How to Become World-Class | The Research Habit That Transforms Your Mind

Good morning, Believe Nation. My name is Alex and my one word is belong. And I believe that the world would be a better place if more people felt that they belong. To help you on your journey, today's message is do your research. Over to you, Robert Kiyosaki.

Everyone says finding good real estate is hard when you're getting started.

What's the value of good network and good partnerships?

Well, I'll say it again. In 1973, I came back from Vietnam, and I was a pilot out there, and I took a real estate course. It was $385, 3 days long, and that was a lot of money back then. I was only making $500 a month, so $385 was all I had. And the instructor at the end of the program said to me, he said, or to the whole class of about 30 of us, he says, your education begins now that you leave the class. You don't get educated while the class. So his assignment was that everybody, 30 of us, we had to pair up in team, get up in teams, 2 or 3 to a team, and we had to look at 100 properties in 90 days. And he says don't buy anything, just look at 100 properties, do your valuation of each property, write up, write a short blurb about it, why it's good, why it's bad. And it's at the end of 90 days and 100 properties, then you make up your mind if you're going to buy something. He says if you haven't found one property in 100 deals, you start again, you know, you start again with another 100. And that's what most— that's why most people are not rich, is they're not willing to go through that process of looking at 100 deals to find one deal. And there's sometimes— and you and I know, you look at a lot of frogs to find one princess, you know. But when you find that one princess, everybody goes, oh, well, how do you get so lucky? Well, I looked at a lot of dirt dogs out there, you know. And that's Like anything in life, you don't marry the first man or woman you meet. Hopefully you kiss a couple of them, you know, before you do.

Put the time in to know your facts instead of just always acting and reacting in life. For me, originally I wanted to be a marriage counselor, and before I made that decision to go into studying psychology in university, I did a bunch of research. I even talked to therapists. When I was going through university, I realized, you know what, it's not quite right for me. So I wanted to become a cop. So what did I start doing? I went to a police station nearby, started asking questions. Anytime I saw cops, I would approach them and ask them questions about their career, what they feel about it, how are they enjoying it, what's the work-life balance, all that kind of stuff. In all the major decisions in my life for my career choices, even though I changed it drastically from one to another, I always made sure that before I jump in, I go and I get all the information, not only online, in books, but from people who are doing the job. This let me get insight into the world of that job. So when I went from wanting to be a cop to going into sales, I did research looking at different companies. What are the best companies to work for? What do they look for? What should be on my resume? What kind of money do they make? I went to talk to salespeople. I didn't just jump in. Ultimately right now I'm in my current position as Director of Operations of Toronto Dance Salsa. I love it. The path to success and the path to feeling fulfilled in life is never a straight path. For most people, it's not. And just because I didn't do exactly the thing that I researched initially, which was being a marriage counselor, that's not the point. The point is your time is valuable. And yes, you do need to get the experience. You shouldn't just sit on your couch always planning. You need to take action. But when you're taking action, it's It's important to have your facts and to be knowledgeable about the thing you're wanting to invest time into. And then once you get into it, then you can make a sound decision. Open your eyes, go do the research, invest time into the thing that ultimately can make you happy. So the question of the day is, what's a decision you're sitting on right now that if you did a little more research into, you can get a clear yes or no and what you should do? I also want to give a quick shout out to Robbie Wilt. Robbie, thank you so much for purchasing a copy of Evan's book, Your One Word. It really means a lot to us. Thank you so much again for watching. We believe in you and we hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. And we'll see you tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. And we'll see you in another episode—

ah!

And we'll see you again in another episode of Coffee Sense with Alex.

Yes!

Alex taking over! Woo! I also want to give a quack, quack, quack, quack, quack, quack here and a quack, quack there.

Okay.

Unfortunately, our society has gotten so lazy in their research. It's unfortunate, especially where I'm in here in the United States. Our educational system has gotten so bad and people are so lazy. And I don't mean to mean speak to everybody. But you know there's a very big lazy culture right now where people won't take the time. They won't even read a book on their topic. They're like, "Oh, a whole book?" You know, they'll read a blog article and pretend it's enough. It's like, no, you know what? The highest performers, they're always researching and they're doing real research. I mean, they don't read one book on the topic, they read 7. You know, they don't interview one person, they interview a person a week. They don't read one blog post, they read them, print them out, highlight them, create binders. I mean, if you want to become world-class, you got to know what else is out there, what other lessons people have learned. You can't keep inventing the wheel.

You got to—

someone else has already figured this out. Research them. Stand on their shoulders. You know what a lot of people don't understand is Einstein, while he was a genius, he also was prolific in the amount of research he did on theories that have already been proven and where their holes might be. He was constantly researching everything, not just putting new ideas into play. He was busting up on old ideas and standing on the shoulders of giants who'd already made major breakthroughs and that now he could apply in new areas with new insights, new metaphor, new discovery. You got to get back into reading and understanding and paying attention.

Yeah, I read the books. Um, the minute I got the part, I went and went and bought all of them and read them, mainly out of curiosity about what might be happening. Also out of— I felt I had a source material there. And whenever I've got a source material, I feel that it— for me anyway, I need to look at all information I can gather about that fictional character. If you read the first description of John, it informed— I think I, for my audition, I bought the book, read the first description of John, read a bit to get an idea of it, and then went in with that. But it's already in the book that he's quiet, he's quite sort of dour in a way. He's like the black sheep of the family. There was, within that first paragraph about who he was and what his sort of essence was like, gave me that first sort of tap into how I should do that first audition. And then that template stays with you for 6 years of what character you've made. That's the way I, if I have something like that to go on, the way I work. Is I'll look at exactly what the writer or these writers or the writer of the book thinks this person is.

Let me give you the one word secret to happiness.

One word. This is all you need to be happy.

The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that sums you up or that would be kind of like a little beacon.

Hey, Believe Nation. If you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.