Have you ever had one of those days where you’re driving down a long road and hit every single red light along the way? It’s easy to start complaining, but when you really start to think about your life and the country we live in, there’s so much to be grateful for. Maybe it’s your car, your freedoms, faith, or family. And maybe it’s gratitude for your business and all of the success you’ve experienced. It’s easy to get down about things like taxes and government red tape, but the truth is that the United States is an amazing place for small business and entrepreneurship. We have so many opportunities that other countries do not.
I’m even grateful for red lights, because they prevent accidents and tragedies and protect my family while they’re out driving. You have to ask yourself whether you want to be a victim and a complainer or want to be the hero in your life’s story. When you stop complaining and shift to a gratitude mindset, you’ll be so much happier in life, and you’ll see much more success in your business. Like my pastor sometimes says, let’s get a checkup from the neck up.
Listen and learn:
What’s inside:
- Why it’s important to stop complaining and start being grateful.
Mentioned in this episode:
Download episode transcript in PDF format here…
Joe: Hey, what's going on, guys? Joe McCall, REI in your car. Hope you're doing well. Listen, have you ever had one of those days where you're driving down a long road and you literally hit every single red light? And I'm not just talking about like a red light, but I'm talking about like you're the first one at every single red light. Like the first one there, and you wait. Well, that's literally happening to me right now. I'm driving down this road in Saint Louis. Some of you are familiar with it's called Manchester Road. It's a very, very busy street. And the last five stoplights, I have been the first one in the red light. And when I'm coming up to my sixth here. Let's see if it actually happens to me. It's green. It's way down, about 200 yards away. And we'll see here and I'll tell you in a minute if I make it or not. Oh, yes, yes. It's red. What is that now? Six. I am not kidding. Six red lights in a row and I'm at the far western part of Manchester Road in Saint Louis. It gets very busy east of me, but out in the west. Oh, brother. So if here's what's my point, my point isn't to complain, but to you know, I was thinking about this because, you know, I was complaining. Actually, I was complaining, but I was complaining at the first stop like, oh, man, here we go. I'm at the red light. Right? I'm leaving the gym, heading back home. It's about 745 in the morning and kind of complaining. And then I was thinking really to myself like, man, I have so many better things to complain about, right? Like, really, Joe, you're complaining about hitting every red light. And I started actually thinking about what I could be thankful for and what I could be grateful for. And, you know, I'm. Well, okay, I was going to say the election was last night. And, you know, I think I don't know if anybody walked away from that election happy, Right. Like, I think all sides all sides were like bummed. But I was bummed a little bit because for whatever reason, I'm not going to tell you why. But like, yeah, I think everybody kind of was it just was elections suck. They're just horrible. But you got to do it. You know, everybody should be voting, but nobody ever wins. It feels like it's just sad. But yeah, I was I was kind of down a little bit this morning and here I am complaining. But I was thinking about what should I be grateful for? What should I be thankful for? And I started thinking about, Oh yeah, you know what? And I got a car. I have the freedom to vote, right? I have the freedom to go to church wherever I want. I have freedom of religion. I have freedom of speech. I have freedom to carry a gun. That is a freedom that some people don't like. But I, for one, am glad that I have the freedom to carry arms and protect and defend myself and my family and my property. And I think that's why we're one of the greatest nations on the earth to protect. We will never have a tyrannical government.
Joe: Well, anyway. Oh, yeah, don't let me go there. But I have a lot to be grateful for. Right. And I'm grateful for business. Like, how cool is it that we get to live in a country that, you know, for what you know, whatever you can complain about when it comes to taxes and government control and red tape and bureaucracy and all that, like there is no other country in the world that supports small businesses and entrepreneurship as much as the United States does. Right. There are very, very few countries in the world that it's even easy to start a business and much less get the support that we can have. I'm grateful that I get to work from home. I'm grateful for the Internet that allows me to do deals from home to do podcasts from my phone. We have so much to be grateful for and these silly and by the way, the next stop light. I was not the first one at the top of the at the front of the red light. I was not. So it wasn't I'm, what, six for seven or six for eight now. But yeah, I think it's I did a podcast one time and I did a blog post and I put it on social media. It's called Wag. No bark less wag more, bark less, wag more. And it's easy to bark and complain and whine, but man who likes hanging out with somebody like that. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the winner in the complainer. Certainly, when I see it in my kids, it's like, all right, that's enough of that, right? You can see it in your kids and yours. We put a stop to it. We don't let them whine and complain. So sometimes we need we need to do that to ourselves. And I feel like that's important. I think it's something you need to talk about. There's more important things in life than red lights. And, you know, here's the other thing I was thanking God for. Right. Like, thank God we live in a country that has stoplights and that has the majority, 99% of the population that actually follows the rules and stops at a stoplight. Can you imagine if people didn't care about the law, didn't care about stoplights? How many more accidents and tragedies would there be if people just ran red lights whenever they wanted to, if there were no consequences for running through red lights? Thank God that 99.9% of the people who drive these streets that I'm driving right now obey the traffic laws because my wife and kids are out there driving. I'm driving. So, yeah, there. Thank God we have speed limits. Thank God we have stop signs and people follow them. Thank God we have taxes that pay for these streets and that pay for the stoplights. So here I am. You know, I complain about taxes a lot, but there are some things that taxes are important for. So you got to choose who you want to be. What do you want floating around in your head, complaining and whining? You want to be the victim or do you want to be the hero? Do you want to be a producer or a consumer? I'm going to choose to be a producer. I'm going to choose to be grateful and thankful. I'm going to choose to be productive. I'm going to. I'm going to be a productive member of society. I'm going to help. I'm going to give. I'm going to cheer people up. When somebody asks me, Hey, how are you doing? I'm not just going to say, okay, fine. I'm going to say, I'm doing awesome. I got a lot to be thankful for. I'm grateful. I'm. I am. I'm awesome. How are you? They're saying the difference. Let's smile more. Let's frown less. Let's wag more. Let's bark less. I'm just telling you, you're gonna be much more happy in life. And your business is going to be more successful because people want to do business with people that are positive, that are uplifting. That are happy. Let's get out of the funk in our mind. Let's get a checkup from the neck up. As my pastor sometimes says.
