John Assaraf, who has spent 40 years building companies, would tell his younger self three things: slow down and plan what actually matters instead of just staying busy, join a mastermind group to learn from peers faster, and pay yourself first to build confidence and ease financial stress early on.
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Now when you put yourself up on the pedestal where you deserve and you pay yourself, you actually build your self confidence, you build your self worth, you build your self esteem and you get paid for the services rendered. When you pay everybody else first, you are putting everybody else in front of you. There are three key things that I would tell my younger self. If I could take the knowledge and the wisdom that I've accumulated in 40 years of building companies, if I could take that wisdom and go back in time 20 or 30 years, lesson number one would be this. Slow down and create plans. Let me explain. When I was younger, I would take every single day as a challenge and to get as many things as I could done. However, I didn't take the time to really focus on the things that were gonna make the biggest impact in my business. I gave everything the same value. And so yes, I was busy, yes I was getting things done. But if I could go back in time, I would focus on what is the plan that's going to move me down the road to achieve the business success that I want. Faster and easier versus harder and more complex. And now, as I am almost going to be 60, I think about time. And I've done some videos in the past on there's no such thing as time management. All you can do is manage what you do in time. But in order to know what you should do in time, you have to think about what are the objectives that you want to achieve in your business. And in business there's obviously sales, marketing, finance, management, product development, technology, etc. But there are certain things that you need to do before you do the other things. And what I've discovered is, is we tend to gravitate towards the things that interest us and are easy for us to do. But business isn't like that. In business, there are critical things that you have to do if you're serious about building a business that actually works for you instead of you working for it. So one of the things that is really, really important is that you take the time to find out what are the building blocks for your type of business, whether you're online or offline. The second thing that I would do and I would give my younger self the instruction to do would be to get myself into a mastermind group with people who are also working on the things that I need to get better at. Now, I don't have a mastermind group to sell you or offer you, so don't worry about that. But what this really means is there are people out there that are building their businesses as well, trying to figure out the same things you're trying to figure out. Why do it alone. Doing it alone is the slowest path to business growth. And if you can get yourself into a mastermind group with people who are better than you in other areas, then you can level up your knowledge and your skills in order to be able to implement what it is that will work instead of trying to figure out on your own. It takes so many hours to figure out what you need to do. It's like solving a Rubik's Cube. If you don't know which way to move the Rubik's Cube, you can spend thousands of years trying to figure out. The third thing that I would make sure that I did back then was pay myself first. Let me explain. When I first started ReMax of Indiana, even though money was coming into the company, I wasn't taking any money out and I worked for months and years on end, you know, just putting everything back in the business. And that created a lot of stress in the early years. And so what I would do differently now is, is I would value myself more and I would take an income or take a percentage of the revenues on an ongoing basis so that I got paid for the services that I provided to my business. Now when you put yourself up on the pedestal where you deserve and you pay yourself, you actually build your self confidence, you build your self worth, you build your self esteem and you get paid for the services rendered. When you pay everybody else first, you are putting everybody else in front of you and you are the number one person that you need to keep motivated. And it doesn't matter how much it is that you pay yourself, it has to be something for the effort and the work that you do. So at least you build your own self worth and value. So those three things, if I can go back to my younger self, I take more time to plan. I would make sure that I paid myself first. I would make sure that I get into a mastermind group where I could learn with other people what to do. That'll help you be motivated, it'll build your self confidence, it'll build your self worth, and more importantly, it'll make sure that you are doing the right things, that you are productive instead of you being active. Hey, this is John. And if you like that video, watch the next video because it is packed with things that you can do right now to achieve success way faster than ever before.
