Joe:  Hey what's up everybody, Joel McCall here. Welcome to REI In Your Car.

Joe:  I'm doing this podcast as a new little test and experiment that I'm doing where I'm going to be as whenever I'm driving around and I've got something cool that I want to share or some marketing trick or tactic or something that's going on in my business that I think is really cool, and I want share it with you, uh, I'm gonna jump on the, on the little, I bought this new DJI Osmo three thing and it's pretty cool. It's got a camera on a gimbal. So maybe when I'm driving, it won't be bouncing around and stuff like that. And I got a new car. I got to Tesla Model X. And one of the things that I want to do is write it off as a business expense. So I'm going to be doing more podcasts in here. And I'm gonna be creating a new podcast called REI In Your Car. And so we'll see how it goes, right? Let me know what you think. I don't know how the audio is or whatever, but I'm constantly coming up with things in my brain that I think are really important and critical for business success. And so I'm planning on doing this podcast. I was kind of inspired by one of my friends and mentors, Russell Brunson. Some of you guys have heard of him. He's written a lot of good books. Go buy every one of them.

But he did this podcast called Marketing in Your Car. And so I like the idea of doing that. And so, I'm going to be following along the same veins. REI in your car. I'll be doing a lot these hopefully if the tech works, if the camera's not too shaky and the audio's good. We'll see how it goes. One of the things that I think is so important in business, this is one of the most important principles that I've learned, that I keep on having to remind myself of. Number one, focus will make you rich. It's easy to get shiny objects. It's easier to chase the new fads, the new trends, see what other people are doing, the success that they're having, and think, oh man, I can do that. I've got the time, I've the bandwidth, I got the money, I could do that as well. I can add this other thing onto my plate. So we chase these shiny objects, but the problem is this, shiny objects will make you go blind. Focus will make your rich. I'm reading a really good book right now called, it's a new book by Benjamin Hardy. Oh, I forget. It was so good. I forgot the title of it, but he talks about there, the power of focus. And I have found this over and over again in my life. When I try to chase too many rabbits, I don't catch any of them. I think that's an old Indian proverb or something like that. Right. But when you're trying to be a jack of all trades, you really become, as they say, a master of none. And so I keep on running into that problem all the time. You know, it was just like the definition of an entrepreneur, somebody that finds something that works and then stops doing it and does something else, creates a new business. And this just blows my mind.

I see it in other people and it makes me mad because I see them have success. I see him find something that's working and they they're making good money, but they get bored with it or they stop doing it or they try to do something else. Or they think they can stack more and more on their plate and do different things and never works out that way, right? So what I'm trying to say is when you learn to focus on what works, focus will make you rich. You know, the power of focus, it's the difference between a light bulb and a laser beam. You know a lightbulb can light the room, which is great, right, but a laser being can cut through steel and it's powerful. Like the sun, right? The sun has a jillion joules of energy or whatever it is, right. But we can be out here and in the sun and, you know, we don't get burnt unless we're out here for a long time, but nothing really damaging happens, right! But if you get a magnifying glass underneath that sun, you can light a fire. We need to be really, really careful of the shiny object syndrome. And one of the best ways to be, to guard yourself and to protect yourself from the shiny objects syndrome is to put revenue in first position.

What do I mean by that? It's means focusing, making sure that every day when you're looking at, okay, what I got to do today, look at what is your fastest path to cash. What are your highest revenue generating activities? And usually nine times out of 10, that will help eliminate what we call it church, the blessing blockers. If you're focusing on this and then this and then this, and you're just fleeting and going around all these different stuff, you're going to really struggle in business. But when you focus on revenue in first position, where what is my fastest path to cash today, that's going to help you eliminate the 80 percent noise and focus on the 20 percent that is most critical and important for you and your business. So when you're facing a new shiny objects, you just ask yourself, hey, is this going to make me money today? Is this my fastest pass to cash to day? Example of this kind of might be i coach a lot of people in vacant land investing and one of the things that i like to help them on is you know quick nickels versus slow dimes i want them to make a quick nickel make money right now i get a lot students have a lot to success with doing little deals will be set deals where they're making three grand five grand ten grand right and they can do three or four five of those a month great money right well guess what happens is the shiny object syndrome like, man, well, I could do bigger deals. I could use subdivides. I can do entitlements. I could get bigger properties and then, you know, do some work to the property, maybe clear it up, cut a road into it. Do a survey, add a fence, subdivide it, bring utilities to it or whatever.

And that's great because now I can make $50,000 to $100,000 on a deal. Okay, well, that's cool. That works, but the problem is on those bigger properties, they take longer, it takes more money, there's a lot more risk. And there are fewer buyers for those kinds of bigger deals and there's fewer sellers so you can make more money but the problem is if you stop doing what's working if you stopped focusing on doing the little base hits on the revenue generating activities of fastest path to cash today you might chase one of those deals what is going to take six to twelve months to see the profits in that and then what happens is you lose the momentum You lose momentum and then all of a sudden you're hurting for cash and you're like, oh my gosh, what do I have to do? Because you haven't done a deal in three months. And I've seen this happen many times where somebody that's doing deals successfully then gets distracted with the bigger deals, the shiny objects, and has to go back and get a regular job because their pipeline is dried up. So if you're in real estate investing, what does that mean? You need to focus on revenue generating activities like marketing. For deals? Talking to sellers, making offers, following up, those kinds of things every single day if you're focusing on that. And even the base hits, right? Those compounded over time.

