How Time Either Makes or Breaks Your STR Portfolio

Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. Quick, actionable ideas to help you along your real estate investment journey, but with a specific focus on short term rentals. Welcome back. I cannot believe it's been 50 episodes already. We've been doing one a week, which means almost a year has passed. Time just flies by, doesn't it? We turn around and a year's gone, three years are gone, ten years are gone. And just as time can work with us, it can also work against us. So I wanted to talk about something special today. Really a guiding principle, you could say guiding philosophy that I've been living by for years now. And it's really helped me really to achieve or do anything that I've wanted to. We're talking about the Slight Edge today. You may have heard of the book before. It's by Jim Olson. It's a set of principles and a guiding philosophy that the little things that we do, even though they can seem insignificant, they add up to big, big things. So we're going to break that down really into kind of four pieces. One, just to talk about the principle in general, but two, a key component about that, which are habits. And then a third piece. And this to me is like everything, really. It's happiness. And that is something that we learn. And I have a story to almost prove it to you. So we'll talk about that. And then lastly, goals. We'll break it in to four sections. And thanks for letting me share today. I mean, I know this isn't related directly to real estate, but it really is in an indirect way. And this has been the most important thing that I've ever learned. I would say after, you know, going to tons of classes and college and MBA and mentorships and conferences and traveling around the world, there's like, this is the most important thing I've ever learned because it allows us to do whatever we want. And so can you if you're not already doing what you want. So let's break it down. Let's jump right in. The book the Slight Edge by Jim Olson is it's really about doing little actions consistently over time. And those actions add up to either our successes or our failures. He gives an example in the book. He starts off, he's at the airport and he's getting his shoes shined. And the woman that's shining his shoes, they begin talking. She sets down her romance novel and she's telling Jim how life's been difficult. She really wants to put her daughter through college. They're struggling financially and struggling to get what they want. And Jim mentions in the book for the last five years that she's been working as a shoe shiner, reading romance novels every day. What if she was reading something that actually helped her? Something productive, Something like Think and Grow Rich from Napoleon Hill. Someone who's compiled their whole life's lessons into one book. What if she was reading those things? Would she still be in the same spot? Probably not, right? She would probably be achieving more of what she wanted to achieve, and she would probably be in a better situation to help out her family or to help her daughter go to college. Now, this isn't to say that things don't get difficult and times can't be challenging, because of course they can. You know, life kind of moves in a wave. But the thing is, if we have good habits and we take these little actions each day towards what we want, then ultimately we achieve those things. So I think the shoe shiner example is a great example. You know, when I hear it, makes me think, am I. Are the things that I'm doing regularly, are they helping me achieve what I want to achieve? Spending time watching maybe a TV series or watching the news or checking social media every five minutes, it's really good to evaluate these things because the slight edge works either in our favor or. Or it works against us. The daily disciplines that we have or mistakes that we have in judgment, if we repeat those constantly, over time, they add up to either a lot of good things or a lot of bad things. The reason that a lot of people don't take the actions or go down the paths to achieve what they want is because while these daily disciplines are easy to do, they're really easy not to do as well. And you don't see any results at first. I'll give you a few examples. You know, working out, if you're trying to lose weight, you don't see it on day one. You know, it takes some time. Eating healthy, your finances, you don't. You don't become rich overnight. A lot of people that do, you know, if we think about lottery winners, for example, the stats show that the majority of the people that win the lotto, they're either just as broke or in worse financial shape after they win the lotto. And why is that? It's because they don't have the philosophy. They didn't have to take the steps to get where they wanted. They got it overnight. And so while their bank account may have changed, their philosophy towards finances didn't. And that's the reason, sadly, that a lot of people Go back to being in worse financial shape. So little things repeated over time. That's how we achieve what we want. And it really is. The slight edge is relentless. It either works against us or it works with us. I'm just going to read a little quote out of the book. He says the right choices and wrong choices you make at the moment will have little or no noticeable impact on how your day goes for you. Not tomorrow or the next day. No applause, no cheers, no screams, no life or death results. But it's exactly those same undramatic, seemingly insignificant actions that, when compounded over time, will dramatically affect how your life turns out. And you can think of compound interest. You know, you've heard the story of a penny a day, right? If you're given one penny and that doubles every day for 30 days, you have millions of dollars, right? There's a compound effect working here in the back. So that is the overall principle. So in order to achieve these results and the things we want, kind of the building blocks of this philosophy are habits. Dennis Whaley has an awesome quote. Your philosophy creates your attitude, which creates your actions, which creates your results, which creates your life. So the habits are what cause those little actions. And John Dryden has a great quote, says we first make our habits and then our habits make us. Boom. Isn't that powerful? So our habits are essentially what help us guide us down this philosophy of taking action every day, little by little, to achieve big results. And there's some simple tips for your