Joe: All right, that's all I wanted to share and appreciate you all. Listen, how many offers did you make yesterday? How many sellers did you talk to yesterday? I don't know. When you're listening to this. It's almost 8 a.m. where I'm recording this now. And as you're looking at your day ahead, think about this. What are the needle moving activities? What are the revenue generating activities that you should be focusing on right now in your business? It's probably talking to sellers, making offers, following up. And if you don't have a budget for marketing, find somebody who else? Some find somebody else who has old leads and contact them and say, Hey, can I follow up with your old leads and we'll split any deals that I find. So make it your goal. If you want to make money in business, you've got to focus on revenue generating activities. Make it your goal to talk to five sellers a day, just five. That's not a thing. And each seller you talk to is only a couple of minutes. And if you don't have any sellers to talk to, call some realtors and property managers and other investors and just ask them, Hey, I'm looking for deals. Do you got anything? Call property managers of rentals on Zillow calls some go section eight properties are it's not go section eight dot com anymore it's another website call some of those landlords go to Redfin look for properties that have been on the market over 90 days that need updating. Call those realtors up and say, Hey, I'm looking for some property. Can you tell me a little bit about this one? I'm an investor. I buy properties to fix and flip, or sometimes I rent them out. Can you tell me a little bit about this property? How much work does it need? What do you think? If it was fixed up, what do you think it would sell for? If it was fixed up, what do you think it would rent for? What's the neighborhood like? Sounds like a nice house. Why doesn't the seller just fix it up themselves and rent it out? How negotiable are they in their price? Are they stuck there? If I can get them something close to what they want, would they consider maybe seller financing or at least purchase or something like that? Could I pay them, make them payments for a little while I fix it up? So like, there's a lot of things that you could do to talk to five sellers a day. Talk to $5 a day. And then what if you could just make one offer a day? Just start off with that, make one offer a day, and then eventually you should be making an offer to every seller you talk to, even if it's just an email or a text or something in writing. Like a letter, even just a old fashioned letter in the mail, the physical mail, send it, offer one offer a day. Eventually you'll start making two offers a day, three offers a day, five offers a day. And guess what happens. Mhm. You're going to start doing deals, you'll make some mistakes. But you start making some money anyway. Hope you doing well, guys.
Joe: Hey, I got a webinar on how to flip vacant land. If you haven't heard of that or seen it yet, I want to encourage you to go there right now. It's a class on how to flip vacant land. I answer all of the questions, the most common questions a lot of people wonder like, well, how do I pick the right counties? How do I make the right offers? How do I find the money for these deals? What do I do if I get into a bad deal? How does the paperwork work? How do you flip these things? Do you sell them for cash or owner financing? I answer all those questions in my class. It's called simple and class dot com. So go there right now simple land class dot com. When you go there, it will ask you to pick either 1:00 or 8:00. I do the webinar every day. It's an automated webinar, 1:00, 8:00. I don't do it where you just you can watch it right then and there because I want you to put it on your calendar and set aside the time to really focus on it, get a pen and paper and take some notes and study. Go through it with me. So, you know, I just want you to have some time set aside to go through the webinar. A lot of people don't like that or complain about it, but um so, simple land class dot com. I want you to take it. Watch that class. Learn how to flip some vacant land. Okay, we'll see you guys. Take care. Stop complaining about the red lights.
What are you thinking?
First off, we really love feedback, so please click here to give us a quick review in iTunes! Got any thoughts on this episode? We'd love to hear 'em too. Talk to us in the comments below.
Enjoy this podcast? Share the love!