00;00;00;00 - 00;00;24;27
Unknown
That has any level of risk in their life, which is pretty much everybody. This term that if we could truly embrace this, and I think those investors that you're talking about who seem like they're like, this is the best year I've had and things are going great if you asked. Right. But but, Adam, if I know if I know that not everything is rosy in your life, right?
00;00;24;29 - 00;00;53;16
Unknown
But that doesn't matter. Overall, things are going well. And the reason that you can say that is because you have what's what I call failure immunity. Yes. So we're going to I want to unpack that a little bit because I think it's a really important concept. And so I'm gonna talk a little bit about the concept, but I want to also then talk about two practical things that whoever's listening, our listeners as well as both of us, can do to increase our failure immunity.
00;00;53;16 - 00;01;20;10
Unknown
Now, what I mean by failure immunity, if you think about getting a vaccine, what are they actually doing? It's not that you won't or can't ever get those those germs or that strain of virus in your body. No, it's actually that you have it, but it doesn't affect you. So failure immunity is where you do and are going to experience failure, but it's not going to affect you.
00;01;20;12 - 00;01;40;03
Unknown
It's it's like, you know, you're you're not going to get the full it's not going to take you down. It's not going to kill you. So so that's what failure immunity is. We all fail every day. I fail every day. But I hundreds of times every day. Even when I don't realize I'm failing, I'm still failing. And so many different ways.
00;01;40;05 - 00;02;03;14
Unknown
You know, choosing the wrong foods because it's not as healthy for my body or, you know, sleeping in and, you know, failing on a commitment I made to the gym or, I mean, every day. So as real estate investors. Is it really reasonable for us to expect to not fail in a journey that is so much more challenging than just living in everyday existence?
00;02;03;17 - 00;02;29;16
Unknown
So of course we're going to fail like that. That is a given. Hey, I love this failure. Immunity. Oh my gosh, I'm stealing that. That is so good. Early on, years ago, starting here, it all felt like it. It felt like it was. There was always friction. Like everything fell harder. Like. Almost like I'm running with weights on my ankles and in heavy boots, and I'm.
00;02;29;16 - 00;02;33;17
Unknown
And running in the mud. And it's just like.
00;02;33;19 - 00;02;55;05
Unknown
Running all over again. Every. Yeah. Everything feels hard. Everything feels hard. But what's, what's crazy is over time, you know, I'm doing that. And then all of a sudden I'm becoming conditioned. And now my legs are moving faster and it's the same conditions. I'm still in the modest leather boots and I still got the ankle weights. But I'm getting faster.
00;02;55;07 - 00;03;18;03
Unknown
Yeah, and I'm getting better. And the things that are so heavy and frictional before don't feel that heavy to me. And I'm like, oh, everything is. It's why people get frustrated with my optimism. Sometimes I'm like, what are you guys talking about? Everything is fine, right? Is it fine or have I improved my skill, my conditioning? Have I built more resilience?
00;03;18;05 - 00;03;38;10
Unknown
I, I think, I love the term failure immunity. Right. Like you're you're going to experience it. It's it's. But what does that do for you. Like what does that do for you doctor flow I'm like you know, do you build a resilience. Resilience is is it really getting easier or are you just getting better. As are you getting calluses.
00;03;38;10 - 00;04;07;07
Unknown
And now it's like you're conditioned. How does that work mentally? It's really both. And the more that we fail and we have the mindset that this is normal. So it's really about normalizing the experience of failing. So if, if I, if I fail and I expected that I'm going to fail, it doesn't hurt so bad. And it's just it's just part of the journey.
00;04;07;13 - 00;04;30;08
Unknown
So I want to I was thinking about this related to let's let's talk about Apple. You know, the, the, the big conglomerate that makes all the cool phones that you know, I've got. Yep. I got one on my desk. Do in fact, I'm on a mac right now. So so Apple they are very very very intentional about their product development and prototyping.
00;04;30;10 - 00;04;49;27
Unknown
But the public doesn't know this. They we like you don't get a beta version. You may get the beta software, but you don't get a beta version of the iPhone. They get all that stuff figured out behind closed doors with, you know, their staff trying to get all these things figured out. So once we see the product, it is as good as they can make it reasonably within a reasonable amount of time.
00;04;49;27 - 00;05;15;06
Unknown
It's as good as they can make it. But as investors, we don't have the luxury of prototyping behind closed doors. We're actually prototyping in front of the world, and I think that's part of the challenge, is that we we let it go to our self esteem, our ego. We get embarrassed, we get shamed, and then we start to think, well, maybe, maybe this says something about me.
