Get your Family Fit

Getting your fitness on yourself is very important.  If you’re fat, overweight, and have aches or pains than you can’t possibly have the confidence to go into any situation with the in it to win it attitude.  Go back to your why, and understand that being the best version of yourself will help you overcome every brick wall that stands in your way.

To give you an example of how important it is to get your family fitness I’ll share this video of a wife who’s life was truly changed by personal training.

That’s powerful.  You can’t deny the level of change.  When you’re family is right than your mindset is right.  Get fit, rich, and happy!

-Short one today, I’ve got to get my workout in!

Choosing Between Employees & Partners

The number one rule in business is to never give out equity.  I would much rather pay someone a good chunk of change than give out a percentage.  When I had my first business I had a hard time figuring out my role when I bought in to the company.  Was I an employee or a partner?  My “employer” made a good call on that one.

I’m suggesting that you learn from my experience, and do the same.  Never give up a percentage of your business, especially if you’re going to hit it out of the park.  If you’re willing to give up a big piece of your business than you’re expecting to lose. Does that sound like you?  Expecting to lose is a big challenge that you need to overcome.

There is nothing wrong with going back a few steps.  Take a look at a couple of my older posts on mindset, sales training and making sure to reexamine your why.

Employees VS Independent Contractors

Now that we have the foundation down; understand this, there are huge advantages to having independent contractors.  NOLO has some very interesting points in their legal encyclopedia of whether or hire an employee or independent contractor.

Pros of having a Independent Contractor:

• Saving Money
• Flexibility in Staffing
• Reduce your exposure to headaches
  • Unemployment Cases
  • Minimum wage issues
  • Sick & vacation time

Cons of having a Independent Contractor:

• Less Control over them
• Worker come and go more easily
• Limited rights to fire a independent contractor
• Increased risk of government audits

Given my business experience I will always take a independent contractor over an employee.  NOLO makes some very good points, but my biggest point is mindset.  Unfortunately, many employees have an employee mindset.  They are looking to get paid the most while doing the least amount of work.

When contracting out work you’re able to get a better quality worker because it their time, not yours that their wasting.

The What I Did Checklist

Keeping yourself in check is very important when starting a business.  When starting my first business it was difficult.  Distractions are everywhere from Facebook to nights out at the bar.  These distractions are consuming a lot of time.  You need to keep yourself in check.

The What I Did Checklist is one of the best ways to keep yourself in check.  Other ways to hold yourself accountable is getting your wife on board, friends, or having an accountability partner.  We can get into those other ways in later posts.

Creating your Checklist

As I talked about in older blog posts, it is very important to write your goals and have a battle plan to attack each day.  I’m going to take back what I said about writing your goals down every morning and night.  Instead of writing them down every night, start your “What I did” checklist.  Keep writing your goals down in the morning though – it is very important.

End every night with writing down exactly what you did that day.  Be hard on yourself, and give yourself a written grade.  Keep honest with yourself, and soon you’ll learn that maybe your not doing enough.

Example Checklist

October 2nd, 2016

What Did I Do Today?

Contact 5 prospects for my Business

Put up 2 blog posts

Collected $5000 in money owed

Etc..

Rating = 7/10

 

Start your Checklist Tonight

Seriously, it’ll be embarrassing for the first few days until you realize how much you need to step up your game.  Stick with it.

 

Focus on Winning the Day

Changing your life from a comfortable, yet unsuccessful existence to a thriving life is difficult. You’ll come up against serious walls, and you’ll need to dig deep into your why to get over them. There will be days when your blah, and by the end of the day you’ve beat yourself up so much about it that you’re more upset with yourself than anything else.  I’ve had those days, Bill Gates has had those days, and Grant Cardone has had those days.
Everyone has had those days, but focusing on those days is what’s hurting you.  Focus on today, and just today.  Focus your mind on winning the day.  Get your routine down.

