Our Happy Self Talk Delusions

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There's a lot of value in books that inspire you to reach for your dreams.

Many of us need that stuff.

I know I did.

Both Nick and I are fairly confident people but if we hadn't read books like "Think & Grow Rich", "The New Psycho-Cybernetics" or "The Greatest Salesman in the World" I'm not sure we would have figured out we were really masters of our own destiny.

I vividly recall reading some strange book titled, "Passion, Profit & Power" by Marshall Sylver and it had an amazing impact on me.

I began visualizing the life that I really wanted.

And I can't be certain but I believe it was that book that had me create my first vision board.

On that board I had a picture of Carol (my amazing wife) and my son holding a calendar with the date that she was supposed to go back to work from maternity leave circled on it.

We set a goal that she we would figure out how to pay our bills and have her be able to NOT go back to work on that date.  The picture was of them was in our kitchen to symbolize them at home together when that date came.

And somehow we did it.

On that board I also put the most beautiful picture of an open air house in Hawaii that I had ever seen.  I've looked at that picture hundreds of times.

We currently don't own a house in Hawaii but somehow I secretly believe that one day we will.

I don't really have a system in place to get it and that brings us back on point...

Those goal setting and "think big" books helped us both a lot.

And they gave us the courage to write down goals like, "Have $2 Million in positive cash flow from real estate in 3 years".  (We don't have that by the way .. not yet anyway, LOL!)

But what those books didn't teach us was this:

The process of how to bring our goals to reality are more important than the goal itself.

For example,

Let's say from that goal I decide to get a rental property.

Where am I going to find them?  What type?  How much?
Who is going to help me?
Where is the money to buy it coming from?
How will I find more money to buy the next one?
How will I stay motivated when problems arise?
What is the process I'll use to deal with maintenance, sewage backups, vacant periods etc.?
How will I handle taxes?
How will I find tenants?  Where will I advertise?  What phone system will I use?  Will I have a database to track leads or a piece of paper?  How many times will I call my tenant leads back?

Without some of these questions answered and then activities booked into a calendar I've found that nothing happens.

The goal looks great but without the processes to accomplish them all laid out ... for me, nothing would actually occur.

Part of the reason we **think** we've been able to help so many investors get off the fence and actually begin investing is that we laid out a system for them.  At Rock Star we've removed all the decisions and laid out an actual plan:  the type of property, where, for how much, where to advertise, how much to charge in rent etc.

You follow X plan and you get Y results.

Done.

Searching for the system that will create your goals is more valuable than talking about your goals for the 10th time.

Same thing with business building.

For years I started various little websites that I thought would turn into businesses.

But until we did some hard math nothing happened.

Someone once explained business like this to us,

"Look you two, how much is it going to cost you to get a customer?  And how much is that customer worth to you?  Once you figure out those two numbers you'll be on your way."

BAM.

That was game changing.

It changed our context from "having a cool idea for a business" to "how the heck do we get a customer over and over again in a systematic way?"

And as Tony Robbins always says, we're paraphrasing here, "The quality of your life comes from the quality of the questions you ask yourself."

Asking the question, "How are we going to get a customer?" put us on a life-long educational journey in marketing.

It also got us thinking like this...

Where will we advertise?  What will we say?  How will we turn prospects into customers?

That process that we've now refined over eight years has generated millions and millions in revenues.

People look at Rock Star and think there's one thing we do that has created its success.

It's the million little things all together that have built-up over time that create its success.

Not the "idea".

Our process is literally worth millions of dollars.

The idea is worth 3 cents.  (OMG, that made me laugh out loud).

Why are we rambling like this?

Because we're action oriented people and if somehow had challenged us earlier to come up with processes that would accomplish our ideas, in detail, it would have been helpful.

If somehow had shared the value of a system instead of the value of an idea earlier it would have been valuable.

Ideas are a dime a dozen.

A good process is a diamond.

Just yesterday someone mentioned an analogy that went something like this,

Just because a mechanic opens up his own garage ... if he keeps working on cars himself then he's not really a business owner ... he's still a mechanic.

Michael Gerber's E-Myth book series really drives this point home.

So if we were to go back 15 years and give ourselves advice it would be this:

Set big goals, HUGE goals, take over the world!

And right after you've done that hunt for the systems that will bring them to reality.

Without the systems behind them the ideas aren't very powerful.

Writing out those goals is only the first of hundreds of steps.  Somehow that point wasn't obvious to us.

It is now.

The process of how to bring our goals to reality is more valuable to you than the goal itself.

Until next time ... Your Life! Your Terms!