S2 E24 - How to avoid the WIPEOUT | Broke to Woke

My dear friends, you have a divine purpose. You have a reason that you are on this planet. Something to provide and add value into the world. And Brittany and myself want to make sure and ensure that you fulfill that purpose. And the only way you truly do it is by not getting wiped out. We're going to talk about some very specific tactical and crucial applications that you can use to avoid being wiped out for good in this episode. Tune in. Listen. Love you.

Brittany Faith Turner. There is a TV show called Wipeout, and on that show, I haven't actually watched it, full disclosure, but I've seen, like, the trailers and those spinning foam things that people run on and they.

Get knocked off into mud.

Into mud or, like, goo or something, and it's called Wipeout, and it's really, really funny.

Yeah, I've watched one show of that.

Did you.

My sister won Wipeout.

Hold on.

Oh, yeah. Courtney. Courtney.

No way.

She competed and she won Wipeout. She did get punched in the face by one of those fists that pop out of the wall, and it knocked her into the mud. And at the time, she was a model actress in la. This beautiful, stunning girl. Punched in the face, knocked into mud. That is her country upbringing, and that is what carried her through to win incredible amounts of money. Winning the show Wipeout.

That is so fun. I had no idea.

But a lot of people don't win life's Wipeouts.

Most people don't.

And we're gonna talk about how to avoid it with some of the common pitfalls. But also, in the event you get punched in the face and thrown into the mud and your blonde hair is soaked full of dark brown, gross mud, your pants are full of it. Everything happening, you're still trying to run.

Oh, man. By the way, I'm watching this episode as soon as I can.

We're gonna link it to this website, to this episode, we're gonna link it to this podcast. Courtney, I love you, champion.

Now, I'm just gonna go out really quick, and for those of you who may not have listened to season one, I'm gonna kind of tie in a personal story. One thing you should absolutely do this. Have key man insurance. Oh, yeah, I'm just gonna throw that out there. That's one that. As far as avoiding some Wipeouts, probably a good one. Especially if you and. Or your business partner, because you probably have a business partner somewhere. If that person is one of the key people in your business, in those operations, you should have insurance on that person. Because I have.

Lost and also very close to have lost People, people that run crucial and operate massively integral parts of my businesses. And if something happened to them, I need a replacement. And I think that's an aspect of a piece of that answer. Avoiding a wipeout, that's a big one for me. What about for you?

Get things in writing. Get things in writing. Very big one in real estate specifically. But a lot of people do this in business. One of the most common pitfalls is hiring friends and family. We all do it when we're startups. It's one of the dumbest things we can do because we hire unqualified people and. Or we try to partner with a friend or somebody knows a contractor. So if you don't want to wipe out, get in writing. Why? The human brain is a little faulty. You can commit to doing something, I can commit to doing something. We move on. We walk out of here, we get an emergency text, we then go into our life, have food, ride the sea, Bob come back and we may have forgotten what we just committed to. If I forget something or misremember what I'm supposed to do, what you're supposed to do, we're gonna eventually have conflict, especially if there's money involved, especially if there's a loss involved, especially if there's lawsuits involved. So if you want to avoid the biggest wipeouts, in my experience with everybody living, get a. It's so annoying. Oh, no. I'm a person of my principle. I don't need it in riding.

I spin my hand and we shook hands.

Gentleman's a grooming.

We had a gentleman agreement.

Well, I'm not a gentleman, so it's time to get this in writing. And a great way to trick people into doing that is to say, hey, I want to follow up on what I commit to. I move on quickly. I don't want to forget, so I want to make sure it's written down so that I can always fulfill what I have agreed to. So blame it on yourself. And then it's just out. And what's fun when you do get in writing is you're going to think through all kind of other obstacles that you may not have thought of before. And you get in writing how you're going to deal with them. So understanding that just because you have a positive intent doesn't stop calamity. How can you think through potential calamity? And as a partnership or as someone working with you, for you, beside you, how do you deal with those? How do you predeterminedly deal with those?

Think through calamity. That's probably going to be tip three in this episode of how to avoid wipeouts. Or are you going to be able to think through every single one of them? Probably not. But you can have a lot of them created. You and I have done some investment deals together where we reach out to investors and we have investors invest in some of our deals. And we've had.

So many different various questions and from every different investor you mentioned. That's a great question. That's one I wouldn't. I would ask if. If I were going to invest in one of your projects and a lot of them come down to insurance or what would happen if this occurred or what would happen to this occur. So spend some time literally sitting down with either an attorney or someone who creates private placement memorandums or a council or board member.

Harness your inner negativity and think worst case scenario. Not that you're giving it energy.

Yeah.

But when you're asking somebody else, how do you plan to deal with this in the event it happens?

Yeah. Speak with an actuary. Speak with someone who's done it before.

I love it.

