In this mastermind‑style session, Chris Prefontaine leads a group of real‑estate investors through a discussion on how to "deepen their roots" so market volatility no longer dictates their confidence. He opens with the metaphor that deep roots eliminate fear of wind, then solicits participant ideas. The conversation coalesces around four pillars: (1) relationship building – both personal mentors and professional referral networks; (2) continuous skill development – regularly revisiting the QLS course, Deal Structure Sundays on YouTube, and the Associate Resource Center (ARC) for supplemental content; (3) lead generation and pipeline diversification – leveraging wholesalers, flippers, realtors, and internal lead‑gen videos; and (4) team and systems – hiring VAs, mapping constraints, and creating accountability structures. Participants surface common constraints (time, skills, team capacity, lead volume) and discuss how to map them against ambitious growth targets (5‑10× volume or income). Chris emphasizes disrupting comfort zones through intentional action, exposure to new ideas (e.g., Rick’s projection spreadsheet, books like Your Future Self), and language awareness. He stresses the importance of regular accountability, permission‑giving from coaches, and deliberate discomfort to accelerate growth. The session ends with practical next steps: watch specific ARC videos, schedule weekly discomfort challenges, and use the smartrealestatecoach.com resources for books and strategy calls.
Chapters
When roots are deep, there's no reason to fear the wind, which you guys have probably heard in many different versions, right? When the roots are deep, there's no reason to fear the wind. I'm going to do a bit of an update rant on this on Monday, but I wanted to hit you guys with this for the High 6 because I'm going to ask you, and I want you guys to actually tell me, how can we make our roots deeper in specifically creative real estate? So that we don't care what's going on in the market? There's a question for you guys. Just speak up because that quote could be anything. I want it related to the market. I have some thoughts on how you can get deeper roots and how you can bulletproof yourself, but I want to hear your thoughts.
Strong relationships.
Meaning referral or sellers or both? I would say both. Like personal, like mentors, friends, people that are surrounding you, as well as obviously professional relationships that you've Builds up over time. Yep. I like that. I like all that.
Cool.
What else, guys? Don't listen to the talking heads on TV.
Yeah.
Okay. That's a biggie, you guys. I mean, as much time as I scream about it, I'm telling you, in this community, some of you right here in the i6 group are getting polluted by it. Like, without calling you out, you're getting polluted by it and you're worried about shit going on in the market when you should be screaming happy because that's exactly when we need it right now. Good, Robert. What else? Consistently learning more. Yeah, skill sets, Jeff. I wrote that one down, so let me piggyback that. So I would think this is a good reminder for you guys. We're in May, right? Soon it's going to be half a year. What the hell happened to '25 when we'll be at QLS? So under Jeff's thing there, I had a couple of subnotes on that. I'm not going to ask you if you are. I'm going to suggest what I think you should do. Once again, I think you should all be revisiting the QLS course regularly, revisiting the QLS— I'm sorry, the Deal Structure Sundays on YouTube. I don't know how many hundreds I haven't checked, but it's probably approaching 500. So, you know, is it one a day? Is it one every Monday, Wednesday, Friday? Whatever it is, you get a rhythm going so you're watching those constantly because I'll get— this group's pretty cool. President's Club. It's kind of like next level with the appointments. And even at that, we're getting like, how can I get better at deal structure? How can I get better? Everybody wants to know that, right? Constantly. How can I pivot when a seller— how do I know when a seller's talking to me which way I'm going, which bucket? You got to— there's no one deal the same. It's why I stay excited. So if you go through those in a rhythm and if you have a team, have them go through them, you will get more and more well-versed in the deal structure. Does it make sense? So that's, that's a skill set issue. And then ARC, I was kind of shocked. Rusty knows better than me, but I think, Rusty, I'm still getting a lot of feedback that either, yeah, I haven't been in ARC, where do I get it, or how to find stuff in there. Like, you guys should be camping out in ARC, which is Associate Resource Center, because it's everything that doesn't go in QLS. QLS is, you know, anyone can buy it and it just gets way too cluttered if we put all of your content in there. So it goes into ARC. So on Jeff's one point, you got YouTube, QLS, and