00;00;00;03 - 00;00;21;25
Unknown
Welcome back to the Seven Figure Flipping Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Whitney, and I have today with me, the lovely Lindsey Arco. Hey, we have a great episode today. We're going to talk about all the information people are consuming and all the action they're not taking and what it takes to just focus on one thing and what it takes to just focus on one thing.
00;00;21;25 - 00;00;38;20
Unknown
So if you guys stick around to the end, we're going to give you some very tangible things that you can do in your business today to get focus and actually get results. So tune in and let's go for.
00;00;38;22 - 00;01;07;19
Unknown
Most investors do not fail because they lack information. They fail because they try and implement it all at one time. And look, information overload is not making people better. It's doing them a disservice. We see this all the time, I think, especially when you when you get around a lot of other real estate investors, you hear about the really cool things that they're doing without keeping in mind that they're doing it in their market, where they have facts and data and it's tested.
00;01;07;22 - 00;01;26;20
Unknown
They try and implement a lot of things all at once, and it's not possible to keep up with all of those things at the same time. And so they become confused and then they become panicked, and then they hit the pause button. And I think people have become immune to the term shiny object syndrome. Who who made that up and coined that and why is it so used?
00;01;26;20 - 00;01;50;27
Unknown
That's beside the point. But like that's that's dumb. The truth is, is more information is literally making you slower. It's making the development of your skill slower. It's making that consistent, your consistency in your business slower because you are trying to do all those different things. You're probably looking for an easier way. But here's the truth. And don't don't tell anybody else.
00;01;50;29 - 00;02;19;12
Unknown
There is not an easier way. There is not an easier way. As a matter of fact, clarity beats consumption. Yeah, you, when you are doing the same thing consistently over long periods of time, you do get clarity. Like if I think about our deals today, we do incredibly complex sub two lease option deals. We're raising capital, we're doing mobile homes, flipping mobile homes and but we've seen so many problems.
00;02;19;12 - 00;02;44;22
Unknown
We've worked through so many things over a long period of time that we have a skill that's built up a callus, that's built up that really one of our superpowers. And we talked about it in, one of our annual planners recently is our ability to solve complex problems on deals, especially title problems. Yeah. And I think I mean like here's the thing, like just knowing more, knowing more information doesn't mean better.
00;02;44;24 - 00;03;10;26
Unknown
And I think that's a problem. I think people are comfortable getting more and getting more of. And they feel productive. They feel productive, but they're not well. And instead of focusing on the the things that you need to do in your business and, and repeat those and make them efficient, right? We look for new, better, easier, sexy things to chase and follow.
00;03;11;02 - 00;03;31;27
Unknown
Where is if we just apply all that energy to the things that that make our business one run really, really well, we would be far more efficient. We'd be far happier with our results. Yeah, I think people are, you know, people get on the internet and they're like, I read a thousand books this year, and Bill really put me on to this, where he said, I quit.
00;03;31;29 - 00;03;50;22
Unknown
And, you know, a couple of years he had read, you know, book a week. I've done that 252 books in a year. And he said, now I just read like the same three books, and I try to implement as many things from them as possible. And I think that's the evolution of somebody who is taking action and getting results or will definitely get results.
00;03;50;22 - 00;04;10;10
Unknown
Somebody who just continues to consume is going to have a hard time winning. When your mind races, you're you start thinking of all these different things again. You should implement into your business instead of focusing on the one thing that's actually going to move the needle and improve your business. Yeah, and I'm sure for them, consumption feels productive, but it's action that gets results.
00;04;10;17 - 00;04;33;07
Unknown
Absolutely. And I think that, as we look at, you know, people in our space, even some of the members of seven figure flipping, even even our high level mastermind, where they go out and they're seeking other information. They're just looking for an easier solution when they know, they they know what to do. Already, they've been told in one mastermind the same thing that they go pay for another mastermind to be told.
00;04;33;07 - 00;04;55;04
Unknown
Like, how many times have we seen that? Yeah. Oh, I mean, myself, I, I remember when, I think we launched the, the seven year multifamily app at one point in time, and a lot of my friends were jumping in on that, and I wanted to write. I just, I wanted to hear about it was like, would that be easier then than doing, you know, 50 residential homes per year?
