Hey, good morning, everybody, this is Joe and you’re listening to the Real Estate Investing Mastery podcast.

Today, I’m going to be talking about how the hustle, overrated. But at the same time, we need to be more disciplined as entrepreneurs and I’m speaking to myself, right? So, it’s Monday morning as I’m recording this right now, I’m just driving up my driveway, and I’m so proud of my two boys. We have this really long driveway that goes uphill in both directions. No, I’m just kidding. It goes uphill. And the boys, they have to take up the trash all the way up this driveway. And it’s a workout to pull these heavy trash cans up the driveway. And they’ve, you know, they both know they have to do it before the trash comes. And nine times out of 10, they do it right. So, I was just driving up the driveway and that’s why I chuckled because one of my boys did it already and my other boy didn’t. But the other boy, he’s just tired. And he slept in this morning. So, I woke him up and so he’ll get it done.

But, you know, the cool thing about entrepreneurship is the freedom that we have, right? The freedom to go to work, work when we want, where we want, how we want, whenever we want for as long as we want. Right? We don’t have to answer to anybody. We have all of this awesome newfound freedom that sometimes can get us in trouble. And I’m speaking to myself, right, because I’ve been lately… Honestly, if I were to be a little vulnerable here is, falling into this trap of… I’ve been getting up early. You know, for me, early is 6:00 o’clock, at 6:30am. And but I don’t get to work till like 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. I just kind of fart around all morning. Not really. But you know what I mean? Like, just kind of lazy. I read a lot in the morning, but I read stupid stuff sometimes, like not all stupid stuff. Here, let me just tell you kind of what my morning is like in case you care.

I do read the Bible every morning, which is not stupid stuff. That’s like the most important thing that I can do. But I waste way too much time reading the news. Like I’ll read Fox News, I’ll read the Drudge Report. I’ll read a little bit of CNN. Sometimes I’ll go to npr.org. Like I’d read a lot of different types of news. That’s funny, I heard someone the other day said they said that NPR’s where Bernie Sanders goes to get his conservative news. It’s funny.

Anyway. So, I was just… I just read too much of the news and then I spend way too much time on Instagram and Facebook, just kind of seeing what’s going on out there. And all of a sudden before you know it, it’s 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. and I’ve not done anything yet. For like productive, for work related. Now, I do feel productive after reading the Bible, you know, for 30 minutes or so. But so, I’ve kind of told myself that I my goal is to start work at 8:00 a.m. every day. I mean, that’s what I used to do when I had a corporate job that, you know, I always complain about having a corporate job, being tied to a cubicle and all of that. But there’s something to be said… All of my friends at church and friends that golf or whatever, like people that aren’t in entrepreneurs’ stuff, man, they’re at work; they’re clocking in at 7:30, 8:00 a.m. right? They leave. They get up at 6:00 a.m. every morning like clockwork. They fight the morning commute… but they get to their desk by 8:00 a.m. If they’re, if it’s after 8:00 a.m., they’re late. And I feel like, man, I’m becoming a slob.

Anyway. So, here’s my point. If I’m, you know, if you, if you’re still with me here, maybe some of you can relate. You know, like, here’s my point. Forget the hustle. Right? Because that’s annoying. Like work six, seven, eight days a week. Right? You know, if you’re not working 20 hours a day, you’re a loser. Like hustle, hustle, hustle. That stuffs got to stop. But there is something to be said with hard work. There is something to be said with getting up early, going to bed early, getting up early and putting in a good day’s work. I mean, that’s what God created us to do. He didn’t create us to be lazy and just sit around and do nothing.

So, what happens, though, when you get into the entrepreneurial world is you get tempted. You don’t have anybody to answer to. You don’t have to… You’re not really accountable to anybody. And you can just work whenever you want. But the problem becomes it’s really easy to get lazy. It’s really easy to just sleep in a little bit, you know, get lazy as you kind of slowly eat your breakfast, read some more stupid news and just kind of get to work later. But then what happens is all of a sudden, you’re like now not getting much done today. Oh, I’m getting kind of lazy and groggy and tired and I don’t know what’s going on, and for me, sometimes I fall into the trap of, you know, it’s five o’clock, six o’clock and I still got a bunch of work left to do. And so, I’m rushing, rushing, rushing to get this work done before the end of the day so I can have dinner with my family at six o’clock. And that’s frustrating and then sometimes it bleeds over to 6:30 or 7:00 and then, you know, if you got kids, you got to take them to soccer, basketball, gymnastics, volleyball, all this other stuff. It’s maddening. It’s frustrating.

