The ONLY reason real estate investors fail, the single worst thought that an investor can ever have.

The ONLY reason real estate investors fail, the single worst thought that an investor can ever have.

I made another post about this that you should watch and read first here.

This is why  real estate investors fail, and even why our students fail.  What is the difference between those who achieve and those don’t?

The class above explains it

This changed my life.

It can do the same for you.

I would love hear your feedback.

Thanks again!  = )

~ Indy Anna

How’s it going – Azam Meo here once again – you know when it comes to buying and selling companies and real estate – and doing it creatively – I get a lot of questions and over the years I’ve heard many questions again and again – so today I’m going to address what is probably the most dangerous of the common questions, once we go over this you’ll never again fall into the trap of thinking this is a smart question – I’ll tell  you a story I heard as a child, a story about the Devil and the lesson in this story is the secret to immunizing yourself from the quicksand mentality of the unaccomplished – what we’re going to talk about is also going to allow to read people a lot faster because once you know what to look for you’ll be able to pick out the best people, the artists to build your team with – you’ll be able to screen them at lightning speed once you learn this.  Started –

You know the single best way to talk anybody into doing anything is to make them talk themselves into it – as if it was their idea.  The more committed they become the more your idea becomes their idea, as if it wasn’t something external that you introduced them to but rather as something internal that you reminded them of. 

Suggestions becomes ideas, ideas become beliefs and the over time the source of a belief becomes less clear – the deeper a belief becomes the more protective the mind becomes of it – the filter that you process new information through becomes more selective in order to confirm – not challenge – your beliefs, any contradictions to your perspective are dismissed, minimized or ignored.  Your constructed reality build on itself and is less dependent on what’s really happening and more based on what you have already accepted and want as reality.  This is how a whispered snowflake of suggestion turns into a mountain of manufactured truth.  So my question to you is what snowflakes have you built into mountains.    What allow you to influence you, the suggestions – the snowflakes that you choose to turn into mountains – is a pretty important question – maybe the most important question – what if your influencer was something as a dark as death, I’m not saying that you’re under the influence of Satan, but if you were would he want you know it?  The beliefs you have started with a single grain of thought, where did that thought come from?  It’s interesting question and there is a scientific name for this, we have a class on that I recommend going through, the class on neuroplasticity, it’s the way that your brain reshapes itself based on what you think about, you enlarge what you focus on, what you think about the most doesn’t just become dominant in your mind but you’ll see illustrated in the world whether it’s actually there or not – train yourself, for example, to find opportunities or train yoruself to find excuses – either way you’ll succeed.  You know while I’m talking about this another really stupid question that people – especially real estate investors – always ask “Will this work in my area” or sometimes they’ll just flat out tell “That won’t work in my area” see what those people really want is an excuse, they don’t really want to know if something applies to them or not they just want a reason that it doesn’t – think about I answered them by saying YES what happens next, will they go out and make things happen no of course not and if they don’t know me very well they may even say that don’t believe but that’s not truth because if I tell them NO this doesn’t work in you are they’ll definitely believe that right – so it’s not an issue of trusting or believing me it’s really an issue of them finding an excuse to validate their inaction, that’s what they really want – that’s why as a policy and I shouldn’t be telling you guys this but as a policy whenever somebody asks me or any of us if something works in their area we always say no – it doesn’t matter what area they’re talking or even if they haven’t told us where they are yet – we always say NO and you should see the their reactions they’re like OHHH I really wish that stuff did work in my area because I was relaly looking forward doing it… it’s so funny because that they’re so eager to throw in the towel – anyway that’s not today’s question but it’s a version of it – 

You know over the years people have asked me a lot of questions and some questions come up again and again – today I’m going to answer one of them, but I wanted to do it in such a way that it would benefit those that may not have this question – today’s question is one of the most dangerous questions ever, it’s one of the worst questions ever, it might be the worst question – and not just because of the question of itself but because of the mentality behind it because in reality when people even think about asking – let alone actually asking it – they’ve already answered it.  In fact, this is the reason why the progress that most people only take their business – real estate  or otherwise – about as far as you can kick a balloon against the wind –

