Joe:  Hey, welcome to REI in your car.

Joe:  How are you, Joe? Here it's a beautiful Monday morning right now. We're starting to come into the fall. Just dropped my daughter off at school and she's loving it. It's a really good school. It's awesome. We homeschooled all of our kids all the way through. Well, our two boys, our older boys, we homeschooled them all the way through high school, and then our two girls, homeschooled them all the way to the 8th grade, so they started high school.

Every kid is different, right? And so we just felt like with our girls, they just, they needed to get into a bigger school and have more structure, more friends and things like that. But anyway, in case you're wondering too, our boys, they're doing really well. They're super smart kids doing different things and real proud of them. But anyway, okay, so on this episode of REI in your car, I'm going to be talking about something. I'm stealing all of this from a friend of mine named Tom Krol. He wrote a post early this year that I thought was so good, and I wrote it all down. He did it on an email and a Facebook post. And I said, man, one of these days, I'm going to do a podcast on these things and give my own kind of spin to it.

And it's different than what you're teaching. You want to hear about it? Because it's pretty cool. And he thought I was kind of weird at first, but then we became friends and it was. We've been friends for, since 2008, 2009, so, you know, 16 years now. Anyway, I got a call from Todd Toback saying, hey, if you were coaching your brother, or would you coach your brother in doing real estate? I said, yeah, I think I would, but you have to make sure you have some ground rules in place. He said, well, I'm thinking about doing a podcast series where I'm coaching my brother live on my podcast audience. Well, he didn't know if his brother was going to do what he told him to do or whatnot.

So anyway, Todd Toback started doing a podcast. Well, he had a podcast already. It was called No Limits Real Estate Investing. And so he started a new series with his brother called the Do or Die Series. And his brother had just either gone into bankruptcy, out of bankruptcy, got fired or lost his business or something. He was doing, I think he was selling lawn care or something like that. Tom tells the story, and it's really funny, actually.

He was like, his back was against the wall. He had to make some money or, you know, like his wife, he tells the story, was in tears because they didn't. She didn't know whether to buy food or pay the mortgage or the rent or whatever. So anyway, I told Todd, don't do it because it's too risky. Like, you know, you're going to, you know, embarrass yourself, your brother or whatever. Thank God he didn't listen to my advice. He was coaching Todd. Tom was, Todd was coaching Tom on this Do or Die series. And this was, again, long time ago, maybe 2010. Tom actually did everything his brother told him to do. And it was hard. He talks about it. But all of these lessons learned that I'm sharing with you, there's a whole point in this story came from trial by fire, came from the school of hard knocks, came from just Tom busting his head over and over and over again, learning from his failures, learning from his mistakes, learning from his successes, learning from his coaches and his friends and things like that. And so this is not some theory that Tom created just from reading books or because, you know, he thinks it might sell.

This is real in the trenches stuff. And so I watched Tom just really explode. I mean, within his first year, he was making a hundred, couple of hundred thousand dollars in profits, wholesaling houses and doing really well. And then within his, you know, the next couple years after that, he was, I don't know how much money he was making… a lot. And I would guess it was close to a million, if not over a million dollars in profits from wholesaling deals. Okay, fast forward probably five years, I'm talking to Tom because we became friends. And I remember where I was. We were camping in an RV for three months, touring the northwestern corner of the United States.

Tom Krol called me. This is a long intro to what I wanted to talk about. So my apologies, but I'm trying to give this some context because I think it's really important on what we're going to be talking about here. But I remember talking to Tom about he was getting stressed out. He's getting way too many leads. He was getting overwhelmed and confused and buried in seller leads and was completely unorganized. And he learned some really valuable lessons from this.