habits. If you have a habit that you don't like or that's not helping, you try replacing it with something, right? So if you're having too many cocktails every night or something like that, maybe try a soda water with lime or something. Or if you're watching a TV series that you don't find productive, save some other TV series that you do find productive. So that when you log on to YouTube or you log on to Netflix, you. You're seeing things that might actually benefit you instead of maybe just kill a bunch of time. Set reminders, put the things that you want to achieve in front of you. So if you want to exercise, leave your gym equipment in front of you, or leave your running shoes out in the morning where you have to step over them to get out the door. Put the things in front of you that you want to achieve. Vision boards are awesome for this. Or change the background on your desktop to show a picture of a beach house that you want or, you know, whatever it is. I mean, put these things in front of you, a lot of you probably heard of the Secret. It's on Netflix documentary, but about visualizing. And I really find that powerful. I think it is true. It is true. I've seen it happen. So success is a process. It's not a destination. We don't just wind up there one day. We change our habits, we change our actions, and then ultimately we get what we want over time. Time. Brian Tracy says bad habits are easy to form and hard to live with. Good habits are hard to form but easy to live with. Dennis Whaley has a great quote that says you have two ways to look at life. You can accept the way things are, or you can accept the responsibility to change. Wow, that's another good one. Another good one. And all of these motivational speakers and self development people, I'll leave some links in the show notes, but man, just listen to a little of them each day and that just totally changes your life. Ten minutes. Jim Molson, in the book Slight Edge, he just recommends, you know, if you just read 10 minutes a day of a book that actually helps you or benefits you, your life will change drastically in less time than you think. So we've got the philosophy, the little actions over time turn into big things, into achievements and things that we want. The building blocks to those really are our habits. And there's a third piece which goes along with our philosophy and our outlook on life. And this is like, it's mind blowing the first time that I read it and saw it from this perspective. And that's the whole subject of happiness. And that happiness is really something that we learn or that we practice. It's not like we're just born unhappy and we're always unhappy our whole life. There is a genetic side to it. But the reality is if we put good friends around us, if we put positive information around us and positive books and things like that, that we become happier. We can teach ourselves to look at the bright side. We can think of life as being half full. And so he references Shawn Achor in the book who wrote the Happiness Advantage. I'll leave the links in the show notes. But game changer, big time game changer. And he talks specifically about this, that we learn how to be happy. And he has five steps for practicing this. And so really becoming happy is a habit. Looking at the bright side of things is a habit. Let's go over these five tips that Shawn Achor has for becoming happier. Number one, he says, each morning, write down three things that you're grateful for. So keep a journal. Whether it's on your phone or written on paper. But this is the challenge. Write down three things different each day, and this really trains us to focus and find positive things. And it can be anything. It can be that you like the smell of your coffee in the morning. It could be that today you're going to visit with a family member. It could be something from the past, yesterday or a month ago or a year ago. Something you did makes you happy today. So just search, give it a few minutes to think about. It'll become easier and easier as you do it. But really what we're doing here is we're training ourselves to be happier. So that's one thing we can do. The next thing is to just journal for a couple minutes about a positive experience you had. It can be anything. But by journaling and talking about it, we almost get to, like, relive that experience. And now these things are best to do in the morning because it just sets the tone for the whole day. So think of three things you're grateful for. Journal for a couple minutes about a positive experience. Meditation. So taking some time out to not think about anything basically is what meditation is, right? And it is a practice. And it's been difficult for me in the past, but we get better and better at it, like we do with anything that we put the time into. So take some time out to meditate. He suggests doing a random act of kindness. So opening the door for someone or telling someone that you like their hairstyle, or sending a text message to a friend that you have letting them know that you appreciate them. You know, whatever it is, there's. There's lots of random things you can do. It only takes a second. And then lastly, in his list of five is exercise. Exercise. The science is there. We all know it. Get in some exercise every day, 15 minutes. I recently started using these bands at home. Now I don't have to go to the gym. I think they're fantastic. And it's easier to have that habit for me because now I have the bands here. They're just sitting out in the living room, or they're sitting somewhere where I know that they are, and it's requiring way less of my time. So to achieve these good habits, we want to, like, limit the barriers to the habit. If we want to eat well. Buying good food to keep in the fridge and not storing, you know, bags of popcorn around or, you know, ice cream or whatever it is. So limiting the barriers to these good habits is good. So that's number three. And I've got a personal example of this actually before I read the Happiness Advantage. He has a few other books, by the way, which are incredible. So just look up Shawn Achor. Read the Happiness Advantage, Read the Slight Edge. These two books are going to change your life. And Jim Olson has a whole list of books in the Slight Edge that are really, really good books that will change your life. I promise you. They'll change your life. My personal experience with just Happiness and I went down a rabbit hole and started reading all kinds of positive psychology books. After I read the Happiness Advantage.

