You Can't Change Anyone Else with CEO of Rented Andrew McConnel

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

I'm talking with the vacation rental property guru, Andrew McConnell. And Andrew, thanks for spending time with us. He's CEO of Rented. And so thanks for taking the time to talk to us today. How did you start rented and why did you move on? It seemed like you just got that other business really humming. Were you getting sick of people and you wanted to move to the islands?

Yeah.

No, no, no. It was a couple of things. I mean, one was just the efficiency. The other business was very dependent on large, large pools of capital to be able to continue to go lease new properties. As a result, the job then became fundraising. That was a job not developing product, not working with customers. It became fundraising. And that's just. I did not find that a terribly inspiring job. I didn't go into finance in the first place, so that wasn't something I really wanted to spend my time doing. The other piece was the scalability. So at the time, we were seeing more and more companies move into the same space with this kind of lease arbitrage space and raising very large numbers, hundreds and hundreds of millions. We thought if everybody's spending that kind of money, the margins are going to keep going down because they're going to overbid each other. And so what we ended up doing was selling out of the contracts we had, turning them over to the managers and just kind of unwinding that portfolio and winding down that business.

What's the piece of the business that you enjoy the most and you're able to do more now?

I think that there are a number of different pieces. My personal mission, why I like to get up in the morning and do what I do is I like to learn and I like to grow. And I like to put that in the service of helping others achieve what they want to achieve. And that's true for my own employees. That's true for our clients and our customers. That's true for the owners that our clients and management companies are managing for. So it could be financial goals that they're trying to achieve. It could be operational independence that the companies are trying to achieve. It could be building out new skill sets or new kind of parts of their career for my internal team. And so really the ability to spend my day doing that in various guises, whether it's connecting with clients one to one and kind of consulting on their business. It's coaching my own team. It's writing articles or writing. I wrote a book this year to try to put in the hands of more people. It's anything that I can do that I'm learning and growing, and I'm able to take that growth and put it in service to others.

And what's the book?

It's called get out of My Head.

Is there a female involved in that or.

No, it's pulling from stoicism. So the concept is there's only one asset that anybody ever truly owns, and that's their own mind. Our bodies fail on us. They can get sick.

We can't control it.

What we can control is our own mental state. And yet we spend almost all of our time, all of our days, all of our weeks, giving our mind away to other people or even renting it back from them. And so this is a whole book kind of pulling from stoic principles and then illustrating with Seal Team 6 people, with the founder of DocuSign, with the former CIO of the city, Atlanta, a bunch of different people on how they take these principles of taking ownership of your mind, mental tenancy, and applying that. So moving from being a tenant to an actual owner of your most precious asset.

Now, was it your position in the company that allowed you to create these relationships or these things that you just found these people and these stories from your research or your own reading?

Yeah, so these were all people that I knew. So the founder of DocuSign, we shared a common investor, so they put me in touch with him, the person from the Navy SEALs. It was kind of an executive coaching thing I did through Deloitte. I got to know him and we stayed in touch. And so different networks and friends of friends, things like that. I got to know each of these people personally.

And do you point back and look and see there were people in your life that were difference makers?

Yeah, I mean, there still are. Back to trying to learning and grow. I really try to learn from every conversation, every person in my life, whether it's from a podcast or a book or someone that I get to know personally. I think they're is on an unending list of that. Probably the most influential over the past decade is someone who I may never meet. But Tim Ferriss, from his books, his podcasts, just had huge impact on my life. And then because of some of the stuff I translated to the life of others. He had his four hour body and that ended up changing my dad's life, who was a cardiologist, he lost 65 pounds and then he had thousands of patients that impacted their lives. And so you just get this cascading effect when somebody really, really influences your day to day life and what you're able to do for others.

Hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business, has accrued over $5 billion in assets under management, and has done well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to whiteellawinning.com Webina Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move up.

I don't know Tim Ferriss either, but it's hilarious to me that he's been successful, made such an impact with a blatant lie. And you know, the four hour thing is just a blatant lie because if you look at his life, he's a.

Workaholic.

Even if he was a student at Princeton, you know, but you can compress timeframes, you know, if you're focused. And that truth is valid, but it's a great marketing concept and it does break down the barriers in people's minds that it communicates. The main thing is basically it's a lie. But the thing is, it's a truth in the sense that it's like in sales, you get the, you find the average salesman will say, you know, if you say to him, when do you work? He'll say, oh, all the time, all the time. I mean, I'm up early. I mean, I said, when do you see the most people? Well, really all day long, you know, at night, you know, seven days a week, this, that, the other. And then you find out he may actually work where you get out a calendar. It's like, okay, how many minutes face to face time did you have with a prospect on Monday? 20 minutes, right? Then you go, they're lucky if they could get four hours in a month. And that's why really the frustrating thing about running sales organizations is they crush it at the end of the month. You have like zero production all month long. And then somehow they get religion in the last 36 hours and they write 10 or 20 grand just like, how did you do that? You know, why don't we even that out over the month? You know?

Yeah, work expands to meet the time allotted. So if you had the same target each week, you'd see the Sprint on Fridays.

But that's, that's human nature. And it is great when someone can come along and communicate a concept and all of a sudden you get unlocked. And when you talk about your dad, obviously he's a man of accomplishment as an MD and all. And so how would you say that affected him? Because that's what we're doing here, you know, we're trying to put ideas and concepts out there that, you know, it's not so much what you say, but the impact that people get, you know, that they want the effect, the effect of it, you know. And so that's what I was saying about Tim Ferriss, you know, the effect. People, people get it. And he found a way to say it. And so what did you notice about your dad that caused him to make those kind of changes?

Well, what it was is you can't.

Change anybody else, right? They have to want to change. They have to see something that they want to change. And everybody has their own aha moment.

For whatever it is that makes them.

End up wanting to change something, right? And so my dad's 6, 5. He never looked like he was an overweight guy because when you're tall it just kind of spreads out. And he was a cardiologist, so he knew about health. He was an md.

And I got him this book.

I said, man, this book, the Four Hour Body is a really interesting book. I learned a lot. And there was this one chapter about how to lose. It was 30 or 40 pounds of fat in 30 days without exercising. And it's the most simple thing in the world.

The slow carb diet.

Just eat meat and vegetables six days a week and eat whatever you want. This seven, and it's super sustainable. And it just, you shed weight. And what made my dad have the aha moment was there's Tim Ferriss illustrates it with different case studies, different people telling the story. And there was this NASA scientist talking about he was going to buy clothes and he was looking in the mirror and saying, why does it even matter? I'm not going to look good at anything I put on.

You know, I'm overweight, I'm just not.

A good looking guy.

And then the guy thought to himself.

Wait a minute, I'm a NASA scientist, I've been good at anything I've ever done that I chose to do. Why can't I be good at this, why can't I be good on my weight? And my dad with the egotism read, yeah, I'm good at everything too. I could be good at this. And so that was kind of his aha moment of yeah, I can take control and try this. And he did and it worked. And so then he became a convert and told a ton of other people. My brother in law, his aha moment was a total different case study in the book of reading about how people who otherwise look, then you have fat wrapped around your organs and that's actually more dangerous. And he said, oh my God, I have a child now. I have to really care about this. I can't do this anymore. And my father in law, we were out for a hike and stuff that he used to be able to do easily. He just couldn't anymore. And he said, oh wow, this is a real wake up moment me. So it's each person kind of needs that own aha to say there is something that I want to change in the first place.

And just giving them more opportunities to experience that aha moment, I think is the big thing.

Absolutely.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world. I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and and put them into something for you to watch. Go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.