00;05;15;07 - 00;05;35;28
Unknown
Maybe I shouldn't be doing this. But it's not saying it's it's not. It's not a verdict like your failure. So I, for example, there have been a few flips last year and even one this year that we didn't make any money. And there have been a couple that we had to bring money to and yeah, okay. Adam's right.
00;05;36;00 - 00;05;57;03
Unknown
And two, it's it's happened many times to me. Yeah. So I could, I could let that be a verdict in my life that tells, you know, like a judge saying you lost money, you're a failure. You shouldn't have done it. I could let myself think that. Or I could have choose to have the mindset that this is part of the journey.
00;05;57;03 - 00;06;24;02
Unknown
Failure is normal. This is to be expected. But not just staying with this is to be expected. This is where Adam's dogged, determination with data. Did you like all those dudes? Love it. They love it. Love alliteration. That's where this comes in. Because you don't. Just like, we don't want you just to expect to fail. And that that's going to be the existence for the rest of your life.
00;06;24;04 - 00;06;43;12
Unknown
It's a both. And when you were asked about, well, are we building calluses or are we actually learning? It's kind of it's both. And how we do the both part of it is that we recognize that the failures, our data points are an opportunity for us to get feedback, to learn how to do things a little bit different next time.
00;06;43;14 - 00;07;01;19
Unknown
That's part of what I love about being in a community, because this is really hard by my own personal experience. It's really hard to to to say it, to analyze. I almost said psychoanalyze. Gosh, that's where my I call it. I just like, it's okay, not with me. You could psychoanalyze your deal, but to analyze it. You know what?
00;07;01;19 - 00;07;22;05
Unknown
What went wrong? Where where did I, where did I ignore risk? Where did I not give as much attention? It's so helpful to do this in a community when you have people that aren't, affected by your, quote unquote, failure by, you know, to be able to give you feedback. And I had one last year as an example.
00;07;22;05 - 00;07;46;21
Unknown
We we bought this house. We we renovated it. It was a super cool house, very unique for Pan, not a unique like it's going to be hard to sell. Unique like it had this balcony on the second floor. That was super cool. We made this amazing master suite that took up the entire second floor. It was really awesome and I had expected that it's, you know, the comps justified like a 395, sale price.
00;07;46;24 - 00;08;10;03
Unknown
So also we listed at three months later, months, months, months later, we sold it at 345. That's a $50,000 decrease, which was all of our profit. And then a little bit more and I'm like, but this house is amazing. Well, what happened? I did not pay attention to the fact that there was a trailer park a few blocks away.
00;08;10;05 - 00;08;31;26
Unknown
I did not factor that into my, into my comps way back when I started. And so and there was another property that, we had a similar it took too long to sell. We had a price drop it a lot. And again, I did not take into account the things around it enough. So so that was my own failure.
00;08;31;29 - 00;08;51;20
Unknown
And I looked at it, got data points, got people's perspective and like okay, so now I am much I, I'm, I'm much less likely to ignore some of the neighborhood or, you know, something in close proximity that might be a deterrent or make somebody think twice about buying it. I'm much less likely to to make that mistake again.
00;08;51;22 - 00;09;27;24
Unknown
So I use that failure as data points, which does help me be better in the next one. But then again, still knowing I'm still making I make mistakes. Just hopefully not the same one over and over and over. So so there's both calluses and getting better. So. But there, there has to be. So the two things that I would like to share specifically about increasing your failure immunity, one is examining, reflecting on what happened and getting getting those data points and getting those feedback like that is really important.
00;09;27;27 - 00;09;51;17
Unknown
Spend time on it with yourself, but also with people that can give you some educated feedback about what went wrong and sometimes there really was. I mean, there have been circumstances in my life where I look back, I've gotten external opinions and feedback and I'm like, given everything I knew and everything I know, I still would have made the same decision.
00;09;51;20 - 00;10;12;16
Unknown
Like, I there's just nothing I could have done different or would do different again, because based on my values, based on all the things I would literally say, make that same decision again. And that's okay. Maybe now I say it will be different. Yeah. And I think that's incredible. One of the interesting things Doctor Phelan is, is a leader of, some figure flipping.
00;10;12;16 - 00;10;41;11
Unknown
And our community, I want to one of the biggest things I see inside these communities is, and we've got a lot of really humble. I call them silent professionals. Like, they're real operators. They're not social media people. They're not like selling products. They're like doing real estate, right? They're like, we have a just a very good, high value, high quality family space and legacy driven community.
