Joe:  You go and you'll sign up for a $10,000 coaching program, but you won't spend $1,000 on marketing. Why is that?

Joe:  I'm back. These are five things I used to say no to, but now I say yes to. Number one was using a CRM, super important. And then number two was managing my books. I don't do that anymore because I actually never did do it to begin with. All right, so number three is this is weird. Hiring a local US-based assistant. I remember, again, Todd Toback. I keep on talking about him a lot. I owe a lot of my success to him. I owe, you know, if you guys don't have friends that can push you and give you good advice and help you with your business, you need to get some better friends. Anyway, so Todd Toback. I remember I had two or three virtual assistants in the Philippines, and I was making good money, but I was like, I felt like I was at a ceiling. I felt like I wasn't working way too hard. I don't remember what my numbers were, but I felt that I should be making a lot more money based on how hard I'm working. And he said, Joe, you need a local US-based assistant. Because how did he know that? Because he did it himself, right? And I said, well, what does that mean? I said that's scary because they cost a lot of money. He said, no, you just need to hire a US-based local assistant. Take my word for it, trust me on it. So I said, okay, what does that mean? What does that look like? So I found a lady who was a friend of ours from church, hired her. She's been working with me ever since, probably close to 15. Is that right? My goodness. Now probably 12 or 13 years now. And so then what I did is I hired her and I paid her very good money. She could work from home. I did later have an office, but that would only last for a couple of years. But basically what I told her was, I said, I don't have the time or the bandwidth to do all of these different things. I have these three VAs that are doing this stuff. I want you to manage the VAs. And if you need to hire more, that's fine. But this is what we want, I want done and this is how I want to do it. So help me figure it out. And so I made her in charge of the VAs. So instead of me talking to the three or four VAs, I just talked to her and she kind of managed all of that, right? So what happened was my income and my productivity tripled. It was amazing to me how much more time I had, how much more money I was making doing this. And so you may think I don't need a local assistant. I can do fine with just virtual assistants. I'm telling you, if you're doing over 200, maybe over 500 grand a year in revenue, you need a local US-based assistant. And you may thing I'm crazy. You may think I'm stupid, but I'm telling you it will double or triple your productivity. And it's not that virtual assistants are not any good. There's something about a US- based assistant that just understands things faster and is also like because it was local it was somebody that I can meet with I would meet with her once or twice a week and I would just give her things to do you're much more productive. It seems like in person so yeah, it's just as great now. She now lives in Florida. So she's not been in St. Louis for over 10 years. So that's kind of how it how it works and you'll be glad because they handle your communication. They understand your culture. They're kind of faster for getting things done and the reliability is a little better. And then again, I had her manage my overseas team.

The fourth thing that I used to say no to, but now I say yes to. And it's spending a lot of money on marketing. I used to be afraid of spending money on marketing, right? And you guys know what it's like. You go and you'll sign up for a $10,000 coaching program, but you won't spend a thousand dollars on marketing? Why is that? You're just afraid. But here's the deal. We're not in the real estate investing business. We are in the marketing business. I am in the coaching business. But guess what? In my coaching business, I spend a lot of money on marketing. I spend a lot of money and time on marketing. This that I'm doing right here, this is content marketing and so I'm spending time creating these videos for you. So I remember when I first started in the business I spent $13,000 on credit cards on coaching and at the end of the six months it was over and I had nothing to show for it and I'm looking back thinking what was wrong, what happened there and the part of the problem was, I had a lot problems but it was all internal stuff it was of a fear of success. It was a fear of failure. But I was not willing to spend the time on marketing. So like, I didn't have any more money to spend on marketing, but I could have been spending time. And I remember my coaches at the time telling me, hey, you need to be calling, emailing, texting, you know, realtors and for sale by owners and landlords and just make it a goal to do five a day. I remember them telling me this and I was like, uh, yeah, okay. But something always came up. I was always busy. And I remember Frank Kern told a story, not a story, but he was talking once. Frank Kern is a marketing, direct response marketing guy. Super smart. And he said, there's two commandments in business. Number one, and I'll use the clean version, thou shalt stop farting around. That's what it was. You stop effing around, number one. And number two, stop being a sissy. He said the other word. And so the point of it all was we're sitting around and we're buying course after course, and we are just farting around. We're not taking it seriously. And if a terrorist put a gun to your head and said, you have 30 minutes to make an offer, you would figure out how to make an offer. You'd stop farting around and you would go to ChatGPT and say, how do I send an offer? Or you'd go to YouTube and how do I send it? And you would find, you'd find a property on Zillow that has been on the market for over six months and you'd go to the county website. You'd find the owner of that property and you would write up an offer and you would send it to them. If a guy had a gun in your head, you would figure it out. You would make the offer. You would stop farting around. You'd make the offer. And you also need to stop being a sissy. And like I said, you know, you go out and spend 10s and 20s and $30,000 on coaching programs, but you won't go and spend $1,000 on direct mail because you're afraid. It's time to get over that, right? We're not in the real estate investing business. We're not in the coaching business. We’re in the marketing business. Make sense? So marketing is one of the best investments you can make.

