Joe:  What's up guys, Joe McCall, REI in your car.

Joe:  On this podcast episode, I am going to teach you the top 10 lessons learned that my most successful clients learned and mistakes and why they're successful, things that you can do to emulate and copy their success and avoid some of the mistakes that they made. Would you be interested in knowing about that? Well, you should because sometimes the fastest way to success is to model what works and find out, okay, what's working today? What's working today for not the guru, not the guy who is out there selling his stuff or teaching or doing the podcast, right, whatever, but what if you could learn what is actually working from the people in the trenches that are where you are. They're just getting started. They're wanting to learn how to do deals and you're wanting to start making money, etc, etc. So like, wouldn't it be cool to learn from them? What's actually working now?

Well, I'm going to do that right now with you guys. You know over the years I mean I've been doing my podcast now for fourteen fifteen years of over several thousand episodes probably close to three thousand episodes and I have interviewed a lot of people and over the last year I’ve been interviewing some of the most successful clients, members in the Dirt Flippers community and they are from different things you know programs or things that they bought. I have a lot free stuff on YouTube and podcast I have a $5,000 program, I have a $25,000 dollar program, and soon I'm going to have a hundred thousand dollar program up because I love working with folks one on one and I believe 100% in whatever I charge, the value that they're getting is 10 times as great. So if I'm selling something for five grand, if they implement it, I know they'll make at least 50 grand. If I'm something that's 25 grand, I'd know without a doubt they're going to make 250 grand from that within a year. And if I'm selling something now at 100 grand, you better believe that I'm 100% confident I can deliver the results that they'll make at least a million dollars in one year. And I can say that because I've done that, I've been there and done that. So anyway, regardless, I took some of my most, my favorite interviews with some of my most successful clients and I've transcribed them all and I uploaded them to AI and I've asked AI, hey, what are the top lessons learned straight from these clients of mine? What are some of the things that they've walked away with? So I'm going to share that with you right now.

Number one, number one, most important, stay consistent. Consistency is absolutely incredible and incredibly important. Especially when it's slow at first and it will be slow at the first, no matter what you're doing. When you're something new, you're hungry, man. You want to go, you want results fast, but if you quit too early, you're gonna fail miserably every time. So consistency is so important, especially at first, because it's so slow. So every successful client of mine, everybody in my community that has done deals said the same thing. It takes time, right? Marketing is a pipeline. It's a pipeline where your first 30, 60, 90 days might feel quiet, but if you consistently do the basic simple things, I've talked about that before being brilliant at the basics, you do the mail, you talk to sellers, you make the offers, you to the follow up. That equals deals. Mail plus offers plus follow up equals deals, big if, if you stay the course, if he don't quit and give up. All right. So number one, consistency. Consistency beats perfection every time because it takes time to build that momentum and every single buddy that has ever done a deal will tell you the same thing or anybody that has done lots of deals because some people, they may just get lucky and do a deal within a week or two weeks, right? Most people though, it takes consistent effort to build the momentum. I've often said there's three M's to success, marketing, momentum and getting a mentor. So you've got to do the marketing but you've got to be consistent with that marketing so that momentum has a chance to build. I've got story after story I could tell you my own journey of doing that but I got to move on.