00;10;41;11 - 00;11;02;14
Unknown
And and it really it really does stand out. I think people people say that to me all the time when they get exposed to our, our friends, you know, and but the risk is, even though our people are like that probably more than anywhere, you'll find, you know, there's this like, we put this pressure on ourselves. We don't want to let other people down.
00;11;02;14 - 00;11;33;28
Unknown
We feel like, you know, we start to have trouble and challenge and we go quiet because it's embarrassing. It doesn't feel good to come out to a group of amazing, driven entrepreneurs and say, hello, I'm strug the whole reason you're here. Well, one of the reasons I should say, in a community like this is to have this big, massive board of directors who can put input into your business and genuinely can turn decades in the days.
00;11;33;28 - 00;12;01;08
Unknown
But here's the thing that only happens if you're open, honest, vulnerable, willing to put yourself out there, willing to listen and not judge. Right. Like I think a lot of times we make we naturally, as humans make judgments, immediately like it's there's, you know, this are studies like I look at somebody, I talk to somebody, I'm making a judgment on the first, like 10s right about that person.
00;12;01;08 - 00;12;20;08
Unknown
And even people we know, we do that. Like, there's a little barometer in your brain that's telling you how much you value the words that that person is saying. And if you can fight that urge, if you can just listen to the words somebody is telling you, no matter who they are, where they're at in the country, what kind of business they're running.
00;12;20;10 - 00;12;43;08
Unknown
They all have had experiences and many of them have had experiences that we may not have had. Yeah. So regardless of the person in the judgment, if you're vulnerable, open, honest and willing to genuinely listen, you can really you really can turn decades in the days by going, maybe there's something to that. Maybe I shouldn't do that, or maybe I should be doing that.
00;12;43;10 - 00;13;19;12
Unknown
And I think that's the hard part for us, Doctor Phelan, is to is to be better listeners. God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason, but it's hard to do. It's it's hard to do. I love that perspective. And we can all think of people that we have respected. There have been plenty of pastors that because of their own challenges and the continued secrecy around their challenges, their life completely imploded due to, you know, addictions and other things.
00;13;19;12 - 00;13;45;17
Unknown
But basically, they were little failures that they did not reach out for support on. That became failures that completely changed their life. We don't have to be that way in real estate. We don't have to be that way in any way. But particularly in real estate, the opportunity that we have to I can call up, any number of a dozen people and be like, hey, I'm really struggling with this, or I don't really know what to do here.
00;13;45;19 - 00;14;07;25
Unknown
Can you help me with this? What's your perspective on this? That's me not keeping my little tiny challenge a secret. That's me sharing it so that it doesn't grow and then implode my entire life. Yeah, I love it, I love it, and like, people in our community have been doing this stuff for decades, you know, like just by virtue of doing it for decades.
00;14;07;25 - 00;14;29;03
Unknown
I promise those people have made all of the mistakes, you know, and they're still making mistakes today. And of course, they have great businesses and they've got a great life, and they're making great money. But like, that's a really valuable this me to me, I like to call people and I talk to probably ten people in our community a week at least.
00;14;29;05 - 00;14;50;14
Unknown
And, I learned something every week. I, somebody told me a couple days ago, I don't know if I'm really, like, learning anything anymore. And I'm thinking, dude, I learned something literally, probably daily from people who have less experience of me do less deals than me, from people who have more experience of me, do more deals than me, like I am not so much.
00;14;50;14 - 00;15;13;15
Unknown
I'm not going to let my ego get in the way of my success. And if I and I believe this to my core, I can learn something genuinely from everybody. So I'm listening because I want a competitive edge. If I got some new guy or gal who know me, who has some skill set and they're like figuring something new out that I don't know, I want to know about it.
00;15;13;22 - 00;15;33;27
Unknown
If it can give me and my team a competitive edge, I want to know about it. So I love that, I love that, and the inner game is where the O is, where the people are made. You're made with the inner game. Yeah. So, love it, love it, love it. Such a great, great perspective. Do you want to do you want to see what question we have this week?
00;15;34;04 - 00;15;58;25
Unknown
Absolutely. Hey, Adam, I'm on a pretty tight budget. What's the best way to find off market deals without spending a ton on marketing? Thanks. Okay, so this week's question is an anonymous listener that says, hey, I'm on a pretty tight budget. What's the best way to find off market deals without spending a ton on marketing doctor flow? And I'm actually interested in your perspective here.