00;04;55;06 - 00;05;14;02
Unknown
But I wasn't even at the level I wanted to be at in that one area. And so I knew if I paid for another mastermind, they paid for another service. So learn about something new. I would then give what I had started doing, even less of my attention, and then not only would I not probably scale, things might start to drop.
00;05;14;04 - 00;05;39;26
Unknown
Yeah. Here's another correlation to if you think about there, there are people who are incredibly wealthy that live all around us, and these people aren't talking about it, and they're not chasing the next small business acquisition. But they did buy 50 McDonald's franchises, and they're netting $4 million a year, and they're doing it quietly, and they're not getting on social media and talking about it because they don't want any.
00;05;39;26 - 00;05;58;23
Unknown
They just want to be rich and anonymous. They don't want to get on social media. So everybody knows they have money. And then people are saying they're stealing from the low level people and all that. But the lesson from those people is they're just doing the thing over and over and over until it's unreasonable for them to not be successful.
00;05;58;26 - 00;06;26;19
Unknown
So by the end of this episode, you're going to understand why consuming more information is not going to actually get you the results that you're looking for. There is a way, though, to get results, and you may or may not want to hear it, but you're going to have to stick around to the end to find out. So why did Lindsay, why do you think overconsumption or too much information is such a massive problem right now for people in the real estate space?
00;06;26;21 - 00;06;45;00
Unknown
It creates an inability to focus. Just social media has has taken over the world. How many times a day are you maybe going to look at your phone for something specific, and the next thing you know, you find yourself scrolling on Facebook for an hour and you've just lost an hour of your day. This happens to investors all the time.
00;06;45;00 - 00;07;02;25
Unknown
And so we we see shiny objects or or things that look like they may work in our business, and we go down these rabbit holes trying to chase them instead of focusing on the facts and data and our own business that is going to drive the results that we want. Yeah, let's demonstrate real quick so you can pick your phone up right now.
00;07;02;27 - 00;07;25;24
Unknown
If you're listening to this, I want you to pick your phone up. I want you to swipe down, and I want you to type in screen time. I want you to click on that. And I want you to say out loud to yourself what your daily average screen time is, what's yours? Seven hours and 53 minutes. I have my screen open on my phone.
00;07;25;27 - 00;07;48;23
Unknown
That's my daily average. That's a workday worth of now, of course, like I'm working on my phone some of that time, but certainly not for eight hours. Right. So that's wild though, right? Social like just think like people who are winning that. What if you didn't have social media? What would you be doing? You would be you'd get one bit of information.
00;07;48;26 - 00;08;18;28
Unknown
You say, I believe in this like you have many times, and then you would work relentlessly until it worked because you didn't have new inputs. You don't need more inputs, you need better filters. You don't need more inputs. You need better filters. Right? And and instead of looking for everybody's comments and opinions on the thing that you want to try or are actually going to implement, just do the work because results will build your confidence.
00;08;19;00 - 00;08;37;24
Unknown
And it's like people are in paralysis. Like, think about it. Oh, I need to make a decision, but I need information to make a decision. So you get information and you go, okay, that looks good. And then you get the next set of information. You go, okay, wait a minute. That might be conflicting. This told me this. Now this isn't like I thought flipping.
00;08;37;24 - 00;08;59;05
Unknown
I can make $41,000 a deal. That's the national average. But then somebody just told me that if I did a creative finance upside down ice cream strategy, I can make $42,000. Now I'm in conflict. Right? And you spend all this time analyzing things that don't matter, instead of sticking with the first thing that you believed in and just executing relentlessly.
00;08;59;11 - 00;09;23;14
Unknown
And here's the other thing to ChatGPT I it's amazing. It can do amazing things to speed up your business. But here's what I also see. Taking information and and plugging it in and asking it for an opinion. If you agree with it, it'll say great point. If you disagree with it, I'll say, thanks for bringing that up. It's not there to make decisions for you, but so many people are relying on it to actually make the decisions.
