And then there are the important ones, like remembering to put my family, my health, and my spiritual side before my business.

There are whole litany of “rules of thumb”, “deadly mistakes to avoid”, and “life lessons learned”.

I’ve decided to a series of blogs about the critical mindset factors that contribute to being a successful real estate investor. This article is the first in that series.

One of the most important one of those is the idea of trying to take a very long view into account when making decisions.

As a property manager with more than a decade under my belt, I see much of the opposite behavior – that is, living for today, tomorrow, and the weekend. But rarely do I see tenants thinking about the long-term ramifications of such decisions as:

1) Continuing to rent from me (I’m not that good looking or entertaining – trust me on that one).

2) Drifting through life on the fringes. At some point, it’s time to grow up and start living like an adult.

3) Little regard for the economic well being (other areas as well) of their children. Ouch. Yes, I’ll speak my mind on this one. If you as a legal adult (in name only, I suppose) want to live without utilities in your house, food in your refrigerator, that’s fine. Just don’t have kids. Ever.

Obviously, not every tenant fits this description. But a fair number do.

People call this group the “have nots”.

There is tons of debate on why the have nots have not, but I believe it all comes down to deciding to live for today at the expense of tomorrow.

These decisions actually become habit…a habit of choosing what feels good in the moment instead of building equity in SOMETHING.

Equity builders are at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Farmers are equity builders. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t keep enough seed from the harvest to grow the crop in the coming season.

People who create and drive a business to success are equity builders. If they weren’t, they would rely on someone else to create an opportunity that would bring them a paycheck.

And, people who choose to invest in something like real estate are equity builders. If they weren’t, they would just save their money or spend it as they earned it.

An equity builder doesn’t expect an instant payoff from their investment. I have quite a few farmers in my family. One of the biggest motivators seems to be passing on the farm to someone in the family. We’re not talking a few years for this to take place. We’re talking decades.

As a business owner and real estate investor, one of my biggest motivators is the satisfaction I get from putting together a winning combination of marketing, systems, and management. It takes time and dedication, but it just feels great when it all works out and creates cash flow.

Again, these results don’t appear over night. It takes time…and what it takes to be an equity builders is plenty of patience and persistence.

She had kind of a rough start with spelling at the beginning of the years. She was getting B’s and C’s at first. I decided that I need to do work with her to help her to develop the skill of spelling. What I did was work five days a week with her a little bit each day.

At first it was a real struggle to get her to practice with me. But after awhile, she got used to it. We even invented a game based on the TV show “Minute to Win It” to help make the practice more fun. After that rough start, she got straight A’s, week in and week out.

The last week of school was very busy with activities outside of school. In fact, we only got a few chances to practice spelling. The day of test she was stressed out because she felt like she wasn’t well enough prepared for the test. I told her to relax – that she would do just fine. Sure enough, she got an A.

The reason that you got so stressed out is that she now has the identity someone he has a good speller, and someone who is an A student. She she was very uncomfortable with the idea of getting less than than an A.

Why am I telling you this story? It contains one of the most powerful success principals. It’s the same thing with any other area in your life.

For example, when you are successful in finding great deals, you begin to believe that you are great at finding great deals. This helps you find more and more deals as your belief in yourself grows. As you find more and more great deals, your identity shifts from unsure to certain that you can always find great deals.

You begin to expect success all the time, every single time. This is your new standard of excellence. You become uncomfortable when fall below that level of success which is your new standard.

I notice this in myself. I’ll get onto a hot streak, and seem to find great deals all over the place. I’ve also been a cold streak, and wonder when I’m ever going to find my next deal.

When I feel that I’m not living up to my personal standards as a real estate investor, I go into action mode. I’ll put myself onto an action-based program. I’ll keep moving until I’m back to my comfortable level of production.

My mistake is that I slack off once I reach that level of production.

Want to create more for your business? Change your identity for yourself. Set a new standard. As Tony Robbins taught me years ago…”Step up!”

That’s how people become more and more successful in real estate investing.