And I kind of coached and helped him about finding virtual assistants to help him outsource his business and stuff like that. The stuff that he was doing. And so fast forward six months, like his business completely changed and transformed and he was killing it, doing like, when I say killing it, like, he was doing a lot of deals, making a lot of money, outsourcing almost everything to virtual assistants except revenue generating activities like talking to sellers and making offers. Anyway, one of my most popular podcast episodes ever, the ones that I have referred the most to people, was an episode I did. Boy, probably. Well, I don't even remember, but it was called the Best Uses of Virtual Assistants Part two. So I interviewed Tom Krol. It was either part one or part two, but I interviewed Tom Krol because he was implementing some things I taught him about virtual assistants, but also did some crazy new things and it was amazing. And what he taught me, what he was doing completely changed my business and the thousands and thousands of students that I've taught this to. So anyway, Tom's a good friend and he's a legit investor, coach, mentor. Now what he does, he doesn't teach. He started a huge coaching business and I don't know anybody else that has taught wholesaling houses with better success and more successful students than Tom Krol did when he had Wholesaling Inc. And he eventually sold that company. Now Brent Daniels runs it, I think, and Brent Daniels from TTP is an amazing guy and is doing really well with it as well. Okay, so anyway, all right, so I've known Tom Krol for years and years and I love the guy like a brother and I would give anything to him.

So he wrote this post and I wanted to share the context of all of this because this guy has been through the ringer, he's been through the fire, and he. There's a lot of other things I could tell you about that are probably too personal that he's gone through. Not personal, actually, but more things in business and people going after him and it's just been insane. But anyway, he wrote this post about 6 months ago and it still applies today. I mean, even if I, if you were to listen to this in five years from now, it would still apply. And I wanted to talk about it here but he said, if you desire wealth, try these 10 proven methods for success. Okay, 10 things. Number one, do not spend time with the wrong people.

Or inversely, spend time with the right people. Okay? Spending time with the wrong people and thinking they don't influence you is like swimming and trying to avoid getting wet. Okay, obviously that's a dumb idea. Do not do that. When you spend time with the wrong people, the right people will avoid you. Oh, did you hear that? When you spend time with the wrong people, the right people that you should be hanging out with will avoid you. They say your network determines your net worth. Now, I'm not saying that you should only hang out with rich people, you shouldn't hang out with poor people, but there's a certain mentality, you need to be really careful of who you are hanging out with. And if you want to hang out, if you want to be successful in your, in business and in the mind and physically, you need to hang out with people who are successful. If you want a good marriage, you need to have friends that have good marriages. If you want to raise good kids, hang out with people that raise good kids or at least are trying to raise good kids, right? Because there's only so much we can do. That's number one, Stop spending time with the wrong people. Be very careful. I tell this to my kids all the time. You're like a sponge.

Your spirit's like a sponge, and you soak in whatever you are hanging around. And so be careful with that. Number two, read every single day without exception. And Tom talks about this a lot. Like, you look at anybody who's successful, they have pretty much one thing in common. They read a lot. And so the most successful people read. And that's where wisdom can really come from, right? I believe wisdom comes with God, from God.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the Bible says. And so for me personally, man, I read the Bible, I try to every single day. And I'm constantly reading good business books. And I sometimes occasionally will read a fiction book just so that, you know, for more entertainment and to kind of get my mind off of business. Sometimes it's too much on business, but any reading is super important. Reading is a great divider when it comes to successful and struggling entrepreneurs. You find somebody who is struggling, and I can guarantee you they are not reading almost every single time.

Okay? Now, it depends on the reasons why they're struggling. But I'm telling you, anytime that I have like a great book as an example is this book called Buy Back Your Time, written by Dan Martell. Another book I just finished reading, The Science of Scaling. Really good books that help you just, no matter what business you're in, they help you really look at the most critical things in your business. The 80/20 principle, right? Simplifying, focusing. And it's just so good to be reminded of that and learn new tactics and strategies, right? Another thing that Tom says here is don't pick your own books. Ask for suggestions from people who are where you want to be. One of the best questions you could ask any kind of coach or mentor or somebody that you admire or respect or what are you reading right now? What are some of your favorite books that helped you get to where you are? So if reading is so important, important, you should commit to reading at least eight pages a day.

Prioritize this in your business. Prioritize reading at least eight pages. And then some people complain. They say, listen, I can't read. I'm dyslexic or whatever. Whatever, right? I don't have the time, and it's too hard for me to read. Some people say, right, well, Tom says if you can read street signs, you can read a book

And I understand too. You know, I listen to a lot of Audible books and there's a place for that. But sometimes I personally, and I don't make a big deal out of this. Tom says Audible doesn't count. Listening to audiobooks doesn't count. Then he doesn't even like Kindle. It has to be a physical book that you touch and feel. There is something to be said for that, though.