00;09;23;16 - 00;09;57;01
Unknown
It's it's absolutely it's actually incredible to see how unproductive these productivity tools have made people. The thing is, is they are doing productive things, what they believe to be productive, which is worse than doing nothing. Doing something you believe to be productive is literally worse than doing nothing. Okay, let's let's talk about some ways that instead of letting all this information, all these information marketers, these gurus, and all the YouTube how to's, just blow up your decision making cycle.
00;09;57;06 - 00;10;23;28
Unknown
Let's talk about some effective ways to use tools like ChatGPT. So for example, you bring up a good point that you know, ChatGPT is not going to make a decision for you and they're going to give you ghosting information or inaccurate or incorrect information. Sometimes, ChatGPT can be better used as a thought partner. They can fetch data from a wide swath of, the internet very quickly to get you enough data to analyze and make your own decision.
00;10;24;01 - 00;10;53;06
Unknown
But if you're relying on them to make a decision for you, you will fail the way that I use it is, number one, you tell it who they are and what position they are. You're my marketing director. You're my sales coach. You're my, you know, you're my vacation planner and you're researching for my family. But you tell them who it is, you put it in context, and then you give it as much context as possible about your situation, and then you ask it a very specific thing to do.
00;10;53;06 - 00;11;14;21
Unknown
Now, if you if you're like, man, that takes too much brainpower, great. Get as much as you can out there. It's going to give you information back, and then you refine and then you refine and then you refine until you have enough data that you can look at it and go, hey, this is enough information for me to feel good about it or make a decision or take it and make it my own.
00;11;14;24 - 00;11;34;15
Unknown
You know, so, like you said, aside from, like, YouTube, all the gurus and people just confusing folks like it is also the AI now and never here. Oh, FOMO was FOMO is another part of this I want to ask you about too, because I'm like, really excited about this. Now people have the fear of missing out, but what if I was not on my phone for those eight hours a day?
00;11;34;15 - 00;11;52;07
Unknown
What would I be missing? What would you say to those people? Because that's why we get on there like, oh, but I could somebody could talk to me. Or maybe there's an investor on there, or they can make up all kinds of reasons why they should be spending their time on social media or doing something else. Yeah, I, I think it's about boundaries, right.
00;11;52;12 - 00;12;17;16
Unknown
There is a time to go and do that. But I think we should be looking at very specific things that we want to implement and shutting out the rest of the noise. If if you can do that and just focus on the the things that actually are things that you are currently looking at implementing or are currently implementing in your business, those are the things I would look at seek out on social media, not just random scrolling through your phone.
00;12;17;19 - 00;12;37;23
Unknown
Yeah. And honestly, you know, focus speeds, brilliance. Like you don't even need to be some, sub at real estate or some savant at business. Like, you just need to be incredibly focused. I would I would encourage people like you have to make a decision, do you want to be a creator or do you want to be a consumer?
00;12;37;25 - 00;13;00;15
Unknown
Okay. If you want to be a creator, a creator of your business, a creator of your, of wealth, a creator of whatever creator of social media content, whatever it may be for your business. You have to make that decision. To me, the word is intentionality. If you need to get on social media to raise capital, if you're doing the 500 K challenge or something like that, we both are right now.
00;13;00;15 - 00;13;29;26
Unknown
Right? So then get on for that purpose and then get off and then and then have an intentional time on your calendar to jump back on there and see what the comments were, and see if you have investors who are wanting to talk to you, or you get an assistant to help you. Yeah. Pro tip to, I learned over the past several months that just putting my phone on silent when I'm doing intentional work and not looking at it, listen, if it's if it's something important, like my kids, if they call through twice, I'm going to I'm going to hear it.
00;13;29;26 - 00;13;49;12
Unknown
I'm going to pick it up. But everything else I can shut out so I can be the best, most productive version of myself during those hours. Yeah. I think the kind of the bottom line for the FOMO, it's like the when we think about FOMO, it's the fear of missing out that's creating a failure to move, to do the thing that you actually need to do to get wherever you're going.
00;13;49;15 - 00;14;14;18
Unknown
Yeah. So we talked a little bit before about how to use AI properly. One of the things that recently came up at our sales and marketing class that we just held the other, the other month was that, Rebus, can you talk a little bit about how Rebus was created and the data that was used to create that so that it would benefit our members specifically?
