Episode 571: The Five Step Formula for Getting Unstuck with Chris Prefontaine

Welcome to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast, your source for actionable, real-life, practical investing advice. Each week we help you make a quantum leap somewhere in your business, your finances, and/or your life. Subscribe, leave a rating and review, and learn more at smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com. Hey, welcome to the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast where we cut through the noise and show you how to Actually get deals done in today's market. Revolutionary, right? I'm Chris Prefontaine, and if you're serious about creating income and wealth through real estate, you're in the right place. I have some really cool announcements to make and some updates to this show, actually, and I wanted to make sure this episode did that for you guys. So welcome back. If you're new, we do focus on the 3 paydays: the cash now, the monthly cash flow, and the long-term wealth. It's the perfect formula for any business. I always say this. I mean, if you and I were to open a business tomorrow, I don't care if it's a restaurant and someone said to us, hey, I have this plan, this system that allows you to get cash now, cash monthly, and cash long-term, we'd be like, we're in. That's a good model for any entrepreneur or any business. And it's so important to get you off the proverbial treadmill, if you will, that it's so important to us. And that's how and why I originally trademarked The 3 paydays. Now, it's super important, guys. I want to talk today about a couple of things. I want to talk about some new announcements and I want to talk about why most real estate investors never do a deal. And I'm sorry if I'm stepping on anyone's toes, but that's a fact right now. I've spoken and my partner Zach and son-in-law has spoken at a lot of REIAs across the country. And the fact is, before we start any presentation, we ask, you know, what level of experience, what kind of deals, and what we do is like the biggest light bulb for most of these readers, most of the people. And then there's some advanced, obviously, in every one of them. So let's dive in. So before we start, the updates are really, really important. We're pivoting this show, smartrealestatecoachpodcast.com. We're pivoting it to 2 shows monthly. They're going to run on the first and the third Wednesday of the month. So it's going to stay on Wednesdays. The first Wednesday, We'll be doing a solo cast. So that's me. So literally once a month, I'm going to be coming to you with a solo cast. And then the 3rd Wednesday typically will be either a solo cast or someone in the SMART Real Estate Coach family that's had success or having success. So you can learn directly and hear directly from them. And the cool thing is most of these people you're going to hear from, if not all, started with no experience. And I know so many of you either are brand new or perhaps brand new to creative. And I got to tell you, creative is where it's at, guys. I've been at this, this will be 35 years next month as the time you're hearing this podcast. Okay. September, 35 years in the business in some shape, form, or fashion. And I've yet to see, and I've been saying this all year, I've yet to see sort of that perfect storm, if you will, of the demand The understanding, the acceptance, it's like come to a nice little head and now there's a massive opportunity. And I've said this, maybe even in the last solo cast, that those of you who jump on it are going to have the opportunity to potentially, I don't know you, I hope to get to know some of you guys and I hope we lock arms and do deals, but you have the potential to create a decade of income over the next 18 to 36 months or so, right? There's not a lack of deals right now. There's just a lack of knowledge on how to structure the right deals. So here's a question for you guys as we kick off this new format. Did you, I would assume, set goals this year? In 2026, in January, did you start the year going, yep, I'm going to do this, this, and this? You could have called them goals. You could have called them your why. You could have called them New Year's resolutions. I don't care, but did you set them? And then here's the gut check. Are you actually on track or are you just sort of staying busy? See, most investors don't fail because they don't know enough. Like, in fact, it's the opposite. Like so many, uh, uh, and some of you might be in this category, like shiny object, I'm going to gather, gather, gather, gather, gather knowledge. So it's not usually the case. They fail, in my opinion, because they never get in the game. In or never get in the game. This is, this is the, the, I think the punchline here relative to goals. If you didn't hit 'em, they never get in the game with a definitive, predictable, profitable plan with people who can lock arms and help, as there are lots of moving parts in real estate. So it's important to, number one, stay with a niche, for goodness sakes, for 3 to 7 years so you can give it time to ruminate. Number one. Number two, make sure that when you're in a niche, and look, I'm biased to creative, but if it's not creative for you, by all means, take this part of the advice. Be in the niche with someone who's in the trenches doing deals with you. Because I don't care how they make