Episode #30 – Strategy for Your Wholesaling Business
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Welcome to another episode of EarlToms podcast.
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Today we’re going to address something that many of you have thought about, but don’t really know how to put it in practice, but it’s something called strategy. The, the area of of strategy that a lot of people in this industry think that is important is, you know, how do you get the leads, that is very important. But that’s not necessarily business strategy. That’s only one aspect of it. It’s kinda if you, if you think of it in terms of a house, you have to have a foundation, you have to have the framing the two by fours that go in the house, then you have to put the drywall on at the plumbing, the electrical, then you have to put the the siding on it, whether it be brick, vinyl, whatever it is, then you put the roof on it to cover it up, to protect everything on the inside. Same as with the siding that’s on the outside. So when you think of when you think of strategy, you really need to think of it in terms of you are building a house. So strategy actually has a couple of different aspects that go along with it. One, there’s, there’s two that most people know about, but they don’t necessarily consider them as part of their business. And to those two things are what’s called is a mission statement. And a vision statement. So when you think of when you think of both of those, the the mission statement is basically the today, what are the core values of what you’re doing your company, the vision, is what you want to accomplish down the road, a lot of people will say that a vision can’t be accomplished. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because a vision is really a goal that you want to get to down the road. So you almost look at the the mission as the process, the day to day activities that don’t change to be able to get to that goal, that vision down the road. So that you can have the success that you’re you know, that you’re hoping for. Because what a lot of people get in this business for is basically for the money. When you ask somebody, why did you start wholesaling? You know, hey, I saw the money people were making, that’s good. But if that’s why you’re in this business, you’re in it for the wrong reason, because that’s a part of it, that is a good part of it. But it’s not the part to focus on entirely. If, if you’re in it for that business, for the money, that business is always going to struggle and never actually accomplish what it could. Because it’s almost, you know, my my dad always told me, if you’re in this business for the money, you’re not going to be in it very long. And that’s an That’s true. Because a lot of people get in this business, if you think of it in terms of just rational thinking, you get in this business, you think you’re gonna have all this money, all of a sudden you’re sending out marketing material, whether it’s, you know, AdWords, Facebook, ads, postcards, bandit signs, whatever it may be, you’re spending all this money. And then when you’re originally in the business, the the leads and the deals that you’re closing, are very few and far between. So you’re spending more money than you’re making and you get frustrated and you go you start questioning whether or not you made the right decision. Should you be you know, should you change something, should you stay the same is it going to pay off, that’s where the mission part of it comes in. Because the mission that core foundation, the the concrete block, the concrete form, whatever the foundation’s made out of, should never change. So if you get in business, and your mission is to help people or to build relationships, or to make money, those three things together are not necessarily a bad thing. But if your core value so to speak is to make money by itself. You’re not gonna you’re not going to be in business long.
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If one of your visions is to make money, that’s fine. But it can’t be the only thing. If your vision is to be the the most reputable wholesaler in your city or to be the one everyone council to get a deal done or the the trust factor that sellers have in you to be the most trusted wholesaler in your city, those visions are kind of what gets you the motivation, because your core values and your and your mission and your core values with your mission and your vision are going to kind of work together. Because one thing that you can do out of both of these is basically say, if if I have a strategy, my strategy is, you know, to have the most return on equity, return on income, return on whatever it is. If that is your strategy, that’s fine. But if it’s the only thing in your vision or your mission, that’s not going to get you to the endpoint of that strategy. It’s a, it’s a means to an end. So the vision and the mission or the means to the end, you have to look at it in both of those ways. The vision and the mission will tell you what your strategy actually is. So if you’re sitting there and you tell somebody, you know, hey, my strategy is to make the most money in my market. Then their next question is gonna be what what are you doing to accomplish that. And then when you sit there and you go, Hey, I send out 500 postcards a month. That’s not a that’s not a strategy that’s going to get you the most money in your market. So your vision, your mission, your core values and your goal to be able to accomplish that your strategy is not going to match that. So when you go through, and you say okay, well, I send out 500 postcards a month. But I want to I want to be the highest earning wholesaler in my market, 500 postcards a month is not going to do that. One thing, they always say that you need to kind of have two streams of income, so to speak. That’s part of the mission and the vision. So if if you say okay, well, I send out 500 postcards a month. All right, that’s a that’s a part of it. If you get a seller that basically says, Hey, such and such took care of my house, they helped me out once you to give them a call. That’s another income stream, right there. That’s, that’s helping get you to that goal of the vision to be the most trusted, most highest earning wholesaler in your market. But you can’t lock yourself down with just one avenue in it. So when you sit there and you think of a mission statement, or the mission of your business, it’s, you know, you don’t necessarily have to go and write one down and says, This is what it is. But if you have a couple of people that work for you, whether it be virtual assistants, or you have people in your office, if they can’t basically recall the mission of your business, right then and there, then your vision and your goals are not going to be met.