The final thing I'll say here is I used to be really stingy with my money. And so one of things I said no to before, but I say yes to now is generosity. I used be stingy. I tried to minimize my expenses, minimize my payroll, but now I am more generous. I'm more generous with other people, with myself. And every time I've been more generous, it has always come back multiplied over and over again, because it's a spiritual principle just as real as gravity. You reap what you sow. And so I go to church, I love the Lord, I go to a good Christian evangelical church, right? And I tithe. I think it's really, really important. It's not a commandment. You don't have to do it, maybe. But I think it's a really good idea. And you're missing out on a lot of God's blessings when you're stingy and you don't tithe. Now, I used to tithe when I could afford it. I used to tithe when if I had enough money left over at the end of the month. You can't serve God or money. You have to choose one or the other. And if you choose to serve God, He wants the first fruits. He wants first of whatever you produce. And it's a way to honor Him. It's a way tell Him, I'm trusting you that you're going to take care of the 90%. He can do more with the 90% than he can with 100% because when you hold back and you hoard, it's a spiritual disease and it's idolatry. You're holding on to money tighter than you are trusting in God. And so when you tithe the best of the first fruits, you're opening up your heart to God and you're saying, all right, I trust you more than I trust this money. And He will always bless this. So this is the only time in where he says, test me on this. So that's my belief and thoughts on that. And I mean, this is so important and people argue about this and just whatever. I really feel like you are missing out on God's blessing, God's best for you, if you are greedy and you hold on to everything. So tithe, it's important. In fact, I would say even if you were not a Christian, you should still tithe and you will see blessings. So anyway, this also relates to being more generous with your team, right? So I'd pay my team very generously, I think. I think I do. They've been with me for a very long time. Another thing, for example, with virtual assistance in the Philippines, normally for Christmas bonuses, I give them an extra month of salary. So it's called the 13th month. You don't have to do it, but it's really appreciated. And that's why I keep my VAs for a very long time and they're very good people that’re very consistent and hardworking and they are amazing. Now, I pay them well. I give them a bonus monthsalary so I think that maybe is one reason why they've been working with me so long. So the other thing too is think about being more generous to yourself and this is crazy. I heard one guy talking about this where he started treating himself more to nicer things because like this life is short and you heard the phrase life is too short to smoke cheap cigars and something like that right? I don't remember what the phrase is. I don't smoke cigars. And so like life's short, right? Sometimes we need to, and I don't want to say indulge, that maybe is a bad word. Maybe it's not a bad word, I don't know, but like sometimes we're too stingy. And so this guy was talking about how he started buying first class tickets whenever he flew. And at first, it was really difficult to do. But as he started doing it more, he realized he was actually making more money by doing it. So what happened was as he's flying first class on business, he is actually when he gets to wherever he's going, he's more refreshed. He's more productive. And then when he's flying first class, it was forcing him to think of creative ways to start making that money back. And then, when he got home, because he was, you know, just was sitting in a nicer seat, getting off the plane sooner, not as stressed, not as cramped, it is a lot more comfortable, he found himself actually making more money than those first class tickets cost him because he was more productive and so when he started flying first-class, now this guy's flying his own private jets, he doesn't own the jet, but he flies private. The return that he's making on that is so much better. And so he's forcing himself to think about, all right, so this flight is costing me $10,000. What can I do today to make an extra $10,000? You see how your mind shifts? So think about that. It gives you time to think. It gives time to plan. It gives your time to create things. So I don't fly private, but I usually fly first class whenever I can because my ROI on that investment is awesome. Plus, I get so many points right now with the marketing that we're doing. We pay for all of our marketing with credit cards and we pay the credit cards off every week, but I'm getting tons and tons of points. I can fly my whole family first class now anywhere. So sometimes though, I don't want my kids to feel entitled. So I'll buy first-class tickets from my wife and I and the kids will go back in the basic cabin, whatever. Okay, so something to think about. I heard the story of a guy who, whenever he writes books, it'sreally important to him he doesn't get distracted. So he will buy first class premium tickets on the nicest airline he can to Asia, which is on the other side of the world, and it takes a really long time. And so when you're flying, you can't have cell phones, right? So, and you can get distracted with life and getting interrupted or whatnot. So he'll fly first class to Asia, and then we'll write the book on a nice little cabin, you know, inside the airplane. And then when he gets to Asia wherever he flies, he gets a really nice first-class hotel and then stays there for a day or two and then flies back on first class. And then by the time he gets home, he's got the book written. And it's cost him a lot of money to do all of that, but he's getting the book written, he's giving the book done, and then he turns around and he sells the book and makes a lot money from that. So point is, sometimes you need to be a little more generous with yourself.

So again, just recapping everything we talked about, five things I used to say no to but now I say yes to. Number one, using a CRM, really critical and important. Number two, managing my books. I don't do that anymore. I hire the experts, get the book profit first, find somebody who does bookkeeping and accounting for you and give them the book. Say you go implement this or just go hire certified profit first bookkeepers and accountants and you can just Google that and you'll find them. Okay. If you don't know your numbers, you don't have a real business. Third thing is hire a local US-based assistant, especially if you're hitting over 200 to $500,000 a year, you need a local assistant to manage your virtual assistants and then start. Don't be so afraid to spend money on marketing. You'll get that back and it's really critical. Stop being afraid to invest in marketing, growing your business, but make sure you track your numbers. Right? So you know how quickly you're making that back or not. You need to be nimble, you need to able to adjust quickly if you're not seeing a good enough ROI on that. My goal is to see a positive return on my ad spend in seven days or less. Sometimes it's 30 days, but my goal is seven days. And then fifth, I think most important is learn to be more generous. Don't be stingy. It's better to give than to receive. And when you start giving more, there's a great book, The Go Giver. Go read that book. It'll always come back to you multiplied. You always make more when you do that, okay? So start tithing. Start tithingoff of the gross, not the net, and you will be blessed. Okay, that's all I got for now, guys. We'll see you. Take care. Bye-bye.