So here’s the situation – let’s say you’re an average person with an average income at an average job – or maybe you’re above average or maybe you’re already in business – the bottom line is that for over nine out of 10 people – for just about everybody you’re not happy with your income – you want to make more money, actually most people just want to have more money they just want it to appear, the more ambitious want to make more money – they want to get it – so when you think about that world, the world of increasing your income on purpose – you don’t have many options outside of business and since everybody is doing almost everything you pretty much have to change everything that you’re doing – and most people don’t do that – but even if you do, the real issues come down to this – you’re either and you know what you’re doing, or you’re just guessing.  I’ll tell you, just take a look at the numbers, the facts, the statistics and you’ll see that almost nobody has any idea what they’re doing.  Go through the SA Class it’s amazing and one of the things you’ll see is that just about everybody that experiences significant changes in their financial situation, it almost never happens but when it does it’s because people are carried to that destination – it’s not a result of skill.  Most people are just guessing.  So it’s natural to not get the best results and when that happens you start down a path where a question comes up, and that’s what today’s class about – a simple three word question that represents a path down to mediocrity, a question that is the beginning of the end – these words are the kiss of death – the question, I’ll just sum it here it is – the question is – SHOULD I QUIT

Usually people will start by talking about how hard they’re working, or how hard they’ve tried and then they’ll talk about a lack of supporters in their personal life – because think about the opposite, it’s not like people will say “Oh, I just started in business or real estate investing and everybody is behind so should I quit?”  No first it starts with bad news – that news is usually how hard they’re working, how long they’ve been working, poor results, deteriorating support, how tried or untalented they feel or differences in their situation versus the situations of others who are succeeding, how much money this endeavor has cost them – so here’s an example of how that sounds – “Azam I’ve been trying to get into real estate for over 10 years, I’ve worked really hard and spent tens of thousands of dollars and probably a lot more I just don’t want to think about it.  I still haven’t made a penny from any of this and my friends and family think I’m crazy and I just need to get a regular job and start being normal.  I’ve tried really hard to get this going but I’m started to think that maybe I don’t have what it takes or maybe I should try something new or try working in a new business or go to a new area where people are having more success in real estate.  I don’t know but I can’t keep going on like this, it would be a lot easier if this stress wasn’t in my life, should I just quit?”

And I just quoted an actual question – but so many others have asked the same thing – and almost every time they don’t just say should I quit – they usually add some or all of the ingredients I just talked about –

Okay – so here’s the answer – this the most brilliant answer on the topic – are you ready for it – you know before I get into this anymore let me just say if you ever thinking about quitting then you already have – just the fact that it’s on your mind means that you have accepted alternate results or another course of action or a course of inaction – either way once you get to a point where you are thinking about this let alone when you have given this strand of doubt enough layers of reinforcement to verbalize it – at that point you’ve already lost – BUT it’s not too late, together you and I can fix it

You know I thought for a while about I should answer this and I could give you 100 different answers or examples from other students – but instead of that I’m going to tell you a story that I was told a very long time ago – and it has a lesson that has been on my mind ever since I heard it as a child.  See when I grew up a moved around a lot like you’ve told you guys before – and I don’t mean moving around just in America but even abroad and I have a large extended family that’s all over the place – so I’ve actually live in Israel, I have an aunt who is a strict Jewish family and been to Jewish schools in Synagogues and I’ve been to Madrassa in Saudi Arabia – you know like schools you have seen on the news – and I’ve been to strict Catholic schools too – and by the way while I’m talking about this I know sometimes disagreements or problems are exaggerated – so let me say this while we’re talking about, in my family and in my life I have lived with and been around Jewish people, Hindus, Muslims, Christians – I have been in the countries and grown up around them in my life and even in my family and I can tell you that they’re all great people, the disagreements or problems that people have are usually exaggerated by media to audiences and to a public that doesn’t know any better so they accept mischaracterizations – this is done across the world, in every culture that I’ve been a part of and it’s because the people with influence and money have an agenda and they have something to gain to victimize their audience and vilify those that don’t agree with them – my point is, that in a place like America we should be smarter than that – people are good, and not many people that you will ever talk to have more experience with humanity than I do – and I can tell you, we can make things better not worse, we are much more alike than different, the world has more love than hate, – people are good.