Number two, don't over complicate the system. Whether it's my system or you signed up for another coach or another program, everybody that's does as anything good has a system. I mean I would even say some of the worst courses that I bought in the past and I bought lots of courses I probably spend well over a million dollars over the last 15 years on coaching and education and programs and stuff like that. I mean, I just went to a two-day event. I spent 25 grand just to go to this one place for two days. But like every single program that you buy even, if it's a crappy one, has a system. Don't over complicate it. Just do what they say to do. I remember the first main coaching program I got it was $13,000. It just happened to be $13000 because that's all I had in available credit on my two or three credit cards. And it was not a good program. You know, they sent me a ton of books and manuals. And I did have coaching on weekly calls for about, I don't remember, three or four months. But it was just, it was okay. But guess what? They had a system. And guess who did not implement it? This guy. And after the six months of the coaching program was over, guess who had nothing to show for? This guy, this was my fault. I kept on over-complicating the system and I didn't do what they said to do. So really bottom line, this is it. This business works because it's simple. My good friend Rob Swanson, who owns FreedomSoft, basically rebuilt FreedomSoft from the ground up. It's an amazing software. I love it. He created this thing called simple system scale. And if it's simple, anybody can do it. And if you build a system around something that's simple anybody can do it, all right? And then when you scale, you only scale the simple systems. If you try to scale complicated system, or if you try to scale something that simple without a system around it, does that make sense? You gotta have those three things in those in that order it's gotta be simple, need to build a system around that and only then can you scale. Because this business works because it is actually simple and everybody that has any success is like, you know, at the beginning, man, I was kind of freaked out. I didn't understand all of the stuff. I thought it was going to be complicated. But it works because it's simple. And when you stop complicating it, and you're consistent with those simple basic things, you're going to do well. So the ones who win, listen to this, they don't reinvent the wheel, they just do what works and they do it over and over again and they're consistent. So keep it simple, stupid. You've heard of that?

All right, number one, stay consistent even when it's slow at first, consistency beats perfection every single time. Number two, don't overcomplicate the system. Keep it simple. The ones who won don't re-invent the wheel. They just follow the steps. If you like this podcast, if you like these YouTube videos, please subscribe to my channel and give me a thumbs up, give me a like and all of that good stuff. I'd appreciate it. Okay.

Number three, super important. Follow up like your business and your life depend on it. People get started. This is one of the biggest reasons why people don't succeed in this business, they do the marketing, they talk to sellers, they make offers, and then that's it. They never follow up, but you don't realize that 80 to 90% of your deals are going to come from the follow up that first conversation, that first offer with the seller, nine times out of 10 is they're going to say no. And if you are not following up, you're killing your business. So many deals come after the second, third or fourth, even sixth follow up. And do not ever give up on the first no, or if they ignore you, always follow up I mean, the rules are simple. I've talked about this a million times and everybody who has taken my advice is killing it right now is doing a lot of deals. Number one, always be marketing. Number two, talk to every seller that calls in, talk to five sellers a day. Number three, send an offer to every seller that you talk to. And number four, follow up every 30 days with every seller that you talked to, that every seller you sent an offer too. So important, but nobody does it. And the ones that do are the ones that do all the deals. So if you're wondering, why am I broke? Why am I having a hard time? Why am not doing deals? I'm gonna ask you two questions. How many offers have you made in the last week? And how much follow up have you done in the 30 days? That's all that matters, okay?

Number four, especially for land investing, this is really important. Pick one market and learn it well. Dive deep. Don't try to be an inch wide and a mile deep. I want you to be a inch wide and a mile deep. Now, I'm not talking about one zip code or one county, but I want to focus on one maybe region. So many people try to go, especially with land investing, go into four different states and one county in each state, and there's just scattered two things. You know the saying, when you chase two rabbits, you catch none? Some of my best clients, they focus on one region, they became an expert in that region, and they will win more often when they do that. So pick one area and go well and deep into it. You know why this is important? Because you're going to learn the market. You're going learn what sells, what doesn't sell. You're gonna learn, well, this type of property doesn't sale. This kind of does. You're go get good realtors, you're gonna get good title companies, you gonna get good lenders, you going to get good buyers, and you're go be able to sell your deals a lot faster. And other people who find deals in those areas are going to come to you and partner with you on those deals. All right.