And definitely spend time and money on that process. So you can think through some calamities and have a backup plan and also have an answer. What if this occurs? What are you going to do? What if this occurs? What's happening?

That's actually something really smart. And even if you are the person looking for investment, you want to have that answer because it means you've thought through it. What I've done in the past is maybe I pitched a project to an investor and they asked me all these questions. I didn't have an answer. So I go back and then I add those to my presentation.

Boom.

I think through them. I do the homework. I build a relationship. I get the insurance. Whatever it is, whatever their common questions are, you have to find a way to let them know you are worthy of an investment because you've already thought through it. You're actually not worthy of an investment if you haven't thought through it. Have your crap together before you ask people for money.

Yeah, always. Now, what if we are not at that stage in our life where we're not in business? We don't have all these things. Avoiding a wipeout for, let's say, your job could be something as basic and obvious as be irreplaceable. If you can be so magnificent that you're unreplaceable and unforgettable. That'll be one of my takeaways. Or one of my suggestions is when you Come into work when you put yourself and your time and your body in that physical presence, make it so astounding and so inspiring and uplifting that people need you there. You are a key and crucial part. It doesn't matter what piece of that employment you offer could be bookkeeping all the way to sales all the way to. You are the janitor that cleans that place when everyone's gone. If you can make yourself a positional spot where you are regarded as a highly integral piece of that company.

Now here, what he said, he said integral. He did not say hide information to where they have to use you because the business will collapse. You actually want to create real value.

That's a scarcity mindset.

Yeah, no, we're doing abundance. You create so much value that they love having you there. They're excited to have you there. You're building things. You're moving the organization forward. Not hiding passwords and fumbling things up to where they have to have you. And they're keeping you around, but they're trying to get rid of you. You know?

Have you had that experience before? I think you're talking from.

I hear you. I'm like, doubt.

No, thank you. Thank you for making that point. Because I have had that in my companies is I've had someone who was the gatekeeper, so to speak. And they had all the, you know, they had all these pieces. I'm like, oh, they're keeping all that. I didn't know at the time. So now going forward, I'm aware of that.

But I let my staff know you hide all that information. You're never going on vacation. I'mma blow you up every minute you're gone. Because you're the only one that knows where anything is. That's not really creating value.

Yeah, that's not at all. That's such a very good point.

Speaking of my next avoiding the wipeout is hire slowly, fire quickly. And instead of dragging on the cousin that you hired and you feel too bad because they lost their husband and they have no other opportunities, ask yourself if they are purposefully being a bad worker, putting in the minimum, talking crap behind your back, whatever it is, what's the most loving thing I can do for this person long term? Is it to keep them in a job they're not good at? They're being poisoned to the rest of the group they're not happy at? What is it? How can I treat them fairly and still remove them from the organization? That's huge. Because one bad apple poisons the entire tree.

I don't know if that's really how it works on a tree, but I can tell you it works in the company tree.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. It is still the premise. You can. And it's such a good point because as a business owner that can apply to your stock portfolio, people that can apply to your real estate portfolio, you can have what's referred to as a hell house. I've had a hell house. Right.

And the h. What is a hell house?

So a hell house is where everything always goes wrong and it's just a problem house. I'll give you an example.

Is this your home or your business?

No, no, this is probably something that you own. Something like a rental project you own, the tenants always call the toilet. Literally always breaks. The shingles are always messing.

Hell house. I have not heard that one.

Awesome. Well, you'll love it now.

Yes.

Yeah. And I'll paint an example. So I had one, a condo in Gainesville, Florida. And it matches one of my rental requirements. One of my rental requirements is there has to be a Division 1 college in that area. And then I buy condos and rent it out to med students or like, is it undergrad or upper grad? Anyway, they've graduated the first four year degree and they're going for more.

I didn't go to school.

I don't know, something. Graduate student. There we go. That's what it's called, a graduate student.

Grads.

So I rent it out to graduate students at a Division 1 school. Anyway, sorry, long story short, the HOA in this condo in Florida was 165amonth. Now you might go, well, that's not that bad. Well, it was because guess what? It offers nothing. No pool, no Tennis Court, no 0. There was no actual benefit to it. I was like, why? So number one, that was a frustration because hoa, as you know, cuts into your overall bottom line. Number two, tenants never paid on time. Number three, they would call my manager once a week with something that was wrong and it wasn't their problem. There was legitimately something wrong with that house. Every week. This window didn't open or close. This toilet didn't flush anymore. This drain became clogged. The garbage disposal, the front porch, the foundation, the driveway, the parking, every part of the home every week. I was like, I gotta get. Get this off the books asap. So that's an example. If you can have something that is just overall rotting or poisoning your overall portfolio. Doesn't matter if it's a stock portfolio, a real Estate portfolio. If it is a drain and energy stock. If it's a person like you just mentioned, get it out.