00;15;58;27 - 00;16;32;14
Unknown
Where do you fall on this? So to me, you either spend time or money like it's it's one or the other. And so what I'm hearing is the money isn't there. But they're going to then typically you're gonna need to spend some more of their own time. So it's kind of one or the other. So honestly what I think would be and we've done this and literally did this yesterday with my husband, we were at a different property with a contractor, and the contractor happened to mention, oh, by the way, the people next door told his crew that they were interested in selling.
00;16;32;16 - 00;16;56;21
Unknown
And it's simply go driving and call people like look for and keep your ears out for hearing about anybody that might want to sell. But it's called driving for dollars. Is is that is the kind of the the industry term for that. And it simply start going driving down the street, look for indicators that house is in distress or the owner is in distress.
00;16;56;21 - 00;17;14;25
Unknown
But it's usually it's going to be the house because that's what you're driving by. And so if it's in the winter it might be that is vacant. And if it's snow, you know, if it's if it's blizzard in like a week ago and there's no shoveling, no tracks, no mailman whatever. And it looks like it hasn't been lived in for the last week.
00;17;14;25 - 00;17;42;21
Unknown
It's probably vacant. And in the summer you know, are the the is the grass overgrown and does it just look like it's not being maintained? Well for that and many different ways. Just take the address down and then and then you can go look it up on the tax assessor's website who owns that property. And then you can start, you know, legally stalking them to figure out like what is their name and or their you already know their name there at the you already have their address but their phone number.
00;17;42;21 - 00;18;00;17
Unknown
And there's a lot of different ways, ways to to be able to look that up. But that's, that's driving for dollars. That's like an old school basic way when you don't got a lot of money. Yeah. And it's great. And you just go to true people search.com and you can look the person up and get their phone number and call those numbers for no cost.
00;18;00;17 - 00;18;24;10
Unknown
Cost you no money that can cost you $0. The other thing I would tell you is there's this fallacy in the industry. All these coaches and gurus are, you know, will tell you like the way to get into real estate when you have no money is wholesaling. Well, that's not necessarily true because you like Doctor Allen said.
00;18;24;10 - 00;18;54;14
Unknown
You're going to spend a whole lot of time and energy or a whole lot of money to market to get deals. It's actually easier to do real estate. It's, not to do real estate, but to get into deals as a flipper. Why? Because you can buy flips from the MLS. You can buy flips from wholesalers. So you have an army of wholesalers across the country who are trying to make a living by marketing to and finding off market deals.
00;18;54;17 - 00;19;17;11
Unknown
We we have this, thing in some VA flipping. We deemed it the black box method because, you know, like, oh, like this technology, this little black box, it just works. We don't know how it works, but it works well. We have a whole system around finding deals and systemize and finding deals from wholesalers, like there's an army of humans out there looking for deals right now that they want to sell to you.
00;19;17;14 - 00;19;40;12
Unknown
Now you just got to develop skills like evaluating the deal really well, making offers, negotiating, and then you got to learn how to raise money or use hard money. You buy the deal, you get some contractors, you go through the process and, you don't, you don't got to spend it. You don't need a big marketing budget for that to to buy deals from wholesalers.
00;19;40;12 - 00;20;00;20
Unknown
And, if you if you feel some kind of emotion towards buying from wholesalers because you think you can't get a good deal, I would tell you you are wrong. That is absolutely incorrect. However, if you don't believe me, that's fine. Go to a doctor for a while and just told you to do. Go drive down a street, look for a distressed property.
00;20;00;22 - 00;20;22;21
Unknown
You know boarded up windows or the grass is overgrown or the mailbox is full. Find the seller, give them a call and make them an offer on their property. Like cost you nothing. $0. So, there is no reason somebody can't go get their first deal today. We have so many resources, so much access to information. You can do it for $0.
00;20;22;24 - 00;20;40;15
Unknown
You just got to be willing to do the work. Literally. You just have to be willing to do the work that it takes to make the phone call, to do the drive to write the address down, to go to true people, search.com, to look them up, to make the phone call like it's not. None of it is like extremely complicated.
00;20;40;18 - 00;21;14;08
Unknown
You got to be willing to do it though. Okay, let's go to our final takeaways. Doctor Allen, what is your final takeaway? Oh. Gathers it. I am my own client as a psychologist, as a High-Performance coach, my mind is the mind that I am the most focused on. Maybe secondarily, my husband. But, you know, mine is the most.
00;21;14;08 - 00;21;49;19
Unknown
And so even any time I ever coach or have these sort of conversations where I'm sharing my knowledge and experience, it always, always, always reminds me that I still need to improve in that area as well. And there have been times, even in the last month where I, I know I've had that little feeling in my gut of like, not intuition, not not like a, you know, that sort of gut feeling, but this feeling of like, oh, this is just maybe we shouldn't be doing this because it's not easy right now for us.