00;14;14;21 - 00;14;43;13
Unknown
Yeah, the creation of Rebus is it's there's a system. It's a system. It's a business system. It can really be applied to any business. But it is designed this particular system was designed for real estate businesses like ours that are, active that have teams that are, you know, have revenue or do a marketing. And this business operating system was created from, over a decade of the top real estate investor successes.
00;14;43;15 - 00;15;04;17
Unknown
So, that whole system got put together. We created an AI tool to support people that made it a literal coach, not a sayer of what to do, but a coach that will ask you really hard questions, make you ask answer hard questions. By the time you're done answering Rebus as hard questions like you will have told yourself what your answers are.
00;15;04;19 - 00;15;30;18
Unknown
So the way it's designed is beautiful. It helps you with, everything from designing your organizational chart to your strategic vision to your execution plan, to specific hiring roles to rehab specific stuff, project management specific stuff, marketing and revenue optimization stuff. So, like, think of the holistic picture of one of our businesses built into a system for everybody in seven figure flipping to use.
00;15;30;18 - 00;15;53;26
Unknown
Then imagine that that brain got put into an AI, and that AI is there to specifically help you in your unique business. It's it's pretty amazing. So our friend Anna, who is an altitude member, we in class, we did a live interview for somebody she had determined through using Rebus that she needed to hire an acquisitions. Seat.
00;15;53;28 - 00;16;20;23
Unknown
And we interviewed this individual who interviewed, well, but not necessarily for acquisitions. She was more of like a lead manager or cold collar role, but she was well liked. She interviewed well. And so Anna's thought was that she should hire her as a matter of fact, most of the class also thought that she should be hired. But when when we did, for their due diligence, we realized she really didn't have the experience that was needed.
00;16;20;26 - 00;16;38;24
Unknown
The cool thing was, Anna went back into Rebus after the class to ensure that she was making the right decision, and when she went back and entered the data and the outcome of that interview, what it showed her was that the seed that she needs to hire for is acquisitions, even though this person was a desirable candidate for another role.
00;16;38;24 - 00;16;55;11
Unknown
So it really helped her, like stay in line with what her goals were, because she had entered all that information in so that she can build her business plan. Yeah, and that's amazing. By the way, if you're listening to this and you're like, I need a business operating system for my business, I need that I took or you can have it.
00;16;55;13 - 00;17;19;00
Unknown
You just send an email to info at seven. Figure flipping.com. So that's a number seven figure flipping.com should be in the show notes. And our team will give you a copy of that. So, you, you probably have to get on a call so they can make sure you know how to use it. But our team will definitely share that with you, obviously, use primarily for our members, but I think a lot of people would benefit from that.
00;17;19;00 - 00;17;43;06
Unknown
Okay, so putting your phone on silent, having focus time, one of the biggest objections I hear is like, what if I miss something important? Yeah, I think so. Here's the thing. The best operators aren't the ones who know the most, are getting the most information. They're the ones who can implement the fastest, who can take a thing, focus on it, and implement the fastest.
00;17;43;06 - 00;18;05;29
Unknown
And one thing I've learned in business sense, leaving the military and coming on this side of the house is money follows. Speed, success, fall, speed. Look, that doesn't mean you're not going to slip. Fall, lose money on a deal, but you're not going to get. The faster you can get that experience, the more skill you're going to have, the more skill you have, the more successful you're going to be.
00;18;06;01 - 00;18;25;21
Unknown
Rapid implementation doesn't mean you play fast and loose, it just means you've already done your due diligence on the front end. You've already made your plan. You you already believe this is the path and then you execute fast. Yeah. And I'll give a I'll give a specific example from us like we do act we we implement incredibly fast in our business.
00;18;25;21 - 00;18;49;22
Unknown
And we were at a seven figure flipping event in Baltimore, and I'm sitting next to a guy looking at his KPIs. And it was August, mid August, on the sheet. He's got great marketing stuff. 5 to 1 return, 7 to 1 return, 3 to 1 return. But there's this one line on there that their spend was 30 grand and they had brought in about 1.1 in revenue.
00;18;49;22 - 00;19;09;09
Unknown
So I was like, Holy crap, that's a big margin. What is that? And by the way, this company had already closed over $5 million by August. So this was a bigger team. And he goes on to explain this creative strategy to me, that at first I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't even know if I can wrap my head around that.