Dawned on me. I think I've kind of always been pretty happy guy, but it dawned on me that a long time ago when I was working as a salesperson selling door to door, cold calling. And a lot of times it wasn't fun. You know, you got the door shut in your face or they throw your business card in the trash can, or they tell you how unimportant you are, you know, whatever it is. What I realized is that I had less opportunity to sell to this person in the future if I thought of them like that. So what I did, you know, I visited a lot of different stores and business owners. So many that I didn't remember all of them when I, when I showed back up the second time. So what I do is I just write a note in my CRM system and my on my computer that said John was a nice guy and check back with him later versus saying John was, you know, a total jerk. He cussed me out and told me to leave. And I did this all the time because it was like every day there were people that were just not happy to see you or they didn't have the time or they're rude or whatever. So I almost like subconsciously trained myself just to think that everyone is a happy person or everyone's good. And I, I swear that has stuck with me till today. And I'm really grateful for that because that has changed my philosophy and my outlook on people. I do think that everyone is good inside. So, you know, of course we go through slums, we have bad days, we have bad weekends, we have trouble with our family, we have trouble with our friends and our finances and all of these things. But if we can train ourselves to look at the bright side, to keep our glass half full instead of half empty, it really is a mindset and it's a different perspective on life and one that I think we should all be living by. Albert Schweitzer put it beautifully. He said, success is not the key to Happiness. Happiness is the key to success. I believe it. I really do believe it. So that's my experience with happiness and just changing your mindset. So please pick up that book if you haven't already. He also has a great TED Talk that you can check out. It's like 20 minutes. You can find it on YouTube. So watch that first if you're not totally interested in the subject. So the fourth piece of this. You know, we have this philosophy. The little things add up to big achievements. Our habits are what allow us to continue to do the things that are going to add up into big results. Our outlook on life, I think, makes it easier to achieve all this, and that's by practicing to be happy and to be more positive. But lastly are our goals. And our goals are our outline for life. It's our floor plan. It's what we want to accomplish. And Robert Sharma has a great quote. He says we can either set your goals and in doing so, have your life governed by choice, or you do nothing and have your life governed by chance.

That's really how it is. Think about it. We have goals to set up our life, or we have no goals and we just let life happen to us. So goals, super, super important. Couple other great quotes I just gotta leave you guys with because there's so many good ones out there, but they put things into perspective. This one's by Les Brown, says, to achieve something that you've never achieved before, you have to be someone that you've never been before. So here we are, 50th episode. A year's gone by, and I just wanted to share this principle because I didn't even realize. I mean, like, we've been doing this for a year. Time just flies. And we all know how much happens in a year, especially this year. You know, it's been a crazy, turbulent one, Right? So little actions over time allow us to achieve what we want to achieve. And that has been my guiding philosophy on life and probably the most important thing that I've ever learned. So I hope you got some value out of that. This does apply to real estate, of course, because we always start somewhere. We start with zero properties and then we add more. So I hope you guys are doing great out there in the world, wherever you are. And until next time, have a wonderful day.

Well, you guys have been asking for it, and I am so excited to announce that we have the dates picked out for our virtual event. Yep. November 14th and 15th. Coming up, we're gonna cover everything we did in our two previous live events, but because of the times, we're going virtual and I couldn't be more excited. You're gonna get all the same info. The systems, the processes, the tools and the secrets that I've learned managing now over 15,000 guests in multiple cities and earning millions in passive income. Head over to restmethods. Com Virtual to save your spot. Looking forward to seeing you in just a few short weeks.