ARK. That a great skill set kind of get my roots deeper so I can kick ass and not care about the market because most of you guys know my story. In '13, everybody and their brother, family, friends, business people, everyone said, you're crazy to buy property after everything I went through. They're like, what are you doing? Why are you even thinking about that? And that's when I really launched everything. And I think it was August to December, did like 13 properties. But they ultimately had to do it. And those 13 properties were like $1.2 million with all the paydays. So we got to be careful who we listen to, whoever said that one. Here's a thought on this. And by the way, did we miss one? Who else has a thought on that? How to get deeper roots? Anyone that we didn't say? I was just going to say I've worked with wholesalers and flippers, realtors, Like Zach was talking about, getting a little bit deeper with those guys so you got deals coming to you. Yeah. John Reese, I love that, not only for variety and lead source, but also because they're getting tighter and tighter. I'm doing more outreach on that now and they'll go, oh yeah, yeah, thanks. They want a referral source. Jeff's getting referrals from that.
Zach's—
all Zach's taken of that because he doesn't have time to make calls. They're more prevalent right now. That's right. Good point. Okay, so here's a thought for you guys, and let's transition into your stuff. I've asked this on occasion, but not a lot. If you were to pick a number, 5 times or 10 times your volume or your income, more so right now, what immediately comes to mind as a, oh shit, like a constraint? In your head, when you think of 5 or 10 times volume or income, what immediately nails you with a constraint? Anyone have any knee-jerk on that? Like, what just hit you? What might be a constraint for you?
Time.
Time, yeah. Okay. What else?
Skills.
Skills, which we just nailed, I hope. That's me. Yep. Time, skills. What else? Building my team, like VAs. Okay, let me ask you a question, Jeremiah, on that note, because it's for everyone. When you say building my team, that would be your constraint. So if I were you, because I'm working with you daily now, I would map that out. What does it look like? Like, when do you think that might stop being a constraint? Right. And if it's now, you stop picking people's brains that have a team. Right here on the screen, right? And me. So think that through. So when you think of your constraint, think of when that might be hitting you based on the 5 or 10 times volume or income. And then let's start making a plan for that. Similar to what Rick did and Judy did to leave the J-O-B, right? It's no different. They just set a plan knowing that, oh, if I'm going to have that happen, that's going to be a problem if I don't start. And you guys interrupt, please, if you have questions. If I get on a roll especially, just interrupt. Same mindset. It's like, as a constraint. Yeah, see, now that's interesting, right? Because most, most of us, me included, our ego won't say that. Like, we don't think of that as a constraint, yet it's probably the biggest constraint, in my opinion. Yeah, fear of success, right? Yeah, that's what kept my head in the sand from '08 to '12. Yep, all mindset. Waste of four years. What else for constraints?
Lead volume.
Lead volume. Probably the easiest one to fix that we just said though, right, Jeff?
Yep.
Now you're an anomaly. Different channels. Different channels I love. By the way, where is that video of Zach for those of you that have not seen that? Is that in Arc, Rusty? Of the lead gen? Yes. Yeah. So if you guys haven't seen that in Arc. Many of you have, but many of you haven't. Probably half of you. Well, raise your hand if you haven't seen that yet. Zach's Lead Gen, where he goes into all kinds of variety. It's only about 20 to 25%. Go into ARK and watch that, please. He did that at one of the Chairman Club private meetings here because that's usually not done in a boot camp. It's a little bit too deep. Okay, so Rick said mental, right? So I wrote down again, glance at my iPad here. I wrote down comfort zone. Because even if you don't think you have one, we all do, right? It's like the example I always give is when I was up in Stowe at my place there in the winter, you'd see along the woods, what, one path? The deer would go out and go back in, same path, same path, same path, just animal instinct, right? To stay protected. So we do the same thing. We get into this nice comfy— we're programmed to be this nice comfy path. If we don't find ways to disrupt it, Right? So it's kind of a progression in this constrained thinking. So more questions for you. How can we disrupt the comfort zone or the habits or the rut that he had? How can we disrupt that? Just want to get your brain going before the half year's over and you go, what happened? I want to get us thinking bigger. How can we disrupt it?