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So it’s it’s one of those things that where you personally have to have the discipline, when you start out to just do define your core values of what you want day to day, that is never going to change. And it’s not, you’re not going to get it right the first time that you do it. You’re going to have to test things and stuff like that. But within six months to a year, you should have it down pat, never change after that point. Because even though we may have new technology out, things like that, the values of you and the company should never ever change. So when you sit there and you think of the mission part of it, there’s a couple of aspects that you need to incorporate on when you’re when you’re thinking about it. It needs to be short. It needs to be simple. It needs to be company specific, meaning your company It needs to be actionable. And it needs to be measurable. So when you go through, if you have this paragraph mission statement, you’re not going to remember it, your workers are not going to remember it. So keep it short and keep it simple. so that it can be recalled every single day because that mission is going to help you. And the people that work for you follow the process every single day, to be able to accomplish or get to the point to where you’re close to accomplishing that, that vision, and your goals that you set out when you open the doors to start your company. So if you can’t turn it to where you’ve got accident involved in it, to move you forward towards your vision and your goals, it’s not a good mission, it’s not going to get you there. The other part of it is it has to be able to be measured, is it working? That’s where the difference comes in a lot of times have someone success versus their failure in this business and in every business to be honest with you. So how do you measure your mission, your values, your vision statement, your goals? What are you what what are the things that are measuring whether or not you’re accomplishing your your goals to get to where you want to be.
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So to switch that over to the vision. The vision also has a couple aspects in it too, to think about. So when you when you kind of develop the vision of what you want to accomplish, whether it be five years, 10 years, whatever it may be down the road, you need to you need to think about these things, it needs to incorporate foresight, which basically means look into the future, figure out what you where you want to be, say in 10 years, it needs to have an event horizon. So if you set it for five years, 10 years, 20 years, you need to have a cutoff point to where you can say, did I accomplish this? Or did we accomplish this, the only way you’re going to do that is by having strong core values, a strong culture, those those type things in your business, you need to connect it with the current capabilities, the situation that you’re in, so you don’t overshoot what’s realistic, you make it difficult to accomplish a vision or a goal, but you don’t overshoot it. So if you’re opening your business with $5,000, to say that I want to be I want to have $20 million dollars in the bank, or I won’t have $20 million worth of rental properties or whatever it may be in five years. Unless you’re like that one percenter that, you know, developed Facebook, Twitter, or something like that one of those guys that, you know, part of its lucky part of it is, you know, just, they’re just that smart, you’re probably not going to accomplish $20 million in five years if you’re starting with $5,000. So make it realistic, but also make it difficult to achieve at the same time. So if you start with $5,000, you might say, hey, in five years, I want a half million dollars, that might be more achievable, but still difficult. As as a goal to have in five years. If you extend it out for 10 years, you may say, hey, I want 1,000,000, 5 million, something like that. still difficult, but it could be possible, then you want to you want to incorporate the values of your company, basically, the core values we were talking about in the mission of why you started that company. Because that’s really what a mission is, is the why. And you also want to keep it short, and keep it memorable. So when you sit there every day and you go through frustration, it’s short, but at the same time, you can you can draw it real fast and think to yourself, I said this is where I wanted to be 5, 10, 15 years from now. What am I What am I doing right now? Is this gonna get me there? So you can sit there and go back to your to your core values and think to yourself, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. Why am I not there? That sometimes happens, but you don’t change them. If it’s the why you started business, you do not change them, they stay the same, you’re gonna have bumps in the road, you’re gonna have good times, and you’re gonna have bad times, but you do not change the why you started business. That’s where a lot of people go out of business because they get there. And they start thinking to themselves, okay, well, I’m gonna start, you know, working on vacant land. Well, that’s a, that’s a new strategy that you’re that you’re taking over. But you weren’t that good at houses before you started with vacant land. So you got away from your mission, you got away from the strategy that was going to help you, you know, be able to achieve your goals, the vision that you’ve set out when you started the company. So you’re not gonna, you’re never gonna achieve the goals that you have.