Anyway – when it comes to different religions I got it from all angles – and a few things stuck, right now I’ll you about one powerful lesson that an uncle of mine taught me – it’s about the Devil.

So one day some of the most powerful demons in the world came to the devil and they said you know it’s not fair that you get all the credit for all the evil in the world because we’re just as good at causing evil as you the only problem is that we don’t have your tools if we just had your tools then we could be stronger than you – why don’t give us some of your tools because you have them all just give us some of your tools devil – then devil looked them at scoffed and said leave me alone demons you don’t know what you’re talking about – the demons left but sometime later they came back with even more demons and the said the same thing – they said we need your tools if we just had your tools we could beat you and without them this isn’t a fair fight – now this time the devil had a harder time dealing with demons but eventually he got rid of them – some time after that ALL of the demons ambushed the devil and this time they demanded the devil’s tools they said that they would not leave until they got his tools – Now at this time the devil realized what that he had a rebellion on his hands and sooner or later he had to deal with this – so he made a deal with demons he said okay I’ve been telling you that it’s not about the tools but if you want me to prove it to you fine I will – I’ll lay out all my tools I’ll let all of you pick any tools that you want take as many as you want and then we’ll go out into the world and see who causes the most evil – now after you’ve taken all my tools if I still beat you then you none of will ever rebel, challenge or question or me again – deal?  The demons all smiled because they knew that if they got their hands on the devils tools there’s no way they would lost – so they all agreed to the deal.

So the devil took all his tools and he laid them out in front of the demons of the world – these are all the tools that I have this is every way that I am able to create evil, without these tools there would never be any evil in the universe – all the tools were there – gluttony, greed, pride, sloth, wrath, envy, lust, jealousy, murder, mayhem chaos, rage, betrayal, seduction, deceit, thievery, bloodlust, corruption, rape, arrogance, bribery, destruction, hate, vengeance, torture, ignorance – all of the devil’s endless arsenal of tools were laid out as far as they eye could see in any direction – then he turned to the demons and he said take your pick take as many as you want as few want whatever – the demons flooded the tools and fought over the tools arguing who would get what – and the devil just stood back and waited for them to finish.  Eventually they were done and the ranks of demons stood before the devil armed to the teeth with all of his tools – except one – in all the fighting over the tools the demons had left one behind.  There was one tool that nobody wanted – it was the smallest, the most worn out and the weakest of all the tools, the devil walked over, picked it up and said you all left this one behind is the tool that you are leaving me, are you sure that nobody wants this one?  They said yes you can have that one, we don’t need it, it’s useless junk you go ahead and keep that one tool – so one more time the devil confirmed the deal he said okay so now that you have all my tools and some of you dozens others have hundreds – but now that you have them and you have left me with nothing but this one tool now the challenge starts and we’ll see who can create more evil in the world and if I win remember that I’m never to be challenged again – that’s the deal right?

The demons said yes that’s the deal but don’t worry about it because there’s no way that you can win – but if somehow you do win yes we’ll never dare to question your authority again.  The demons signed a contract, the devil snapped his finger and poof the contract was recorded and disappeared and then the devil started laughing – he started laughing louder and louder, uncontrollable laughing – he looked at the demons and said you fools – you don’t stand a chance – the demons said why, why do you say that?  And that’s when the demons learned who they were dealing with – the devil held up his tiny tool and he said in my hands is the ultimate tool of evil, in fact it is required tool for evil and none of the other tools combined have any power without my tool – and I knew you demons would look past it and let me have it because you don’t understand how humans work. 

The demons got closer and listened closely – the devil continued, he said – all of the tools you have only work on bad people, the problem that you have is that people are not bad, people are good – so to create evil in the world it won’t happen by making bad people do bad things it happens by making good people do bad things, we need to turn good people bad, the secret to spreading isn’t to influence bad people, it’s to create them.  And this tool in my hands, in the war between good and evil this is the most underestimated power that there is because only with it can evil live on.  This tool is what allows a bad person to be born within a good one.  This isn’t just the only tool that you need but it’s the one tool, the only tool that allows room for any other tool to work.