There is something to be said with actually reading with your eyes. And some people, if you really want to retain stuff, read it with your eyes while you listen to it in the audiobook. Because when you activate more of your senses, you can. You learn better that way. All right, so number one, don't spend time with the wrong people. Spend time with the right people. Did I say that right? Don't spend time with the wrong people. Spend time with the right people.

Number two, read every single day. Read something every single day. Something of value and importance. Number three, track your net worth. This is really important. And this is something that I don't do as much as Tom wants me to do it, but I should be doing it more. This is so critical, important, because when you focus, what you focus on grows. What you focus on gets better and matures.

So when you focus on your net worth, it forces you to make better financial decisions in your life. And it should be written down and you should be tracking it and updating it every single month with your spouse. Again, this is something that I don't do enough of, but it's important. So make sure that your cash flow is increasing your net worth before it's increasing your living expenses. Tom and I are both hyperspenders. It's funny, we talk about this a lot. We're hyperspenders. We spend too much money.

We buy things without looking at the price tags. And it's just, you know, but we need to get that under control. We all do. Right? We all need to do a better job of that. But when you track your net worth and make sure that when you are making money, your cash flow is increasing, you need to make sure that it's increasing your net worth before it's increasing your living expenses. And he has another principle here. It's important. Make big purchases based on both your cash flow and your net worth goals.

So understanding your numbers is so important in business. Okay. And I would say if you don't know your numbers, you don't really have a business. So you need to start learning how to track your net worth and your cash flow. Really important. Okay? And have it written down. Track it every month. One of the things that Tom says that I think is important when it comes to measuring your net worth is the equity in your house.

Don't count all of the equity in your house. If you've got 400,000 in equity, you should probably only count half of that because you're going to need another place to live. If you had to sell your house to get that equity, it would take time. You'd have a lot of expenses involved with that. It's not a one to one ratio. So be conservative. Track half of the equity in your house towards the equity in your net worth calculations.Make sense?

Okay. Number four, make sure you only take instructions. Get coaching, advice, mentoring from people who have already achieved what you want to achieve. So if you want to make a million dollars a year in your business, only get coaching and advice from people who have already made a million dollars in their business. This is really important because there's a lot of people that. One thing I would say this to add to this as well. You want to get coaching and advice from people who have been through the cycles. You know, since 2012, we have not seen a housing crash.

Now the last couple of years, it's kind of flatlined a little bit. But be very, very careful taking advice. Real estate Finance, real estate advice from somebody who has not been up and back down and up and down again because the last 10 years or so, I mean, like anybody who can breathe can make a lot of money in real estate. I would say maybe from 2012 to 2023, anybody who could breathe could make money in real estate. Right. The last two years has been, been challenging and subsequently we've also seen a lot of real estate coaches, the space and stop coaching because they're not doing what they teach and they're not making money anymore and they're struggling or whatever. So when you get coaching and hire somebody, make sure they've been through cycles, up and down cycles. They know how to weather the storm, they know how to change course, change direction, change strategies, and can focus on making money when things change because things do not stay the same.

The only constant is change. So make sure you're getting instruction and mentoring from people that have already had the success that you've had that you want to have. Right? So if you want to make 10 million dollars a year, don't get coaching advice from somebody who's only made 5 million a year. If you want to learn how to do your first deal right, that's okay. Then you get coaching from somebody who's already done their first deal. But if you want to grow and scale and make millions of dollars or $100,000 a month or $100,000 a year, make sure you're hanging out with people, reading books, gettingmentoring, studying podcasts, YouTube videos from people that have already been there, done that. This is so important. Your mentors must have personal experience and this is a big deal.

This is a really top issue Tom says here that's holding entrepreneurs today. They're taking too much advice from YouTube entrepreneurs, YouTube coaches, podcasts, from people that maybe have just been, maybe they're just a flash in the pan. They’ve had some recent success, they haven't had long term success. And so when market dynamics happen and things shift, they really struggle to succeed because they've taken advice from the wrong people. Make sense? Okay, so number one, let me repeat again, do not spend time with the wrong people. Number two, read every single day without exception. Number three, have a written net worth goal and track it every single month.