My Morning Routine:

1. Wake up first time my alarm goes off (first win).
2. Piss & grab some a cup of water with apple cider vinegar in it
3. Write down 3 goals according to our guidelines
4. Write up my battle plan, and take a picture of it to make sure I have it with me all day
5. Eat a good breakfast, and get to work
6. Do 2 things off my battle plan ASAP, and get my first WINS of the day

Winning my way to my first successful business

I feel like I didn’t have the success I wanted in “my first business” with the Danbury Tree Pros as I talked about in this post. I decided to what I learned from that business combined with a new system and backed by massive action was going to create a winning business.  I knew I had been a pro myself with Appliance Repair so I created the Appliance Repair Pros of Danbury.

Appliance Repair was a truly popular trade at that point in time, and I knew I needed to capitalize on that.  First I created my website danburyappliancerepairpros.com which was one of the hardest parts.  It’s not a easy thing to write about appliance repair for page, after page, after page, but I did it.

I got my win for the day.  That’s all I needed to start my day.  Later in the day I crushed my whole battle plan, and then went on to secure my first investor.  I just got a roll, and couldn’t stop winning.  Remember, start your day right, and focus on winning. 

 

The Millionaire Booklet

Grant Cardone recently wrote a book called the Millionaire Booklet.  He wrote this short 45 minute book in just under 2 hours after coming back from a charity banquet.  As you can see on the left I prefer listening to my books rather than reading.  This wasn’t any ordinary charity banquet – it was one for the books (literally!).  The Charity’s goal was 2 Million dollars.  You heard that right… 2 MILLION DOLLARS.

That’s a huge goal, but we know Grant thinks big.  The first half million was donated by about 50 people with each person serving up a BMW 350i’s equivalent in cash.  The second half million was donated by just 5 people with each donation being close to $100,000.

The last donation was done by 1 person; one single person donated $1,000,000 to that charity.  People were cheering, crying and shocked beyond disbelief.  How could one person possibly have that much to donate?  Success – that’s why.

Grant was then inspired to write a book called The Millionaire Booklet in which he gives 5 essential tips for success.  I don’t want to reveal all of them to you, but I did touch on the first one in my previous post.

Guide to Being Super Rich

Before you go ahead and buy Grant Cardone’s Millionaire Booklet I would recommend that you read the following books.

1. Cash-flow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki
2. 10X Rule by Grant Cardone
3. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
4. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
5. Sell or Be Sold by Grant Cardone

Note:  Do not buy any of Robert Kiyosaki’s courses.  I have in the past, and was $5000 in the hole with some serious disappointment.  I won’t say it wasn’t worth the money, because it totally change my mindset.  Would my mindset have changed anyways?  Maybe, but thinking about what ifs isn’t really a good use of time.

Who’s got my Money

One of the “King Kong Huge” success tips that I got from Grant’s Millionaire Booklet was “Who’s got my Money?”  In a nutshell “Who’s got my money?” is referring to who has big money, and how do I get in front of them.  I learned this essential fact much later in my career.

If I had known that I needed to spend more time getting in front of people who had big money than I would have stopped messing around with hard selling buyers who didn’t have deep pockets.  I often felt more at ease trying to sell someone who doesn’t have big money, because they were more on my playing field at the time.

The problem with that mindset is the foundation.  If you can remember from my post on the three things you must believe in to be successful than you already know what the problem is.  The problem is that the belief in myself isn’t strong enough to go for the big deals.  I’ve got to sell myself on my ability to make $10,000 a month off a deal.

Once I’m totally sold on having the ability to get serious results for my different clients than I’ll be able to adopt the “Who’s got my money?” mindset.  Mindset is key – I paid about $5000 for mine.  At this point, I’d pay another five in a heartbeat.

Work Like Your Broke

Working like your broke isn’t supposed to be fun.  Give yourself a celebration every time you make a sale or strike a new deal.  Focus just on a small celebration without spending all of your new income on “doodads”.  The idea of wasting money on “doodads” was made popular by Richard Kiyosaki the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad.  That’s another whole blog itself!