I could remind you that we all have same amount of time, but I know you’ve heard that one already. But it’s true…and we all possess an equal share of this resource. But what is not shared equally is the skill to utilize that time to the fullest.

So what is the biggest difference maker? How are some people able to be extremely productive, while others work hard but just don’t seems to get anything accomplished?

There is a ton of training stuff, techniques, all out boot camps, and you name it on the subject of time management. In fact, if you do a google search for the term “time management”, google returned 880,000,000 search results for me.

But I believe there are two keys to getting the absolute most out of your time.

1) The ability to focus on priorities. Everyone reading this is almost certainly familiar with the 80-20 rule. You’ve probably been told more than once that you should focus on that 20%. But are you doing it? Have you actually created a list of those items that are the biggest difference makers in your business. And, do you keep that list in mind when you are creating a plan for your day?

2) Consistency. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve started some new “program” or “technique”, only to give up after some period of rime. I’ve done the same thing with many different planning systems. I’ve used the Franklin Covey planner, Tony Robbins “Rapid Planning” system, etc.

Something happened along the way with each one of these that resulted in me either moving to another system, or just stop worrying about daily planning. Sometimes it was because the system was too complicated. Sometimes I just got distracted.

The bottom line is that I didn’t consistently use a planning system day-in and day out.

You won’t get consistent results if you don’t consistently adhere to a daily planning system. It might sound boring, but consistency is boring. Consistency may be boring, but addiction to excitement can lead to inconsistency.

Great companies have their own hedgehog concepts because they find that one strategy that they can use over and over again to be the best in world at something. One of the examples given by Collins is when Krogers supermarkets went from dingy neighborhood stores focused on cost savings to new, clean, convenient stores focused on providing a wide number of choices. That decision cost the company huge amounts of money because they had to close down all of their existing stores and convert them to this new model of doing business. But when they did so, they slowly took more and more of their market.

Jim Collins explains how the hedgehog concept works using the diagram below.

As you can see, these great companies have figured out how to focus on the intersection of what the company can really really be good at (its strength), what it’s people can be passionate about, and what it can make money doing.

The process of of a company discovering its hedgehog concept is certainly not an overnight process. But it is a key step in any company becoming a great company.

O.K., so the hedgehog concept works well for big business. How about small business? How about us as real estate investors?

It absolutely has application if you have an interest in being a successful real estate investor. There was a time when I tried to do “everything” really well. I was trying to do buy and hold, wholesale flips, rehab and flip, lease options, subject to, short sales, and anything else I thought would make money. That included some things even outside of real estate, such as trying trade stocks.

When I tried to do all of those things well, I had no focus. I wasn’t able to develop specific knowledge, skills, contact, etc. in any particular area.

But when I started focusing in on just buy and hold, some surprising things started to happen. The cash flow for the business improved for a number of reasons. We found ways to become much more efficient in operating the business. We were able to get better traction with financing.

In the past, I’ve set goals and put plans together that have fallen flat. To prevent that from happening to these plans, I used a technique called inevitability thinking.

Inevitability thinking goes something like this: you come up with a set of conditions that virtually guarantee that some result that you’re looking for will come to pass.

Begin with a clear result in mind. For example, that could be a certain amount of money that you have in your bank account by a certain deadline. Maybe it’s a property that you buy within a certain period time. Having a certain timeframe, and it must be something you can measure and monitor along the way. The trick in inevitability thinking is coming up with some external conditions that you put in place that will virtually guarantee your desired result will happen. That’s kind of abstract, so let me give you a specific example.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve had a goal of losing weight before. Now I suppose that you have a goal of dropping let’s say 15 pounds in in two months. So I put myself on the scale and boy you see your right at 200 pounds. That means my goal is get down to 185 pounds within 2 months. If I just set that goal, “Yeah I want, I want to be 185 pounds” and then I flip on the tv and grab a beer, I’m not really moving in the right direction.