Number four, make sureyou're only taking instructions from people who already have achieved what you want to achieve. Number five, this is a very simple formula for success. Proven instruction. So good instruction, good teaching plus massive imperfect action equals results. Does that make sense? Let me repeat it. So proven instruction Things that work. Learning from somebody who does what they teach and teaches what they do. Good mentoring plus implementation or massive imperfect action.

What does that mean? It's one thing to learn. Like, I was a professional student for three years, man. I knew everything, but I wasn't making any money because I was afraid to take massive imperfect action. So understand that proven instruction, good teaching plus massive imperfect action equals results. You cannot have results without good teaching and without good implementation. And that is implementation where you're okay with failure, you're okay with making mistakes. You're understanding that you're failing. Forward fast. You're learning from your mistakes. You're picking yourself up and you're going, it's ready,fire, aim. It's not ready, aim, aim, aim, aim.

Aim. Ready. Buy another course, watch another video, listen to another podcast, read another book. Buy another program. Ready, aim. Aim. Aim. Aim.

Ready. Aim. Aim, Aim. We never get to fire. It needs to be ready, get some instruction, fire, then aim, fix, adjust. And that's massive imperfect action. Okay? You don't move the parts of that equation around. You learn when you earn.

Makes sense. So that's putting revenue in first position. So when you're learning, okay, learning, studying does not produce revenue. Putting revenue activities in first position, that's how you learn. That's how you grow. That's how you have success in business today. Okay, number six, this is important and controversial, and I totally, 100% agree with Tom on this. Okay? And this is weird.

You may not see this in business advice, but there is a spiritual principle from God himself. And I hate saying from the universe or the higher power, whatever you believe in. No, it's from God. Right? God created this principle that tithing is super important. Tithing, giving 10% of every dollar that you earn, giving that to God. And that could mean to your church, it could mean to charity, it could mean to the poor. I believe it should go to your church.

But tithing is so important. It's the only place in the Bible that tells us it's okay to put God to a test. And in Malachi3:8, if you read it, God says, test me now on this. If you tithe, I will bless you. And I believe that 100%. I will stake my ground on that. And I will die on this principle if I had to.

Tithing is commanded by God. And if you want blessing in your financial life, in your business, you need to learn how to tithe personally. From my own personal experience, when I wasn't tithing, I was struggling. Now that I do tithe, and I've been tithing for years. God has blessed me. Now, is it. We don't tithe to get, right? We don't give to get. I'm not tithing because it will bless me.

It's not like that, right? It's just the principle of putting God first in everything. And even if you're not a Christian, I still think it's important, right? Because it's just. It's just a spiritual law, just like gravity, just like thermodynamics or whatever, right? Like it's a real principle. When, when you're charitable, when you give, you sow. You reap what you sow, okay? And this is the only advice. Tom says this, this is the only advice that I offer that can be counted on 100%. You will be blessed when you tithe, okay? Really, really important.Number seven,understand that the purpose of social media for entrepreneurs is to create content, not consume content.

This is so. I mean, how many of you. And I'm raising my hand, you get trapped and stuck in Instagram. And, you know, sometimes I go there when I'm just discouraged or super busy. I need to get my money off of work because it's entertaining, right? But then I find myself a half hour, an hour later, like, what just happened? This. I feel worse now than I did before. There are two kinds of people in this world, right? Producers or consumers. And you need to decide who you're going to be.

Do you want to be a producer? You want to be successful? Do you want to contribute to society, or do you want to be a consumer? I'm encouraging you to change your thinking and start putting yourself to a higher standard. You need to be a producer. You need to limit your consumption time on social media drastically, starting right now. So that just means putting the phone down, right? When you're with your family, obviously, put your phone down, put it away when it's time to work, work, work. You know, you don't. Doesn't mean you have to work, you know, 10 hours a day. But when you're working, work, stop. Turn the distractions off, turn the Facebook off.

You need to be thinking in terms of producing content to raise awareness, to find new customers, to grow your brand, okay? And not be using social media to consume content because it'll suck you in, it'll drain you dry, and you'll be. I mean, just look at the cesspool that X.com has become, right? I mean, it's absolutely ridiculous. The Same sometimes with Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and TikTok. All of them. You can measure. I can guarantee you this. You can measure the net worth of somebody and their financial health by how much time they put into social media. So be very important.