it sound on stage. I don't care how they make it sound in their courses. And I say they just broadly. The fact is when you do deals, there's a lot of moving parts. And that's why we structured our model to be so interactive. That's precisely why we did that. And those people tend to have what I call the ones that don't have that predictable plan. And if this is you, I want to help you. They don't have a plan. They probably have, it would be nice goals. Like, yeah, I set those in January. It'd be cool. Yeah, it feels good. Sounds good. But I didn't set a plan to say, here's my plan. Can someone help me stay accountable to that? And there's no looking back. Like, there's a lack of that. So let me give you an example. At our Deal Lab, it used to be In the Trenches Bootcamp, just for those of you that have been listening to me for a little bit here. We have now rebranded it to Deal Lab because it fits what we do. We do deals. We have people in there that have just literally started. And I say to everyone, all right, please raise your hand if you personally set goals in January of this year and January of last year. Okay, great. Keep your hand raised if you nailed those goals. And then, and the hands go down. Now, when I compare that to the people in our community, and I can name a bunch of them, like our coaches, all I can say this about them, Rick, Rusty, Mike, they all came in and said, ah, Chris, I'm so frustrated. I tried wholesaling or I tried flipping and all it did is create another job, literally all 3 of them. So can you help me with a plan to escape my W-2? And then when When they're in the room, they go, yeah, I nailed it. Like, I set a plan for 24 months. I went full-time in '17. I set a plan for 24 months. I went full-time in '26. Like, they're all close because we've done it since 2014. And if you're a bit older in age, maybe like me, and you still have not had success, don't sweat it. I get that. It was me. Like, let me give you some context here. So, you know, I was kind of in your shoes. I remember literally looking in the mirror in my 40s realizing, shit, this is not, not where I thought I'd be sitting in a one-bedroom apartment at age, I think it was 45 or 46, starting over. And you talk about an ego burst. You talk about an energy burst. You talk about a lack of confidence, just chewing away as I saw where I was. The, the, an ego punch would be an understatement. Okay. And it wasn't, I mean, the market did a lot of things, right? But I also made, I know people that made a ton of money during that. So I could say it wasn't the market in hindsight, it was me. And I realized that I can change it instead of sticking my head in the sand. I could change it by reaching out to people. And I did. And I said, hey, what did you do? And that, like, some people just laughed at me. And some of you've probably heard this story before because my stuff that I thought was enormous and just like crushing was minuscule, was a dot on their radar because they thought bigger, did more, and accomplished more. Now, I knew I was the problem, right? So if you're the problem, which of course you are, right? If you're stuck, the good news is, guess what? You're also the solution, right? So you're not stuck. You might just be undecided or like not clear or confused. And trust me, unclear and confused is crippling. It's why people stay stuck, right? And part of it is what the things I threw at you, like social media and get rich quick, and there's this niche and there's that niche. And so many of these niches are going to just, you're going to create another job and you're going to try to run this job next to your job and you're going to go, what am I doing? I don't have time. Right? The other thing I've seen, and I'm just on a rant about this right now, but I think it's so important we nail this, is people kind of wait. They wait till like they're exactly ready, or they wait for permission, sadly, from other people, or they wait for validation. And I could go on, wait for, you fill in the blank, but the day never comes. And if you don't decide, then what do you do? I call it drifting. Like I'm just drifting along and drifting is super expensive, guys. I know because from February of 2008 to February of 2012, I look back now in hindsight, I didn't know it then. My head was in the sand, but it cost me millions in missed 3 paydays, in missed opportunity cost. I'll give you an example. I have designed at the request of one of our Smart Real Estate Coach family members, Just like you, he came from Microsoft actually. And he said, look, I like your plan of like 3 years, but I want to see what a 1-year, $1 million plan would look like. Well, I designed it and then I looked back in history and I took a snapshot of our family team, which was myself, my son Nick, my son-in-law Zach, and a couple staff members and VAs. And we took a 12-month look back and we actually did $1.6 million. Now that's not cash, guys. If you understand the 3 paydays, and if you don't, I'll give you a class to go watch. But if, but if you understand the 3 paydays, you know that payday 1's upfront, then it launches a payday 2 monthly, and then you have this predictable payday 3. So when I say $1.6 million, I think it was like, I don't know, $500,000 or $600,000 payday 1, monthly income of $6,000. So that's $72,000 a year. And then it had like an $800,000, whatever