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You stay grounded, if you want to think of it another way, you can look at trees, some trees have what they call as a tapper, the basically goes straight down. Some trees have roots that, you know, go sideways in the ground. When a heavy wind comes, the the trees that have the route that go straight down, fall over the trees that have the roots that are stable, that go out, they survive that that windstorm, it might put a branch off or something like that, but that tree survives. So that is a solid foundation solid value. That helps you survive the bad times the heavy winds that are going to come in your business, because you’re going to have them there’s the it’s, there’s no way to avoid them. Whether you did it intentionally or it just wound up happening from an external factor, it’s going to happen. So get those roots that go out sideways, so that you can withstand those heavy winds when they show up. But if but in order to do that, you have to practice those core values every single day, the people that you hire in the business has to know what those values are, so that they can help you accomplish your mission. Now we can go back to one of the episodes. And I may have mentioned this in a couple of episodes. But when I hire someone, I’m the last one they talk to, because I put the other people in the office out in front in a group discussion with whoever we’re bringing in to do an interview first. The reason that I do that, is because I’m the tree. The people that work in the office are the roots, I have a established a solid foundation, the roots have gone out so that when we have heavy winds, I have that strength in my company to help withstand it. So that so that the tree in the company can still stand and get past it. A lot of people don’t understand that. But that’s why I do it. Because it’s a I’ve built a solid foundation. And that trust that loyalty that everyone has towards each other in the office. I don’t want someone coming in the office making a making a hire that we all didn’t approve of. And then all of a sudden they want to be in a problem in the company or mood in the office starts to deteriorate and no one’s having fun anymore. Because this person always causes problems always has an issue, things like that. Because it’s it’s going to affect the business. So when you have an office where, you know, you don’t have a lot of sensitive employees, people can go in there and cut up with each other, have a good time, be friends with each other things like that. You’re gonna have a solid foundation. But when you go in and you get away from your values, if you hire somebody that knows everything or is never happy about anything or tells you you’re wrong about this, like they’re the expert. You’re it’s gonna cause problems in the office because if they were such an expert, why don’t they own their own company? Why are they working for you? So it’s it’s one of those things do you have somebody in there that’s that’s coachable? that’s a that’s a team player. And that doesn’t mind that actually takes pride in being a route that keeps that tree standing up in heavy winds.
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There’s always people out there that for whatever reason, they always want to you know bash on people that are successful, they just have this problem when they’re your friends, they love you until you’re more successful than they are. And then once that happens, they talk about you behind your back, they’re gonna, you know, not be as close anymore to you, they’re always gonna complain about something. It’s just a negativity. So you know, a lot of times you find out, you know, I’m better off not being around that person. At the same token, you’re gonna find people that once you become successful, or once you have a, some success in your life, you’re gonna have those people that are standing behind you, Pat, on your back, good job. Hey, is there anything that I can do to push you forward a little bit more? there? That’s those those roots, those foundations in your personal life as well as your business life? So you have to always take into account? Yes, you have goals? Yes, you got in this business, because the promise of a lot of money. But that’s not what’s going to get you to that point, the foundation, the mission of why you open the doors, and being able to have the discipline to do those every single day, even in the hard times, is what’s gonna push you to the goal, to accomplish the vision.
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One thing that I’ve, and I’ve done studies about this, it’s a, it’s a fact that this point, you’re one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs or business owners is burnout. You’re going if you are not stable, keeping it not overworking yourself, taking the taking the good with the bad, then you’re going to experience burnout. So what and what I what I would look at this for saying real estate is the summer season. Summer season is always is always a little bit more active. The holiday season, November, December, not as many people out there looking to sell their house. So it’s downtime. If you sit there and you push yourself, because I see a lot of people in these social media groups about real estate, Hey, can we cold call on Saturday? Can we do Is it a good idea to go look at a house on Saturday or Sunday or whatever it may be. If you’re doing that, you’re going to burn out. You may you may call me nuts right now by saying that. But I’m telling you upfront, you’re going to burn out, it is going to happen. It may take a month, it may take a year, but you are going to burn out and when you burn out, you’re going to walk away from that you’re going to be disengaged from that business for a week, two weeks, a month, three months, whatever it is, because you’re you’re emotionally drained, you’re mentally drained. You may be making all the money in the world, but something just doesn’t feel right. And you’re trying to figure out what it is inside you. And why you don’t feel right. So what you have to do is you got to step away, you have to have a stable work environment. Tom’s things like that what I do. nine to five, Monday through Friday, you call me about business on the weekend. I’m not answering the phone. It’s just you call me at night, not answering the phone.