Be very, very careful about that. All right, number eight, liveoff of. Live below your means, right? Live off of 70 to 80% of what you take home and invest the rest. This is really important. Okay? If you tithe 10% now, you've got 90% left. Learn to live off of 70 to 80% of that and then invest the now. It's hard if you're not there already. So start small.

You might be where you're already spending 105% of whatever you take in. That's a problem, right? You need to stop that and reverse that. But once you get that, just don't think that you have toovernight do this, but start small. Every single month, every single year, liveoff of 1% less, and eventually you'll get there. Okay? And I like this from Tom. He says, allocate your savings into these five different buckets. Personally, I don't do this yet, but I'm working towards it.

And I really like Tom's advice here. Number one, invest 50% into real estate. 20% in the stock market and in the stock market. Both Tom and I agree on this. I really like index funds. Real simple index funds like VTI. I don't know what it is, but I have it. I think it's a Vanguard total index or something like that.

It's just a total market index fund from Vanguard. It's done me very well for the last few years. Don't invest your 20% into individual stocks. Just go broad. You will not beat the market. Okay? Okay. 50% of real estate, 20% into the stock market, an index fund. 20% into cash, 5% into gold, 5% into speculation.

High risk, high returns, like lending money, individual stocks, bitcoin, crypto and things like that. Okay, so let me repeat again. 50% into real estate. Now that could be putting that into your house to pay it off. It could be, in my opinion, buying free and clear real estate or paying it off as soon as you can and renting it out. Or I prefer to sell on owner financing. If I have a house, I'm selling on owner financing instead of renting it out. That's a whole other discussion.

All right, 20% of the stock market index fund. 20% into cash. That could be T bills. It could just be CDs or high yielding savings accounts. And 5% into gold. I don't do that, so whatever. And 5% into high-risk speculation, lending the money, individual stocks or bitcoin and things like that. All right, number nine, on workdays, revenue in first position, not preparation.

Okay? Stop trying to build your website, design a logo, get a business card, study more courses.Focus every day on revenue producing, generating activities. And a lot of times we get this confused and we think preparation is a form or we think preparation is working, but it's not. Preparation is just a form of procrastination and we're never ready. We go when we ready, when we're ready enough. This is really important. Okay? So number 10, if you're ready for this, I know this has been a long podcast, my apologies. Number 10, do not work on Sundays no matter what.

All right? No matter how much you love what you do, take a day off, okay? Take some of those off completely. That doesn't mean you can't work work. Like sometimes you have things you have to do at home, you know, go to church, go shopping or whatever. Like I'm not that legalistic, but I think it's important to not work at least one or two days a week. You need a day off. You do not earn a day off. You just get one. Okay, real simple, ten things.

Let me repeat. Number one, stop spending time with the wrong people. Focus on creating real good friendships. Read every single day without exception. Number three, have a written net worth goal and track it every day with your spouse. Okay? Number four, make sure you're only taking instruction and coaching from people who have already achieved what you want to achieve. Number five, remember this proven formula for success. Instruction plus implementation equals results.

Okay? Proven instruction plus massive imperfect action equals results. Number six, tithe 10%. Give every dollar of your first fruits 10% of all your first fruits to God and you will be blessed. All right, number seven, understand that the purpose of social media is to create content, not consume. Number eight, only live off of 70 to 80% of what you take home and invest the rest. Number nine, on the days that you do work, put revenue in first position. Focus on revenue generating activities, not preparation. Preparation is a form of procrastination.

And then the final thing, number 10, don't work on Sundays. Take a day off, spend some time with your family, focus on the things that are most important. Go to church, get a relationship with Jesus and your life will be blessed. It won't be easy, but you'll be blessed and you'll be glad you did. Okay, so cool. Special shout out to Tom Krol for coming up with those things. I think they're really smart, simple things. You may disagree with some things, and that's totally cool.

You may want to add a few things on top of that, but this is a great place to start. And if you do these things, you will be successful. All right, so take care. I gotta go. My car is almost done charging here and I've got a coaching call in a few minutes. We'll see you guys later. Take care. Bye-bye.