Number five for land investing, especially again, again, most of these students and clients that I interviewed were people that were successfully doing land deals. Number five, use realtors and use title companies to do the heavy lifting. Do not try to do everything yourself. The right realtor, the right title team will help you scale faster and free up your time. And I would say, take this one step even further, find somebody to JV with on your deals, I have, I don't think I've ever done a deal, at least it's been over 10 years, where I did everything myself from beginning to end. I've always partnered with people. Maybe it's a private investor, maybe it's another buyer. You know, I'm always looking for somebody that can. I have limited bandwidth, right? I've got several businesses. I'm doing a lot of things. You, you're busy too, right. When you try to do everything yourself, you might want a hundred percent of a grape, but you don't realize that 50% of a watermelon is more than a hundred of a great. I remember one time I was, somebody called me about, with a motivated seller that had a house in Houston, Texas, and the seller was like, listen, I don't have enough equity. And I remember at the time, there was maybe only $10,000 or $15,000 equity in the house, but their mortgage payment was so low and the rent was so high, it would easily cash flow about 500 bucks a month. And the seller even told us, they said, listen just take over my mortgage, right? I know you can't pay cash for it, just takeover my mortgage. And you can, he even said, just, you can take over the mortgage for the rest of the mortgage. Like there's 20 years left or whatever. And they knew how the game was played. It probably was an investor. I don't know. But you know what I did? The first thing I did is I went to Craigslist at the time. This was before Facebook marketplace. I went into Craigs list and I did a search for in Houston, owner financing and lease options. I looked for those two keywords, owner financing, lease options, and I went and I found a creative real estate investor that was already doing deals and I called him up and I said, Hey, listen, the first guy I called I'm listen, I've got this I'm my name's Joe. I am an investor in St. Louis, I have this potential lead in this certain area in Houston, and it's definitely a sub two, and I'm going to need to sell it on owner financing or wrap around or something like that. Contract for deed, lease option, whatever. And there's issues in Texas with lease options, whatever.” So I said, have you ever done that before? He says, yeah, I do them all the time. How'd you find me? I said well, I found one of the listings for your properties that you were advertising as owner financing. He says oh, cool. Anyway, what I said to him is I said would you like to partner and JV on this deal? Short story long, it did not work out, but I learned something really incredibly valuable with that when you go find somebody that's already doing deals in whatever market and area that you're in, you will shortcut your path to success cuz that guy the reason why I didn't work out is the seller for some reason flaked out but it was it was awesome because that investor when I was talking to you super excited and I said hey do you want to just JV on this deal will split everything fifty-fifty? You do the work, you find the seller, you find a buyer etc etc and he was totally excited about that. That deal didn't work out, but I learned something valuable from that where I said, all right, I'm going to find somebody that already has the contracts and the paperwork, the title company, the escrow agents that know how to do those kinds of creative deals. So fast forward a few years, I wanted to go travel around the world with my wife and our four kids. And this is something that it was just, I was part of a coaching program called Life in Air. And it's all about creating a vision for your life and then building a business around that, right? Most of us have it backwards. We have our business or work. And life kind of goes around that. Let's reverse it. Let's create a vision for our life and then design a business. So I wanted to go travel around the world with my wife and our four kids, but I was too busy doing my business at the time. We were doing a lot of regular cash deals, wholesaling deals. And so I wrote down all of the steps on how to do a lease, how to do a deal and specifically how to wholesale a house. And I asked myself a real simple question. How can we do none of this? How can I get somebody else to do all of this for me? And it was a really simple process at that moment. I said, all right, well, I can have this direct mail company do my direct mail, I could hire VA to take the calls. I can hire another assistant to do VA to do the comps and whatever and manage the CRM. I was using Podio at the time. And then who am I going to find to help me sell the deals? And I thought, well, why don't I, I know a bunch of wholesalers that are already doing deals, they already have the money, they all ready have the title companies, they have relationships with the buyers. And so I started calling some local wholesalers that I knew were doing a bunch of deals. And I said, Hey, listen, what if I want to go travel, I'm going to be gone for the next three months. What if I did all the marketing, I had my team, I paid for the market. I had, my team pre-screened the leads and give you pre- screen leads. Would you work them, get them under contract, sell them, and we split the deal 50-50? You know what every single one of them said? Heck yeah. Are you kidding me? You're going to bring me leads on a golden platter, silver platter? I'll do that all day long. So fast forward a few months, I'm traveling, I'm doing deals in about four different cities, about two to three deals a month in four different cities by finding wholesalers and partnering with them. So my whole point is use other companies, use other investors that are already doing the stuff and have them do the heavy lifting for you. Use realtors. Why are investors so afraid of realtors? I don't know, but my most successful clients and investors in the Dirt Flippers community are finding other people to help them with stuff.