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I will for certain people, because I know we’re we’ve got a friendship too. So sometimes when they when they call, it’s not always going to be about business. That’s a special circumstance. The others I’ll do or for tenants. I mean, I got my tech started going off yesterday morning at six in the morning. So because attendants got a rat in her house, trying to nicely explain to her pest controllers tenant responsibility. She was not happy. That’s what she saw. So sometimes you have to do it, but you make those times rare to avoid the burnout. No, does that mean you’re going to avoid it completely? That probably not. We’re all human we’re all gonna have but the the downtime, the level of burnout is going to be greatly reduced. Because if you’re if you’re not just constantly pushing and overworking yourself. When you do experience the burnout, you might be down for a week. And that may be solved by Hey, I feel like I’m burned out. Let me take over vacation, and we’ll push through it until I get to go to that vacation. And then just leave and go to the beach mountain skiing, whatever it is for, you know the to enjoy. Just doing that for the week, and then come back, ready to go. The that’s that’s just how you avoid it. So make sure that you’re looking at your business in the today form, and the next month form and the next year form and in the next 10 years form, so that you can actually have a process to be able to get there. Because if if you’re just like I’ve said a couple of times in here, if you’re just looking at it as I want all this money, how are you going to get there, you don’t have a plan in place, you don’t have any values in place to get you there, you’re not going to get there by yourself. So that mantra that all of our parents used to tell us you are who you associate with, that is exactly the same in business as it is with friends.
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So in order to get you where you want to go, eventually you’re going to have to rub off on some people in your office, because you’re not going to be able to do it all by yourself. Because your goals I guarantee you will or are high, or you wouldn’t have gotten in this business because all of the Guru’s promise you entirely too much money, too much success. So you’ve got it in your mind, you’re going to be a multi millionaire in a year, five years, or whatever it is, you’re not getting there by yourself. So you got to rub off on someone to be able to get there, that’s going to be your core values, your mission, the why you started that company and the what you do every single day, so that your employees don’t have to run to you every single time they have a question. They know the answer already, because you’ve ingrained the core values of the Y in them so that they can do the job without asking you every single time. And then when you look up and six months, a year, five years, whatever it may be, you’re gonna see that you’re actually closer to accomplishing the goal that you originally had when you set out to open up the business. Hope this has informed a lot of people and given you something to think about the the the business can be exciting can be frustrating, there is a good opportunity to make a lot of money. But it’s it’s hard to do. And if I’m just being honest, that’s what I’m going to tell him it’s not everyone is not going to have the same success. Only the people that are willing to do the day to day stay stable weather the wind are going to be the ones that get close to their goals if not achieve them and the others are just going to fall down when the wind blows hard. So you need to make a choice of which you want to be in this business and in your in your life in general. To determine whether or not you want to put a firm foundation on that will withstand the heavy winds and get you towards what you want to accomplish or you’re going to follow over every time the wind blows hard.
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If you need any help growing growing the business that you that you started Feel free to go over to EarlToms.com there’s a there’s a lot of information with things about how to grow your business things that business should be doing to provide that foundation it’s it’s everything over there is on the website is free, except for a spreadsheet that will help you determine whether or not something is actually a deal. And that’s only $7 so you know I do this to help people. By no means getting rich by doing this. That’s why I only do it once every two weeks because honestly I just don’t have the time to to devote to doing something every day every week because I’m out there trying to accomplish my goals with my mission and my vision. But again, if you if you want to learn more about how you can grow your business, just head over to to EarlToms.com.
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Hope you’ve enjoyed the episode learned a little bit, have gotten some things to think about that. Maybe we’ll We’ll help you be successful. But with that, we’re gonna, we’re gonna end this episode. We’ll talk to you again in a couple of weeks. Thanks for listening