Oh, I love that. That takes me into my next point.

Let's get it.

He's talking about person, the person of poison. We talked a few episodes ago about what love is. What love is not the biggest wipeout of my life. All my wipeouts actually have been sponsored by keeping people around who I hoped were good. Convinced myself that they, you know, I feel bad they're only doing that because of this or this. Making excuses for tons of bad behavior. And now the truth of knowing what love is. What love is, not what friendship is. What friendship is, not what a good employee is versus what it's not. It's not that I don't have grace with people, it's that I can cut the poison when they truly had all the opportunity in the world to step up and they step out and they turn and they stab in the back or they're jealous and they're insecure or whatever the freak their problem is. You know, people have chemical imbalances, they got childhood issues, whatever they are. Like, how can you not accept, not tolerate abuse in any way in your business, in your personal life, in your friendships, in your family? By getting rid of that, you can walk in so much peace, so much light, but having them around, keeping them around. I had one person very close to me get 70% of my staff to quit at the same time. The entire accounting team walked out. You know, they cancelled insurance just to piss me off, like so many things.

And I kept them because I thought I had to keep them in my life, per the Bible, you know, like whatever it is, like whatever your very logical, good sounding reason is, look at the obvious. Stop making excuses for people. Is anyone having to make excuses for you? Uh oh, if they are, pull it together.

Yeah, stop.

God. The basics of humanity and the basics of kindness are free. And you will know them by their fruits, not their words, but how they actually act. But their actions, of course, speak louder than words. And you will know their heart through their actions, not their words. So getting rid of the junk in all areas of your life will always propel you forward.

When you were talking for that last two, three minutes, I was just realizing all the things that we've covered up until this pod. I mean this is wonderful because we did just episodes ago, we talked about what love is. That episode, in my opinion, is so crucial because when you're talking about avoiding the wipeout, we are absolutely talking about having the people in your life that will ensure that it doesn't happen.

Right?

And those are the people that are going to care about you most that are going to look out for you. They're going to be thinking through things for you that are going to hopefully see some problems that you might not have seen before. One way that that brought my to my attention was automation. Right? Automating some protocols, some systems in your organization.

Yes.

Your company, such a good one in your business. Because I have someone in my life that, that helps me with that. Specifically shout outs to Mr. Matt DeLonge.

Matt DeLonge. You're the man.

I love Matt so much. And he, I call it the Matalong era. You know, just working with this guy because he helps me avoid the wipeout. Because what the wipeout can also be, let's face it, is for people like myself who love to not only work, but pour time into adding value. It can become a point in time where you spend so much of your time and energy that you can get potentially sick, you can have a burnout, you can get grouchy or irritable. And it takes one moment, one slip up where you can do that. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person and poof, now it's a, you know, now it can be a disaster. That's a relationship that you're developing, right? That's over time. You're again spending someone, spending time, spending your asset to build an asset, spending your time to develop a relationship so that people can help you. And when you're helping automate certain systems, protocols and organizations in your company, that allows you to scale faster, that allows you to be more of you and less stress and have that ability to really be streamlined, focused and tactical, which makes businesses grow faster so smart.

And a couple links in order for those of you who want to start building out these processes, building out these systems. Where do I put them? Where do I put them? A super easy one for very baby startups is Google Docs.

Oh yeah.

A great place to save all your company passwords and all of your employees. Passwords to get into your bank accounts, passwords to get into your accounting system, your Instagram accounts, your company. Facebook's LastPass is huge. Trainual is an incredible website. You can literally have or make sure your employees record the way in which they do anything and put a description and they're done. And a great way to tell them that is like if you get hit by a bus, you're not taking the company down with you. These systems have to be documented. If you want to go on vacation, we have to know where things are and it's just not an option. Align Today is an incredible, incredible online software for organizing and strategizing your teams. Number one I've ever worked with in my life for how to get the long term vision of the company out of your head into what do we have to do today to move that forward? And then Kajabi is an incredible site for website hosting, e course hosting, promoting things all across the board. These are great links that I wish I had known about years ago and would save me thousands of hours of research. There you go.

That's what makes Baroque to woke in my opinion, one of the best. No, no, no, sorry.

The best make us number one. At least in Lithuania.

On the entire Internet, on the entire, in the entire globe.

We're summing it up for you.

That's a tactical practical application right now that people can use.

I am.

Because as we do that, as we take that information, as we develop into the the next stages, we have to develop those relationships that help us.

Yep.

And I want us to talk about how we can have awakened woke relationships. Because in that journey, those are the people that are going to help us become woke. Right. Those relationships, those people that are in our lives are going to help us go from broke to woke. We'll see you guys there.

Lithuania. If you want to take us to number one, you are gonna have to rate, subscribe and continue sharing and listening to Broke to woke season one, season two and maybe even season three.