All right, number six, you ready? Number five, number one was stay consistent. Number two is don't overcomplicate the system. Number three, follow up like you like, depends on it. Number four, pick one market and learn it well. Number five use realtors and title companies and other investors to do the heavy lifting and partnering with you.

All right number six. You do not need a big budget to start. Really important. A lot of my clients, they either have the money or they don't want to spend the money because they're starting slow. And a lot of them are doing deals just spending maybe 500 bucks a month on marketing, maybe on a virtual assistant, on a CRM. Freedom Soft is about 197 to 297 a month. So you don't need a huge budget. In fact, you can get real creative on doing this. My coaching business partner, Gavin, he spent, he had like $7,500. Okay. And he spent seven grand on coaching and he spent $500 on direct mail and had a great knowledge base, right? But had no leads. He wasted all of money on direct mail. And his coach, it was a friend of mine at the time, said to him, hey, you just need to get creative. You need to go and go to the local real estate clubs. You're good on the phone and just tell everybody, hey, if you've got old leads, I'll work your old leads and we can JV on the deals. And so he did that. He went, he said, I'm good on phone if any of you have old leads. Whatever. And two or three people came up to him after that meeting and one lady gave him about 30 dead leads. And when he tells the story, like they were dead, dead, they were like, some of them a year old. But she said, here, take these leads. And if you can do anything with them, I'll pay you half of my assignment fee. I think this was in Phoenix, Arizona at the time, super competitive market. And so he called these 30 leads and about halfway through he got a deal. And all he did was say, Hey, you probably don't remember us. We talked to you a little while ago. Do you still have a property? Do you want to sell it? And he had no idea what he was doing, but he kind of relied on the other person's experience. You kind of, cause he had, no idea how to estimate repairs, but anyway, Within a few weeks, he'd made about $9,000 doing this, just got creative, he found somebody else who had dead leads, and he called all of the dead leads and started negotiating, got them under contract and wholesale them. But he relied on somebody else's experience, similar to the point that I was making up before. So my point is you don't need a huge budget. Just go find other people that have old leads and call their old leads up. Go to FSBOs, call realtors who have older vacant land listings or who have houses that need a lot of work that have been on the market over 60 days. Start calling those agents up, talk to them, build relationships with them, and make offers, right? So use your time and the minimal budget that you have. Wisely and stay consistent and you will do deals.

All right, number seven, stay plugged into a community. The great thing about Facebook group and now even some school groups and there's things, discord, I've gotten into discord and I have no idea. I'm completely lost. I guess I'm too old for discord. I don't know, but there are a lot of really good communities out there where you can actually get help when you need it. Okay. I have a dirt flippers community, which is amazing. It's awesome. But when things get hard and they will staying connected can help you through those hard times. Okay. There's a lot of communities, the ones I'm doing there's, we do coaching calls every single weekday and my higher end program, I do comping calls every, single day Gavin does accountability calls. Once a week, but I'm always like, I want to be there because I want to do deals. And when you have a community and support network, it's going to keep you going when things get hard. So it's important that you plug into the community, get involved, ask questions, offer to help people. And then when you need the help, there will be somebody there to help you with that. Okay.