it was, payday 3. stack that was going to take place over the next several years. Now, here's sort of the, the, I'll call it an industry truth. If you have not locked into one niche, and again, I'm super biased to creative because I've been through so many and there are not too many. There are a few that can survive different markets and different chaos and different media screaming. And I like a few. Yeah. Creative touches all of them because you can buy any asset class with creative. So if you have not locked into one niche, one single focus, you're not in the business. Guess what you're in? Sadly, you're in the studying business. You're in the education business. And then you perhaps beat yourself up when success isn't instant because social media says, oh, get rich quick tomorrow. We can wholesale, we can flip, we can do all this crap that it's 'Cause it's going to, again, keep you on a treadmill. Look, think of it this way, guys. If it took you blank years, in my case, 60 years to get here, stop beating yourself up that you can't have success tomorrow. If you're 41 years old and you go, yeah, I haven't made it yet. Well, that was me in a one-bedroom apartment starting over after being in an oceanfront home, right? So don't beat yourself up. It took you blank years to get here. Don't expect those years to all of a sudden miraculously take one year to fix. And just get stuck getting after it because what works is what? Real exposure. Like, I'll be specific to us, people, real people making real calls to real sellers and doing real deals. That's what works. That's what works. Especially attached to our model, this long-term sort of wealth creation. That's how you learn to think and act like someone doing deals versus studying. By hanging out with them and doing it with them. That's really cool, right? I had a guest on this podcast a few episodes ago and he said, hey, Chris, it's simple. You just need to, he was talking to the general audience, get in a different room if you're not having success. Just get, he's like just shrugging his shoulders, just get in a different room. And what was he talking about? In my opinion, I'll like, I'll summarize it for you. Exposure and proximity. That's all he was talking about. That's all I did from Went from '08 to '12, instead of jumping on it in '08 when I was down and out, I waited 4 freaking years and then started getting the exposure and proximity that was different than the last decade. And it changed everything over the next few years. So we created what, like I said at the very beginning, I'm going to come back to it. We created what's called Deal Lab. That's why we built it, to get people in the game, to get them in a different room, to get them seeing real deals, not going, oh, this looks great and all things are going to be rosy and then I'm going to go out and I'm going to do deals and I'm going to have no headaches. No, that's not the case. So if you've ever thought, I just need to get in the game, that's exactly what Deal Lab was built for. You, 100%. Let me tell you why and how we do it. You come in, we'll prep you for it. We have prep calls that are free. And this whole thing is free once you become an apprentice or any level in our company. It's free. Why? Because we want to do deals. Day 1, we're going to literally call the leads from you and others in the room who bring them in. Call them on your behalf live. So do they all go great? No, they're real calls. Day 2, we're going to structure some of the deals that from the calls that went well on day 1, they all go well, but we're going to structure deals on the whiteboard. We're going to outline the 3 paydays. We're going to outline what the offer might look like or offer options. And we're going to send those off to the sellers at the Deal Lab. And on day 3, we're going to wrap those things up because we're going to have some sellers calling back, but we're also going to on day 3, Give you the exact metrics. We're going to give you the 1-year, $1 million plan if that's what you want to do. If some of you want to water it down, we're going to do a different plan. We had a pilot in the last Deal Lab, real quick example, and we structured for her what looked like a ramp to get her away from flying at the demand of the airlines and more flying when she wanted to. And it wasn't $1 million, it was like a quarter of a million dollars. So whatever you want, but I promise you this, You will leave, it's 2 and a 3/4 days. You will leave with clarity and confidence. You might leave with appointments and deals. That's pretty cool. I frankly don't know anyone else in the entire education space because we're looking at companies to acquire them to set this industry straight. That's what we're doing right now. And I'm seeing behind the curtain at a lot of companies and guess what? No one's doing it. They want to sell you stuff. They don't want to, they don't care if you do deals. So I want to help you with a simple 5-step formula, which I've shared in the past. And I shared at Deal Lab because it's always good to relook at it. Step 1 is get honest with yourself right now where you are. Okay. Like if I did that in '08, I wouldn't have waited 3 freaking years to get my head out of the sand. 2, decide where you want to go. Like act like you have a magic wand just for 2 seconds. Don't do the yeah button. Go, here's where I want