So the thing I like to think about is, man, I mean, quick nickels, slow dime. Sometimes when you're chasing those slow dimes, those bigger deals, that same amount of time, you know, you could make 50 to 100 grand on a deal. It might take six to 12 months. You could have wholesaled five or 10 deals and made the same amount of money in the same amount time with a lot less stress, a lot of hassle, and you have that consistency coming in. So don't try to scale your business until you already have systems in place, people in place that can do those little things for you so you can keep those kind of base hits going. Does that make sense? So it's important, I call it the one thing rule here. Pick one strategy, pick one market, pick one buyer, one seller, pick one thing and focus on it until it's running for you automatically without any of your involvement. Only when it's runing without any of your involvement can you add other things in. Does that makes sense? So you basically are building systems before scaling my friend who wants freedom soft talks about simple system scale when we make mistakes when we tried to scale before we have the systems in place we also make a mistake when we try to build systems that aren't simple so we have these complicated Frankenstein’s you know and we're trying to build a system around something complicated and it just doesn't scale so i'm not gonna get this right but the way Rob Swanson explains it is so well when it's simple we can do it okay. And when it's a system, we will do it. And then when you scale, you can get somebody else to do it for you. Something like that, right? You get what I'm saying. So simple system scale. Don't try to grow and expand and do new things until you've built simple systems and you have people in place, then that can scale those simple systems up. The other thing I think about, and I have my notes here.

This is so cool on this test slide. I've got my computer right It's actually the browser on the Tesla and I have my notes, which is crazy. I don't know why Tesla allows me to have a web page open, but I do. I've got Google Docs right here with my notes. So cool. So anyway, part of something that relates to this is consistency in those small things. Consistency in those, small little steps, those revenue generating activities are going to produce tremendous results for you. So consistency beats perfection, beats talent, daily things matter. And you can't stop doing that or else you're gonna lose momentum. Focus on the revenue generating activities, focus on the things that make you money, and you'll build the momentum. The momentum will start growing and growing and And that's when you become unstoppable. And so sometimes we think, man, I want to be like Richard Branson, or we think multiple streams of income, or I need to have, I can't have all my eggs in one basket, I need to diversify and grow. Like, okay, that sounds good, but you're not Richard Bransen, right? You're not the guy who can spend, you know, a million dollars hiring the best team in the world to run his companies.

So don't try to be somebody that you're not, right. Richard Branton didn't start in his business ventures, right, by creating 20 companies. I don't know what his story is but he created one thing you grew that scale that made it big right and here's the thing. Complexity kills success every single time. Aren't these notes really good here? Man, I hope you're picking up what I'm laying down here. Complexity is the enemy of success, right? If you try to build this complicated thing, you're gonna get confused. Your team's gonna get confuse. Your customers, your sellers, your buyers will be confused because they don't know who you are. They don't what you stand for, what you believe in. They don't know what it is that you're doing. It's like, have you ever gone to one of those Chinese buffets that have everything under the sun? They have Chinese food. They have tacos and Mexican food. They have American food and hamburgers. And like, you know what, when you go there, none of it's good, is it? None of it is good. It all sits out there forever. It's cold. It's crusty. It's hard. It's just nasty. And guess what? Every single one of those restaurants always close or if they are, and you go into them, there's nobody in there and it's just nasty food, right? You just don't go.

If you want sushi, you don't go to a Chinese buffet. If you want steak, you don't to a Chinese buffet, you don't go to all of this all in one thing. Having said all this, it means you need to say no more often to things, right? You need to say no to those shiny objects that come up and you might think you can do it. You might think you have the time and the bandwidth, but you probably don't. Money loves simplicity. Money loves clarity. You've got to be focused, got to slow down. And just be consistent, build the momentum, build the simple systems that can scale. Sometimes the riches come from just the boring repetition. And when it does get boring, you've got the systems in place, it's simple. You can bring other people in that can do that for you, but don't stop doing the thing that got you to where you are now, okay? Just keep that going, keep it simple. I've been doing this podcast since 2011. I remember reading the book, The One Thing. Do you remember that? It talked about what is your one thing?

And I decided for me personally in my education, digital marketing business, my publishing business, whatever you want to call it. My one thing was my podcast, and I just have to keep on doing that if I'm going to have success, and I have. I've done very, very well in my business, on the real estate side of my business and in the education side of my business very well and I'm proud of what we've built and proud of the team that we have around me. Does that make sense? So focus will make you rich. Stop trying to dig 20 wells. Imagine you're digging a well And you go down three feet and then you stop just like you know this isn't working or is not working well so you go dig another well then you dig another one pretty soon you got twenty wells all around that are only three feet deep and you you're not done anything but if you would have just focus on one thing and hammer down and drill down in there you would of found water eventually right i want you to be that horse with blinders on that blinders that just focus is what when you put up blinders and a horse what do they do they just like They run faster. They run. They're more focused. They're not distracted with the things that are going on around them and beside them. We just need our own blinders. We need to focus. Stop chasing shiny objects. Focus on revenue generating activities today. Things that right now will give you the fastest path to cash. If you want to have success, if you want to be in this business a long time, if you don't want to go back to your nine to fivejob, pay attention. This might be one of the most important podcasts that you've ever heard. All right. So how was this? Let me know what you think. I'm almost home. I think I'm going to enjoy these types of podcasts. I just have to make sure I have important things to talk about. I don't want to be wasting your time on silly, random thoughts, but sometimes I have some good advice. I think I can help you with a lot of things. But hey, I appreciate you all. And I'll see you on the next REI In Your Car podcast. Bye-bye.