an easy adjustment to get back so I still you know, I still feel really really good about where we are right now and we’re just gonna slowly make that adjustment through our Q4 rocks and just the way we treat the day to day so that’s where we’re at now so in the end still feeling really good it’s just a small I think adjustment we need to bake to get that to get that hunters mentality back cool, so my Friday email today was about Admiral Stockdale, which was a first. 

 

I was first exposed to that story in Jim Collins book. Good to Great. And the whole idea behind a the whole idea behind Admiral Stockdale as he was a he was a Vietnam prisoner of war for over seven years he was in a you know, prisoner of war camp. 

 

He was tortured just horrible treatment throughout that seven years and you know, obviously a brutal thing to go through but, It gives you a lot of perspective on how people react to problems and issues and the he talks about how he got through it was having that unwavering faith that he would get through it that in the end it would come to an end and he’d be going home but you know, the reason they called the Stockdale paradox is he had that on wavering faith that everything was gonna get done and eventually he’d leave the camp and be safe and be home with his family again. 

 

He never lost that little fire in faith. But at the same time he was grounded in reality in that he wasn’t a Vietnam POW camp and it was brutal and he didn’t know when that day would come that he’d leave he just he had faith that he would leave but he was still stayed very much grounded in reality that he was in a camp and he had to deal with it one day at a time and he had to deal with torture maybe it’s one year maybe it’s three years, maybe it’s ten years. 

 

You don’t know how long it’s gonna be but you still have that unwavering faith that you’ll get out and when asked you know, and he survived obviously. He came home after seven years so you got to see his family again and he was asked a question of who didn’t survive the camp and he said it’s the optimist. 

 

The optimist that we’re not grounded in reality and when asked why he said because the optimist would always go into a year and they’d be like, oh we got we’re definitely be home by Christmas. This world be over will be out of here. We’ll be out of here by Christmas Christmas would come. 

 

Christmas would go the next year would come by and then it’d be then it’d be Easter. Oh my god. You know we weren’t out here by Christmas but we’ll definitely definitely be out of here by Easter I mean, that’s three months away, you know that’s in April for sure be out here by then Easter would come Easter would go and before you know, it it’s Christmas next year. 

 

And you know those people who were optimistic on being out on these dates would just die internally of a broken heart and just give up. So, I thought that was I thought that was really interesting. If you are an optimist and you’re not grounded in reality, it’s easy to get destroyed. 

 

It’s easy for that faith to burn out and I related it in my email today to like to this industry. Um there’s a bunch of frickin’ say you’re interested in real estate and start scrolling Facebook, you’re gonna get targeted  300 guru ads that they tell you, you know, oh you pay fortune builders $50,000 and we’ll teach you how to you know, never work a day in your life and make trillions of dollars. 

 

You know in your underwear your kitchen table with a fucking cell phone, they’re selling that optimism. So in this industry, they say enthusiasm is common endurance is rare. So the people that are successful. Understand the balance of yes you need that positive mindset that you you will be successful and you’re gonna have everything you want and you’re gonna do all the houses you want and you’re gonna you know, whatever you want to do escape your nine to five or be full-time real estate investor, but aim same time you need to be balanced with the fact that most people fail in this industry, it’s very difficult. 

 

It’s gonna take a lot of hard work, you’re gonna get you’re gonna get screwed a couple times. You’re gonna lose money a few times. So the people that are successful understand that balance they understand that yes, you have that unwavering faith. That you will be successful and you’re gonna do well in this industry and you balance that on wavering faith with the fact that this industry is fucking difficult. 

 

It’s really competitive. A lot of people have tried before you and failed most people do fail. So you balance those two together and that’s how you get through, you know, the tough times. That’s how I get through the tough times. I’m very good at the I’m very good keeping grounded because I’m a logical person and sometimes I struggle with the unwavering faith side of things but I’m getting better at it. 

 

Cool what else I want to touch on today philanthropy, we already did that and one more thing about the company and just the spot we’re in now putting the right people in the right seats and making the small adjustments to do so we’ve made a several adjustments over the past two months or so. 

 

Moving people around putting people in different spots giving people different responsibilities and it’s crazy to see how things click when the right person is in the right seat and I’m still in that from a book traction which you know, this EOS is the system we follow at Yelver, I’m still in that from traction, but having the right person in the right seat is an absolute game-changer. 

 

It’s one thing we struggle with for a while and I also think we’re a lot getting a lot better at but so the focus moving forward is we’re gonna spend a lot more time recruiting trying to get the right people in the right seats and get that. Culture of fire back in the organization. 

 

So that’s all I got. We’ll probably might go live tonight at the cigar and whiskey night to show everyone how fun it’s a much fun we’re having and you know and then try to get some people to sign up for maybe another one or people will show some interest because at this point we are full from those two, but at least showcase what’s going on pretty proud that whole thing came together. 

 

So if you listen the whole thing, thanks for listening, And we will see you next Friday.