00;21;49;21 - 00;22;15;11
Unknown
And, so I, I still I still need to remind myself that failure is part of the journey that I am to expect it. It's not the verdict. It's not saying anything about me. It's just an opportunity for me to learn, to grow and to improve. I, I, I love that and, you said a term today that I'm going to use and that is failure immunity.
00;22;15;13 - 00;22;44;23
Unknown
In my mind, almost another word for resilience. Like you create resilience through those experiences where you overcome challenges and, you know, you and I both have a military background. The military does a great job of creating resilience and, young Americans. And, that's by putting you through hard stuff. You do hard stuff and then your, your, their monitor for what's hard just keeps changing.
00;22;44;26 - 00;23;08;22
Unknown
And things that used to be really hard are no longer hard. And I think that that is a there's a really good correlation to entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship. You don't a lot of people talk about coming into entrepreneurship because they want, they want freedom. You know, what does freedom really look like? And what's in the realm of possibility?
00;23;08;24 - 00;23;38;13
Unknown
If you think freedom is you don't do anything and you just have a bunch of money, you're going to be very disappointed. Number one, it's really hard to just get a bunch of money and do nothing. Like, that's not that's not a world that we live in. Unless you're one of the 1% who hits big on some idea, some business, or you hit the lottery, like, probably not going to happen.
00;23;38;15 - 00;24;13;09
Unknown
Honestly, you're going to build over time. But the freedom that entrepreneurship unlocks is the freedom to decide to love what you do, to have this intersection between work and life that feels aligned and, all of that is built through this failure immunity. Because when you're in entrepreneurship, you know, I can think of all the challenge when I take my optimism down and I really go back and analyze, I'm like, gosh, I saw a lot of really hard problems.
00;24;13;09 - 00;24;34;16
Unknown
And they suck, too, by the way. It's sucked for me as bad as a sense for other people. I'll give one more example. Doctor Fallon I was an infantry guy, hung around with heavy packs on and really miserable experiences, and we would be out and we'd have a heavy pack on and we'd be hiking some long distance, you know, and I'm talking to, just a shoulder crushing heavy load.
00;24;34;16 - 00;24;59;22
Unknown
Right. And you're walk in and it sucks. And you see people fall out of that hike like they literally physically fall out of the hike. The the the doc comes up, they gotta take their internal temperature and throw them in the safety truck. Right. It's an event. And then I look around and I think, why did why the people who are still here, why are they still is it because it's easy?
00;24;59;24 - 00;25;25;06
Unknown
It's not easy. No matter who they are or how conditioned they are, it's still hard. But the people who aren't falling out of that have conditioned their mind. They have. It hurts for them too. But guess what? They've conditioned their mind to to be accepting. Like I know this is what it feels like. I have a goal to make it to the end of this.
00;25;25;13 - 00;25;50;25
Unknown
So therefore when I expect it to be hard and I thrive in that, and then I overcome that challenge and I make it to the end while others don't. It's because it all started up here. It's all up here. But then when you make it to the end, this crazy thing happens. It feels easier and the next one feels easier, and the next one feels easier.
00;25;50;27 - 00;26;11;15
Unknown
And sure, you'll do something hard. And you were all that one was hard. But then the next one will feel easier. And that's entrepreneurship. And that's like, that's why, you know, like that's what we signed up for. But I love it. Like I love it. It's I was born to solve problems. I freaking love it. You know. So I love this idea.
00;26;11;15 - 00;26;32;21
Unknown
Doctor Flynn, thanks for sharing the failure immunity with me today. This was such a good episode. I always, I just value our time together on Fridays, and, you always making me. I spend the whole weekend reflecting on what the words that you say. Because I'm like, I'm getting a free session over here. You know? Thanks.
00;26;32;21 - 00;26;52;29
Unknown
Thanks, doctor. Flu. Ellen, thank you for who you are and what you do and and just, how you light the world up. I appreciate you and thank you to, all of our seven figure flipping listeners. I just got this stat, Sherry that I don't even know if you know this. We have over 800 episodes and over a million downloads on this podcast.
00;26;52;29 - 00;40;59;07
Unknown
Like what? That's a lot of impact. Congratulations. Yeah. So cool. I'm just so happy to be a part of it. Okay. Thanks for listening. I am really looking forward to seeing you guys on the next show. I think you're really going to love it. So I will see you guys on the next one. Bye!