Number eight, you ready? This isn't anything I made up. But this is straight from people's that I was interviewing from what they were saying. Number Faith, mindset, and gratitude matter. That's interesting, isn't it? Faith, gratitude, and mindset matter. Many people talked about the emotional rollercoaster. And this is true of anybody who starts business. A doubt, fear, stress, you go through the ups and downs. Again, this is why a community is so important. But faith, prayer, and attitude were a common thread that a lot of people said that got them through the challenging times. And it's gonna be challenging. In fact, I would suggest this, never take business advice from somebody who has never failed. There's a thing, I remember Russell Brunson talking about this. It's so powerful. He learned it from somebody else, but the best coaches and mentors out there are the ones who have failed and bounced back. Find the ones that have made big mistakes, who have lost it all and have come back better than ever because they're the ones who can encourage you and know where you're at. And trust me on this, everybody who's ever been successful in business and in life has had a lot of failures, but they bounce back from that. Okay, so we have the faith in the system find a coach or mentor who has bounce back and come back and just listen to their advice okay so it's in the mindset in its gratitude is being grateful stop complaining stop whining stop being a Debbie-downer a negative nelly like stop being yeah butter and just have to focus on your mindset because this business is eighty percent mindset twenty percent pack that's the truth. I wish it wasn't the case but that's I wish it was eighty percent tactical because tactics are easy to teach but the mindset is the trick. Part of that, okay? So how do you fix your mind? You just be grateful, be thankful, okay, and pray, right? I'm a big man of faith. I love the Lord. I believe tithing is really important, so great, all right.

Number nine, you do not need to be the real estate expert. This stuff of fake it till you make it hogwash. You don't have to pretend to be somebody you're not. Most people, by the way, too, when they get started, everybody had never done a deal before when they did their first deal, okay. So most students, when their getting into land, they have no prior experience doing land, many of them have no experience doing houses either. And actually, that's a good thing because they don't have any bad things in their head that they need to relearn, okay? But obviously, anybody who's ever done a deal has never done a dealing before. So don't let your lack of experience be an excuse to hold you back. You do not need to be a real estate expert. You do need to not be a sales expert. Guess what, you just need to you. You need to be genuine, you need to yourself, and you're gonna be just fine, all right?

Final thing, number 10, get help when you need it. But don't wait to start. Start, the time is now. I don't know what day you're listening to this. Maybe it's Wednesday, all right? Ask yourself, what am I gonna do Thursday? Don't wait till start. Don't say, well, you know what? I'm gonna start next week. No, actually today's Wednesday. I'm going to start today. Don't Wait. And how do you get help? Well, you can hire, like if you want help for your business doing the data stuff, the data entry, the managing, the CRM, et cetera, et cetera. You can hire VA, virtual assistant. You can partner up with other people. You can use software and tools like FreedomSoft, but don't wait until you feel like you're ready right? Decide today you're going to start today and don't wait until you get a good warm fuzzy feeling in there, right? The time is now. And this is really important. This is a really important principle. You're going learn by doing. Learn by doing the fastest, your speed to income. This is important. I'm done with this. Okay. Your speed to income is directly proportional to your speed of implementation. Write that one down. Okay? It's one of my favorite principles in this business. Your speed of income is direct proportional to the speed of implementation. So decide today, but man, that's okay if I don't understand everything. It's okay that I don't understand step seven and eight, I'm going to do steps one and two right now, I am going to learn by actually doing the stuff. And that's how you can succeed.

Alright, so I hope that helps. Little long winded here. I wasn't expecting to go this long. I made this list of 10 things and I thought I'll just fly through that in five minutes, but here we are. This has been a long podcast and my car is done charging. I need to go. Appreciate you guys. Hey, listen, every single week I do a flip dirt challenge. Okay. Flip dirt challenge, so if you go to www.flipdirtchallenge.com join my next five day challenge. Right now it's free. It might be, we might be charging for it later on, but check it out because I'm actually going to teach and show and I'm show you by doing how to flip land in my five day challenge. Okay, why vacant land is the best, fastest, simplest, easiest way to get started in real estate and make money fast. And I'm going to show you how to find the right markets, how to find the best sellers. How to make fast offers, how to use AI to make offers. In fact, I'm actually even going to give you one of my software in there that I just created that uses AI to calculate offers and to come up with offers and how to sell the deals fast. So go to www.flipdirtchallenge.com and check it out. It's free. Appreciate you guys. We'll see you. Bye-bye.