The plummet  that a person takes from good to bad isn’t sudden or in the blink of an eye, it is a gradual descent that starts with a single unnoticed step and it’s important that the first movement towards evil is done covertly because if people knew the path they were starting on or the person they were about to become then there is no way they would allow it to happen – but it must happen for our work to carry on, there aren’t enough bad people in the world for evil to survive we must recruit from the good – the turn from good to bad has to be done in such a way that people don’t know it’s happening and that’s what this tool does

This is how I’m able to speak into peoples ears, to embed myself into their minds – eventually my suggestions become their orders, my plans become their goals and my words become their thoughts – and this all happens before they even know that we started talking.  This tool is so small because I don’t want it to be noticed, it’s so worn down because I use it the most and it’s so weak because I need it to be accepted easily – and I have disguised this tool so well that even all of you demons were fooled and overlooked it’s importance – but without this tool you are all powerless, without this tool even I would be powerless – this is the ultimate of all my tools – the tool of… discouragement.

That’s the answer discouragement – that’s the end of the story, this me Azam now talking to you – that’s a story I always remembered, and anytime that I’ve felt myself getting discouraged I immediately work to improve my autocorrect – and if you look at your situations in the past, the times in your life when you did things that you know you’re better than, when you think of them you usually did those things because somewhere along the line you allowed yourself to get discouraged.  Make no mistake getting discouragement is a choice.  I’ll say that again – getting discouraged is a choice.  The moment you accept it – a pact is made with the devil, you are shacking hands with a chainsaw.

And you should treat it like talking the devil because if you don’t take aggressive steps to reshape the path you’re on then pretty soon you’re thinking about quitting, then you’re wondering if you should and eventually not quitting seems crazy – this is why most people and most businesses are a graveyard of brilliance and potential – so many smart people live their lives carrying around the tumors of regret, the darkness suffocated potential and the scars of lost dreams – and if you study this you’ll see the same pattern.  Whenever somebody arrives at the destination of quitting, if you trace your finger back through their maze of decisions all the way back to the starting point you will always see that the first turning point that leads down the path to quitting always starts with the choice to get discouraged.

That is the moment that the seed is planted.  So my answer to all the questions about quitting is more a mirror than advice – if you’re wondering whether or not you should quit – you’ve already decided to quit, you’ve decided to give less than your all, you’ve decided to make countless microdecisions based on the less than half-assed effort that you are willing to give – you have already decided, hundreds or thousands of times at least, to get discouraged.  So my reply to anybody wondering if they should quit – is what do you want?  That’s the real answer.

If you don’t want to be a quitter – then it will rely on your ability to immune yourself from getting discouraged.  So if you really want something – don’t let that happen, use your passion, resilience and training to look at any potential setback as an opportunity to learn and improve your approach.  Grab opportunity the hair, minimize the negative and maximize the positive – in short be the best version of yourself, and only get involved with causes and business that mean enough to you that you will not allow anything other than your best foot forward.   Keep in mind that the world won’t miss what you never give it, so use my stuff and leverage your emotion capital by investing in whatever model you do from now on.  Once you do this, you will insulate yourself and become allergic to discouragement and when you look back at your old self you’ll have the disbelief of a weight loss victor looking at before pictures – get crazy.

And finally remember this… Momentum is one of the strongest forces in the world, and it works both ways  – enforcing action and reinforcing inaction.  Whenever you quit something you feed a habit, train yourself and add an extra burden of weight to start the next journey with.  From now on do not stop pursuing a goal until you get what you want – arm yourself with willpower, emotion and skill so that you ignore the temptations to quit.

You know one of the reasons that I’m spending so much time talking about this is because even though I’ve heard this question from some people I know that a lot more people let the thought of quitting cross their mind or worse they don’t actually decide or consider on it and they just let it fade away, days of inactivity turn into weeks, weeks into months months into years and soon they don’t even remember all the things they passively quit – and to the younger people from overseas who may have found their way here you guys are probably wondering what I’m talking about, you never DREAM of quitting or letting up – this is a problem that is almost entirely in America because quitting is a luxury that comes with comfort. 