Your mindset should be:

1. Quick Celebration
2. On to the next one
3. Relocate that surplus income

Reading this blog alone will allow you access to a higher income stream.  You’ll begin to change your mindset after hearing my story.  Just arrived on this page?  Start from the beginning by clicking here.  You can’t start a 3rd story on a office building without building the other two.

Surplus Income = Investment Income

Making more money often equals out to making more bad decisions.

• Buying new cars
• Getting a new house
• Getting a new TV

None of these are going to make you more money!  Even if the new car happens to be a Prius which will save you money it still won’t make you money.  You can either think about saving money or making money – which do you want to focus on?

Making money should be your focus.  Keep working like your broke while pooling your money into secret investment accounts.  If possible have that money come directly out of your paycheck, or arrange an immediate transfer from your checking account.

Be ready for an Opportunity

In this economy you must be ready for a great opportunity when it comes your way.  You must have the funds to buy investment property or loan a good friend 50K when they want to start their own business.  Provided that you believe in your friend’s ability to run that business, and make it profitable.

Without cash on hand you won’t have the ability to seize these opportunities when they arise.  As you work to secure a loan there will always be someone with cash on hand who will beat you to it.

Delay Gratification

Delaying gratification is the hardest thing about #Winning because the norm is to reward yourself for a job well done.  Our whole society is built around rewarding for a great job.  The way to being super rich is to delay that instant gratification.  Still celebrate your wins without breaking the bank.

In 5-10 years you’ll thank me for giving you this awesome information.  Imagine yourself 7 years later with the residual tax free income coming from your assets, and paying for your fancy cars.  I’m not talking about some cheap BMW that costs 60K, but instead about real cars.  Lambos, Aston Martins, Ferarris…  Those are real cars.

The choice is yours:

• Celebrate hard now?
• Celebrate even HARDER later?

Get your Mind Right

There is one often overlooked part of success is getting your mind right.  Once you have you have Massive action, your Why, and some serious Sales training down pat; you need to start getting your mind right to perform well.  Massive action is never easy in the beginning, but being able to slice through your tasks quickly is very beneficial.

How do I take care of my mind?

Treat your mind right by reading your body right.  Exercise is key to being more productive.  One thing about exercise though is that it shouldn’t be something that requires your attention.  You shouldn’t need to focus on what exercises to do, or some fancy programming.  Having to constantly come up with new programming is not only time consuming but a serious pain in the ass.

Get a Personal Trainer

I’m sure you’re like…  You must be joking right?  I’m not joking one bit.  I’m dead serious about you getting a personal trainer.  There are a couple key reasons why you should get a trainer aside from the normal health & fitness advantages.

• They know people (think 6 degrees of separation)
• You can hash out ideas with them (its great to talk about you, yourself and your business)
• You don’t need to worry about doing the right things
• They can come to your house!

I spent a good portion of my time in Brooklyn, NY getting in front of people.  The more people you get in front of, and hit them with your vision – the more people that can say yes.  While hammering through the massive actions of basically cold calling people or called walking as I call it.  I would literally walk into businesses everyday, and badger the receptionist to get in front of the decision maker.

This process was tiring, and by the end of the day I would be totally shot. I needed an edge, and it wasn’t my 4th coffee of the day.  I decided to hire a personal trainer.  His name is Joe Lefkowitz, and the guy was awesome.  Not only did I lose like 15 pounds while getting my energy through the roof, but this guy knew people.  If you’re not motivated after seeing his video than there is something wrong with you.

I soon realized that the only way a business owner could afford to pay a trainer $125 an hour was if they made serious bread.  That’s the kind of guy I want to know.  Over the next two months I got to know his clients really well.  That led to some serious deals that far outweighed the few thousand dollars I spent on getting my ass back in shape!