What I’m lacking is an external condition that would virtually guaranteed that I’m going to start loosing weight. What am I talking about? For example, I could get a gym membership down at the YMCA and hire a personal trainer. But I wouldn’t want to just leave it at that. I would want to set up an appointment with the trainer to work out three times a week. In addition, I could put in place a penalty for missing an appointment. Let’s say if I missed any of those appointments that you set up with the personal trainer then I would pay a hundred dollars each time to a charity.

All those conditions would serve to motivate me to get to the gym and work out. If I work out, I’m much more likely to start loosing weight. I could do the same thing with diet.

Back to the adjustments I decided to make to my business. The conditions I put in place were to increase focus on the vision for my business. To do that, I decided I needed to do pay close attention to my overall vision, and take a close look at that vision at least once per week. During that once per week look, I needed to put together a weekly plan.I committed to send an email to a friend of mine letting him know that I’d done my weekly planning.If I failed to do my weekly planning, I had to pay $50 to his charity. I also set up a monthly planning meeting to plan out my next month. I got several other people to agree to meet on the last Tuesday of each month at a specific place and time. We would all work on plan for the coming month.

This system of planning has worked very well in helping me to focus more on my vision.It is helping me to move closer toward this vision.

He asked me whether or not I thought it was feasible that he’d be able to do a wholesale flip every month or so. 

It told hime that of course it’s feasible to do such a thing.  Many, many people just like him do this very thing. 

But he will definitely not be successful with that type of attitude. 

Here’s why not:  One of the things that one of my mentors, T. Harv Ecker, told me that that there are three ways to look at an opportunity.

1) Will this opportunity work for me? 

Most people look at opportunities this way.  This perspective originates from a place of doubt and skepticism. 

This was essentially my coaching clients perspective. 

It focuses your mind on all the things that might go wrong and shuts down your focus on the your positive posibilities of the opportunity. 

It stems from an inherent lack of confidence in ones own ability, or lack of trust in ones self to see something through to the end.  It’s really a wimpy way to look at the world because it lacks comittment to action. 

One can just languish in the investigation mode, and before they know it 10 or 20 years has past and nothing has hapended.  And yes, 10 or 20 years passes very quickly in the skeme of things.

I’ve certainly had times when I’ve looked at the world in this way just like my coaching client was looking at doing wholesale flips. 

2) How can I make this opportunity work for me? 

This is much more powerful perspective. In this perspective, your starting possistion acknowledges that you have everything you need within you to make this opportunity work. 

You move from a place of questioning your own ability to make things happen to the next level, which is "how can I leverage this opportunity quickly and effectively"? 

If this opportunity is something new to you, you may have some fear and doubt.  Almost everyone does.  But that question "How can I make this opporutnity work for me" is a powerful way to focus your mind on solutions and possibilities. 

The biggest obstacle to producing the the desired result on this level is the fear and doubt.  This video from T. Harv Eker talks about that fear and doubt.  Take just a 3 minutes to watch it – it’s very insightful:

3) I will make this opportunity work out, no matter what.

 This is difinitely the highest level of comittment.  You have decided that you will make this opportunity work – come hell or high water. 

When you have this level of comittment, it’s possible to move mountains. 

Most people in American society don’t ever reach this level of comittment with anything in their lives.  Even when it comes to marriage, most people never fully commit.  After all, 50% of marriages end in divorce. 

What has happened to the loyalty that used to exist between employers and employees?  Sure, our economy is in flux, but I don’t believe that’s the only reason so many people have been put out to the curb.  It also works the other way.  I hardly ever meet employees who I feel have a great deal of loyalty to the company for which they are employed. 

I believe that comittment in our society is in a state decay.

Why is it so difficult to make a decission and commit fully? 

It’s the same when it comes to owning and operating a real estate business. 

Take a short time – a few days or a week at the most – to gather information on some type of opportunity.  I’m talking about some facet of the business, like doing wholesale flips or buying and holding for the long term. 

I’m not talking about an individual deal.  If the numbers don’t work, then obviously you walk away from the opportunity. 

Decide if you are in or out. 