So, there’s got to be a better way. And I suggest, I propose to you, the better way is this: get to bed at 9 o’clock, at 10 o’clock at night, get up 5 a.m., 6 a.m., spend some time in the Bible, read a little bit of the holy book. It’ll do you good. Trust me, it’ll do you a lot of good whether you believe in God or not. Just read a little bit of the gospel of John. It’ll just make you feel better and then get to work at like 8 a.m. It’s funny. It’s entrepreneurs, you know, we work so hard, but we forget about this basic, fundamental, solid core principles that you had, and those disciplines that you had, when you were working a corporate job.

Like how many of you can say this? Like, would you hire yourself if you were an employer? Would you hire yourself? I don’t know if I’d hire me. I don’t know. Maybe I would. I mean, depending on what my goals… If I was looking to hire an employee, I would not hire me. If I was looking to hire somebody that could create money, then I would hire me. But. OK. So, my point is this, guys, don’t forget the fundamentals. Forget about the hustle… working hard like a dog. That’s not going to do you or your family any good in the long haul. And, you know, in the long perspective of things, working like that’s not going to do you any good. It’s just gonna help you get to the grave quicker. And you’re gonna look back and you’re gonna say, man, I wasted a bunch of valuable time that I could have been spending with my family.

But at the same time, don’t be a lazy idiot. Like, get up, get out of bed. Stop spending so much time reading the news. Forget it because you can’t do anything to influence the news anyway. So why are you wasting energy cells spending so much time reading the news? Like it’s addictive, isn’t it? We got to get that out of our lives. Like we should only really worry about things that we can control. If you can’t control the news, especially the local news, man, nothing gets more depressing than the local news because all they report on are the tragic things that are happening all around us, which is discouraging and depressing.

And then I don’t know where I’m going with all this because I hope you guys hear my heart and I’m not trying to blast, you know, them. Well, anyway, let me just say this final thing and then I’ll shut up. Sometimes you gotta be careful because the news, hearing sometimes in the news, it’s easy to… It’s so addictive. Right? And especially if you’re more of a conservative bent or even a liberal bent and you watch some of this news, all they do is complain and whine, especially people on talk radio, conservative talk radio, Fox News. You just listen to them and all it seems like all they do, it’s a shouting match. And all they’re doing is whining and complaining and whining about how it’s not fair. That’s the worst thing to listen to. Right?

Whining about: “Oh, it’s not fair they can do that. If we did this, they would say that… Blah, blah. But now they do it and it’s not a big deal or we did, you know, whatever is going on here in the news isn’t reporting on it. It’s not fair.” Like that’s just gotta stop. That’s a bunch of whining. You hear that from your kids you’re like, go to your room. Get out of here. Shut up. You know, some of it. So. Okay, so stop the whining and be careful what you listen to and what you pay attention to. Get up early, read good stuff. Positive things that will build you up, give you wisdom. Alright? Be careful what you feed into your mind. Get up early, get to work, get it done and get home in time to have dinner with your family and play with your kids. That’s all it matters.

I think Sam Walton… I know it is Sam Walton on his deathbed. He said, his last words… did you know this… was “I blew it”. Those were his last words. I blew it. One of the richest men, one of the most successful businessmen ever in American history. And those were his dying words. He was a nice guy. I mean, he drove a cheap old beat-up truck. But you know what? It was he worked way too hard. And he realized as he was dying, he wasn’t taking anything with him. The only thing that he was leaving with was his family and his relationships. I don’t know all the story, you know, why he said that maybe, he had dementia or something? I don’t know. But like, he probably was sitting there on his deathbed not wishing “I wish I would have worked harder and I wished I would have opened more Wal-Marts”. But he was probably thinking, I wish I would’ve spent more time with my family. I wish I would’ve spent more time with my wife, with my kids. And there’s a lot more important things in the entire internal perspective of stuff.

So, I just wanted to hopefully encourage some of you guys with this and just know that I’m speaking to myself, too, at the same time I’m speaking to everybody else. So, we’ll see you guys, take care. Oh, hey, if you want a book that talks a lot about this stuff, you know, go get my REI Secrets book. I broke up REI Secrets into daily little nuggets of real estate investing wisdom to help you get more leads and close more deals. So, go check it out. REIsecrets.com. REIsecrets.com. You cannot get it on Amazon. You can only get it at my website and check it out. Alright, guys?  We’ll see you. REIsecrets.com. Take care. Bye-bye.