Action.
Yeah.
Action.
Be intentional about the action as well. Changing it intentionally.
Yep.
If we're not doing that now, how can we— how can we do better to disrupt it in that way? Anyway, now with different people. Yeah, it's huge. We see that, Steve.
Yep. I was going to say, I think that spreadsheet that Rick had put together with projections of where you can go I think it's things like that that can make your mind see things in a different way. Because, you know, if you're thinking small, you have no clue that that is possible. But just, you know what I mean? Like believing that, wow, if I make some tweaks, that's, that's, that can be my income.
Yep. So that's disrupting it by exposing yourself to it. It was Rick, but it was his spreadsheet, right? It could be a Book could be anything. You expose yourself to something different. Same thing goes for that. If you guys haven't seen Rick's video on that because you're newer, newer, that's a good one. And if that gets you excited when you, when you go through that, why wouldn't you do it every 3 months? Not sure where to get started? Go to smartrealestatecoach.com/getgoing for free books, strategy calls, and a whole bunch more. We're going to help you get going the wicked smart way.
We've been after this for over a decade doing For me, one of the things, Chris, that really kind of pushed me forward to leave my W-2, I remember Rusty mentioning the book Your Future Self. And when I— and it was an easy read, kind of like what you said, like you can do one chapter at a time, but it really kind of got me thinking and I'm like, oh my God, when is it going to happen? Like, I've got to do something and everything doesn't have to be perfect. Just do something.
Yep. And again, everything coming out is at whatever stage you're at. You might be at someone else's stage that you're hearing right now at 3 months. That's why this is good to hear from others, because we disrupt and get ourselves out of that. We kind of expand and beat up the rut. We don't go back. Hopefully. Stay focused on your goals. Go ahead, Rich. Sorry. Stay focused on your goals. Yeah. How can we do that? What are some thoughts? How can we stay more focused if we feel we're not focused? Make the time, make the effort. How about accountability?
Accountability, definitely.
And here's the key thing, guys, in this community anyway, with me anyway, and the coaches, is giving permission. Because sometimes, We all can forget. My coach can get pretty hard on me over the years, and I might forget that. Well, shit! I told me he could do that. So that's important. What else? How else can we disrupt the guys? And by the way, each idea you're hearing, sorry. Why wouldn't you schedule this to be a regular thing? If exposure is important, why wouldn't you make sure you're doing that? We give you some exposure events, right? We give you an event in Boston like the summit and boot camp. We give you some exposure, but you got to be— you got to be elsewhere. Well, sorry, I interrupted someone. Yeah, no, that was me. That's fine. So you can write down 3 things for the week that makes you feel uncomfortable and make sure you try to accomplish that first, maybe in the day. Yeah. Yep. I'll add one here just because I get you guys nightly accountabilities and you often will hear me say, Correct the way you said that, and that is the language we use, right? Jeremiah, I think you had one last night. I figured it was Dave. Why Dave Alvin? It's awesome because now he'll catch himself and say, "I didn't mean that," and he'll correct himself because I corrected him so many times. So the language we use, and you're whoever you're reporting to can catch that. Sometimes we don't even know we're doing it, right? Not it's not even conscious. Words like try and. Let's go out of real estate for a minute. Instead of lose weight, be fit, or I want to be X, right? So it's just language, but we don't realize we're doing it. Think about that. And it's not easy to do by yourself, so you got to kind of have an accountability partner for that.