00;19;09;12 - 00;19;23;14
Unknown
And then I come back to him. He tells me again, I called you, you were up. You were up, I think you were sick. And I called you and said, hey, we got to do this. So that was mid August. I said, how I told that guy, let's get on a call next week. This is crazy. I told you we got to do this.
00;19;23;14 - 00;19;40;10
Unknown
And you're like, yes, this is amazing. So the next week we get on a call. They walk us through their underwriting. They walk us through kind of their process. We decide what we're going to do, the way we're going to do it a little different than them. And by we put it into play between the third week of August and September 1st.
00;19;40;10 - 00;20;02;06
Unknown
By September 1st, we had started executing the strategy. By September 17th, we had signed our first contract on that strategy, and by the 30th we had brought $60,000 into our bank account from it, right? Like 0 to 100. And that was in weeks. I have people that I've showed that same strategy and our membership that are five months and are thinking about doing it right.
00;20;02;09 - 00;20;23;08
Unknown
We made $1 million from it in cash and one and a half in equity, and they're still thinking about doing it like, I don't know if it'll work in my market or whatever. Part of the reason we were able to implement fast, though, this is important, is that we were willing to go all in and pause some other things that were not working as well.
00;20;23;10 - 00;20;46;21
Unknown
So that that takes discipline, that takes patience, that takes, you know, some nerve to be able to do that. But putting everything else on pause that is secondary or not as important to try to try and test and improve this process was really important to making sure that that we gave it the energy and the attention that it needed while we were creating the process.
00;20;46;23 - 00;21;07;27
Unknown
Yeah, to, absolutely. That goes back to the focus, right? Like more information is not good. We so we had to get rid of things to bring something new in to wholeheartedly do it. And I think in the past we had been guilty of going to a mastermind meeting, seeing something cool. And, quite frankly, half ass implementing it.
00;21;07;29 - 00;21;25;24
Unknown
And it doesn't work for us. Well, God just doesn't work for us. We did that before we actually did this with, foreclosures that at one point we we grabbed data. We called for a couple of weeks, but we had all this other stuff going on, and we were like, this probably doesn't work. And we stopped.
00;21;26;01 - 00;21;49;05
Unknown
So when, when we revisited it last year, we went all in, we put other things on pause and we went full speed ahead. And I think for just to give some like really tangible stuff to our listeners, one thing you could literally do today is get out a piece of paper, get your favorite pen or pencil. I'm a mechanical pencil kind of guy.
00;21;49;05 - 00;22;08;19
Unknown
I like to erase all my mistakes and write down all the things you're currently learning, all the different things you want to learn, you have on your list to learn. You're kind of reading this book. You're kind of reading that book. You're trying this strategy. Write them all down and then circle one thing that actually moves you closer to your goals.
00;22;08;19 - 00;22;34;07
Unknown
Just one thing. Cut all that other stuff out just for 90 days, and focus on that one thing for 90 days and and commit to it, commit to it. And that that is how you pause the noise. That's how you get results. Okay. So that to me that that really caps the episode. And thank you guys so much for tuning in to another amazing seven figure flipping episode with Lindsay and I.
00;22;34;09 - 00;22;51;25
Unknown
If you got something out of this episode, I know you did, because I know you picked up your pen and paper and wrote those things down. I want you to go and leave me a five star review so that more people know about this podcast, and it serves more business owners. Now, one more thing for you guys. If you're still tuning in to us, you're still here.
00;22;51;25 - 00;23;12;13
Unknown
You're still listening. Just know that we continue to provide the most elite and best training, even if you're not in our mastermind, and we routinely we'll have it linked in the show notes. So if you want to participate in our capital raising training and our lead generation training and our deal analysis training, sometimes we do scaling training for those scaled up investors.
00;23;12;15 - 00;23;29;09
Unknown
For those of you guys who might be doing more deals, but you have a cash flow crunch, you don't really know how to solve that in your business. We do training for that too. So check the show notes and make sure you jump into the training I guarantee will help you make money in your business. Thanks for listening and I'll see you.
00;23;29;09 - 00;23;30;03
Unknown
On the flip side.