What makes all this worse is that there are some very simple ways that we’ve talked about on how to beat this demon – through passion, skill, training, etc. but ultimately it comes down to how you deal with your problem, or whether you look at them as challenges to get past or problems to dwell on – a lot of tell somebody will tell me a problem or a laundry list of problems one thing you’ll hear the LC often say is that “I’ve tried everything” and as a policy whenever I hear that I always say the same thing, anybody on our team we always say the same thing – somebody says I’ve tried everything we say “List the last 10 things that you tried and how you improved your approach with each” and here’s the crazy thing in all the years that I’ve been doing this nobody has ever had a readily list of 10 things that they did and improvements that they made to each one – you see the problem is that people don’t try many different things to solve their problems they might try one or two things maybe three or four but they don’t go crazy – it’s a simple problem, the best way to stop your problems from overwhelming you is to overwhelm them so from now with any problem or challenge that comes up immediately write the numbers 1 through 10 down then go back and fill in each blank with an idea on how to deal with your issue – push yourself to come up with answers, remember intelligence is the ability to make connections, this is how you make yourself get smarter – there is no problem in the world that somebody somewhere in history hasn’t already solved we just don’t always make the connection – remember in our class when we talked about the Wright Brothers and the mastery of flight the first airplanes were made of materials that had been around for thousands of years but nobody make the connection – push yourself to make better connections list 10 possible solutions – find out who would have the answer, or who would know somebody who has the answer – then make sure that with each of the 10 items you can get them started and have some way to measure their effectiveness in the next 24 hours – one of our kids Sabrina came up with a name for this, it’s called the 2410 – and it’s brilliant – because within 24 hours you look at the most effective idea and you reinforce and  you look at the less effectiveness ones and you fix them – then you come up with 10 more ideas, or 10 more or 30 more ideas – you go crazy – and the first list may take some time but I train students to come up with that list in less than 60-90 seconds

And in general your ability to develop or extract ideas and mold them into brilliance and then putting that brilliance into action – so developing brilliance and then getting it executed those two things will solve any money problems that you will ever have and notice I said getting it executed instead of executing it yourself that’s a whole lesson on it’s own anyway – when  you start doing this you’ll develop bulletproof confidence, you’ll always know that you can deal with anything, that you have a concrete chin and nothing will keep you down – this is also people always ask me how we get kids coming up with so many great ideas and becoming so brilliant this is one way – because anybody trained with my stuff can figure anything out and we have them go through the 2410 constantly and they get smarter – I mean what is more profitable or important than your ability to quickly solve problems – you see how powerful this is – and by the way if you’re hearing this and you think oh Azam that’s too much work, 10 things or more and going crazy that’s too much that’s an over reaction – first I’d say ask you if you lived your life solving your problems too fast or too aggressively – would that really be a problem?  Wouldn’t you rather have too many problems and not enough solutions, or too many solutions and not enough problems – but on top of that if you’re thinking that this is too much work – then… you’re right.  It is, so don’t do it.  Let somebody else do it while you become just another statistic, most people won’t do this most people will let their laziness convince them that fixing their problems is more painful than having them, most people won’t get what they want – so when say something stupid like that sounds like too much work I won’t tell you you’re as wrong as bestiality, which my students know that you are – I’d say that opposite you’re right and that’s exactly what your competitors think too it’s why their competing with you you’re all on the same level and you’re not going to make a good student so don’t apply.  Most people are very creative in finding problems, not in solving them.  Don’t let challenges discourage you, discourage them – as you develop this you’ll develop a fearlessness and skill that will immune to market conditions, the economy, competition, pricing wars, online changes – you’ll know that you and your team will always figure it out.  Never getting discouraged.

Remember most people quit, they will rationalize it and make it sound like it’s the logical conclusion – you need to know better that to listen to those mother grabbers, it isn’t about being smart or arrogant – you aren’t better than them, just better trained.

And finally remember this… Momentum is one of the strongest forces in the world, and it works both ways  – enforcing action and reinforcing inaction.  Whenever you quit something you feed a habit, train yourself and add an extra burden of weight to start the next journey with.  From now on do not stop pursuing a goal until you get what you want – arm yourself with willpower, emotion and skill so that you ignore the temptations to quit… or to even get discouraged.