My advice to that coaching client who was looking into doing wholesale flips was exactly that.  If you are in, move on and commit fully.  If you are out, move onto something else. 

Do you remember the story of the little red hen?  It’s definitely one of my favorites.  In the story, the little red hen had a found an opportunity when she was just going about her day-to-day routine of clawing around in the dirt.  She found grain seed.  Lots of it. 

In a moment of inspiration she had a vision of growing that seed into a nice crop of grain.  She could then grind the grain into flower.  The flower could then be made into many loves of fresh, tasty bread. 

How many times have you found opportunities while “scratching around in the dirt”?  I love the “acres of diamonds” philosophy which states that by far our best opportunities are right here, under our noses.  If you are short opportunities, you’re either not seeing them, or you aren’t looking in the right places.  You never have to travel 5,000 miles to find your diamond mine.  There’s almost always one right around the next corner. 

The little red hen was a realist.  She realized that the entire process of cultivating the ground, planting the seed, tending the crop, harvest, milling the grain, and making the bread was going to take an enormous amount of effort. 

It’s been said that opportunity usually shows up dressed in work clothes.  That’s definitely true when it comes to real estate investing. 

Don’t ever be fooled into the “something for nothing” philosophy of money making because it doesn’t work.  Never has.  There is always a price to pay for success. 

The little red hen decided that she would try to create a partnership so she wouldn’t be the only one stuck with all this work.  So she started sharing her vision of fresh, tasty bread with her farmyard companions. 

They all decided that the little red hen’s idea of fresh, tasty bread was sheer genius.  They all wanted there fair share of that bread.  But when the little red hen talked about everyone’s fair share of responsibility to do the work required to carry out the plan, suddenly all of her farmyard friends had reasons as to why they wouldn’t be able to help out. 

Isn’t it funny how we want the rewards but aren’t willing to pay the price for that success?  Let’s face it, every single one of us would like to have tens of thousands of dollars of passive income that comes to us without us having to work for it.  oqwe

When it comes to real estate, the secret recipe for passive income and building a very high net worth is neither secret nor very complicated. 

The first step is finding your grain.  What are the opportunities that are right in front of your right now, almost staring you in the face?  What are the opportunities that you’ve been avoiding?  Nothing coming up for you?  Keep scratching around in the dirt.  You are bound to find something.  Are they in that list of REO properties that your realtor sent to you last week?

Once you find your grain, you’ve got to get it into the ground.  You’ve got to secure financing for your deal and close on it.  Do you have a source of financing established so that when you come a across a great deal scratching around in the dirt you can take advantage of it? 

Once you get it into the ground, you’ve got to tend to your crop and harvest it.  That means you  need to put that property into service.  Get it fixed up and creating cash flow.  Do you struggle with managing your properties so they produce for you? 

The little red hen decided to go ahead with the project, and do the work herself.  At every step along the way, she offered her farmyard friends the opportunity to participate.  But they were all too busy taking care of there immediate concerns.  They all declined her offer. 

It’s so easy to find reasons to “not participate”.  When you are too busy being caught up in taking care of your immediate needs, you loose sight of some of life’s sweetest rewards. 

I’ve seen many, many people stuck in mode or another wanting to do their first deal.  They want the reward of passive income, but there is some reason that always stands in the way.  Every day is a new opportunity, but in the end the reason wins out every time. 

When the little red hen had harvested the wheat, ground the flower, and baked the bread, the sweet smell of the fresh, tasty bread filled the farmyard.  As you might guess, all of her farmyard friends wanted to share in the reward. 

Her farmyard friends had fallen pray to the “something for nothing” philosophy.  They had opportunity each step of the way, but they steadfastly refused to pay the price.  Therefore, when bread was baked, they received none of the reward. 

Be among the red hens in real estate who take the long perspective.  See life for what it is…new opportunities coming every day to participate.  Learn how to say “no” to the reasons, and “yes” to opportunities. 

Scott Nachatilo

http://www.replaceyourpaychecknow.com