to go. 3, identify what you think, because most of it's perception, believe it or not. It's not actual, but identify what you think right now is blocking you. There's something or you'd already be there, right? You would already be there. I don't care if it's with us or someone else, you wouldn't be looking for the next thing. And then 4, massive action plan with someone's help. If it's with us, then we're going to help you with that massive action plan. And then guess what the Step 5 is you're going to track it. We're going to give you a sheet to track this, certain metrics, because if you don't have numbers, you have a hobby. You don't have a business. I spoke with one of our members last night on my way home. I tend to do a lot of calls to the community. I like doing deals. I like mixing up with the community. I don't hide behind the computer. I get out there and do deals with these guys. And he said, Chris, I've been at this about almost 90 days with you guys. Here are my metrics. I said, Mark, this is perfect. Because now you have a business. You're not relying on our numbers. You did it first. You had to. Now you have a business, not a hobby. Very, very cool. So here's a question for you guys. Are you in a spot where you like to do deals or you just want to learn about them? I'm betting based on you sticking with me to the end here that you're serious and committed, and that's Why you're listening. Well, this is simple. I've been screaming about this and it's sort of our flag, if you will. We work with serious and committed people to make sure we transition them to wicked smart investors. So let's get after it together. It's not complex, guys. Not complex at all. Listen, I appreciate you being here. If this episode helped you, share it with someone who needs it. And make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss these. I'm going to be coming at you with a lot of these personal messages here, and you're going to hear from a lot of the community members. I know it's going to ring some bells and we're going to change the industry, guys, with your help. So if you're serious about doing deals the right way with 3 Paydays, head over to 3paydaysapprentice.com/podcast. That's the numeric number 3, 3 Paydays Apprentice. And get over to our office and hang out with us. No one is doing this for you and with you. We are. And we're going to help you take the next steps and actually execute that plan with you on day 3. Can't wait to meet you in person. We'll see you in a couple of weeks on the next Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast. Make it a great week. All right, guys, super cool announcement. On the 27th through the 29th of September, We have our 3 Paydays Live. I'm talking no gurus there, no fluff, just a proven system that builds wealth, literally. Join us on this 3-day event, guys. It's in person. There'll be no virtual. We're gonna show you literally step by step how deals are constructed, how we negotiate and solve challenges for sellers, and how we close those deals without banks or credit. Super important when I came out of the crash. You'll see real deals, real numbers, and exactly how the 3 Paydays model creates multiple streams of income from just one deal. I'm talking averages of $45,000 to $350,000 per deal, all 3 paydays. Just one or handful of these can change your year, guys, and certainly create a total breakthrough by the year 2027 for you. You're going to leave this event super clear and confident about how to speak with sellers, how to structure offers that are win-win, and how to think through deals literally in real time. We've made some really cool adjustments this year too. We've built in hands-on workshop learning experiences and extended the Q&A after each section and some other really cool experiences so you can actually do deals when you leave, not just conceptually understand it, but do deals. And lastly, we've removed all outside speakers, back to our roots, just the family team. You're going to hear from people who have recently closed deals and how they made it happen, and that's important because association with others And proximity really, really matters and can and will change your trajectory. If you're serious about totally replacing your income or adding a really cool supplemental income and building some long-term wealth, this is where it becomes real, guys. 3 Paydays Live. It's led by our family team and our coaches, all who are in the trenches every single day, every single week. Again, no outside speakers selling you stuff. None. Just go to 3paydayslive.com/podcast. All right. Thanks for tuning into the Smart Real Estate Coach Podcast. If you got value from today's episode, guys, be sure to subscribe so you never miss a future episode. It literally takes one nugget to access some of the things we're doing. And when you're talking the amount of the size rather of the paydays, it's an opportunity cost that you can't let go. So don't miss an episode. And for goodness sake, share it with someone who needs to hear it. If you're ready to flip your find career, go to smartrealestatecoach.com. That's smartrealestatecoach.com. your best path for getting started on your real estate investing journey in general, head over to smartrealestatecoach.com/getstarted. We're going to help you take the guesswork out of your next steps. See you in the next episode.