Don’t skimp on motivation because you feel pumped already. Stash some away for when you need it most.
Sometimes people are just too excited to be motivated.
If you’ve been to one of my courses – any of them – you’ll know that motivation and goal-setting is the starting point.
Always.
That’s not an accident.
I always tell people to take the time and figure out what their peg in the sand is. What do you really want? And why are you doing it? You’ve got to know your ‘why’.
And it’s odd. Compared to, say, the asset protection stuff, the goal setting and motivation exercises are fun. Vision boards, sitting back and allowing yourself to do some big picture dreaming.
But guess which one gets the most resistance?
Yep. Visioning.
The resisters tend to come from two camps. There’s those folks who see it as ‘soft’ science. It’s too much ‘social studies’ and not enough ‘maths’. It’s a little too ‘magic’.
I guess they’re worried that it could be a slippery slope. If I get them doing vision boards, then before long I’ll have them holding hands around a lentil curry singing Lion King covers.
(That has very, very rarely happened at one of the boot-camps.)
But there’s another group of resisters. And that’s the people who are so excited they just want to jump straight into their first deal.
Something drops and the have their lightbulb moment. They realise that this is the road for them. They see what’s possible. They meet people who have totally turned their lives around. They see the deals that helped people with nothing find financial freedom.
It’s the key to the life they’ve been waiting for. And they can’t wait to jump in.
And so they push right past me. “No time for motivation now Dymphna. I don’t need it. I’m pumped. Show me the money.”
And so they don’t take the time to make goals. They let their peg in the sand be something vague like ‘retire early’ or ‘financial independence’. And they never get clear on their ‘why’.
And then, they hit a wall.
Now ask any investor who’s been in the game any length of time and there are always walls.
Something, at some point in your career, isn’t going to go to plan. Maybe your DA gets held up in council. Maybe a tenant does a runner. Maybe they find an exotic and endangered squirrel on your development site.
Who knows? Life is full of unknown unknowns.
And it’s at this point that the game gets hard. It’s where it tests you. For a while, it stops being fun.
And maybe a few months ago you were smashing it and making an effective wage of $1,000/hr. Now it seems like you’re not even clearing minimum wage.
And now the old life starts to tempt you back. Ron was a turd-burger of a boss but at least he mostly paid me on time. Working for council records and audits was sapping the juice out of my brain, but I had a nice desk. There was a pot plant.
And you’ll face that unarguable truth that the old way of living was ‘easier’. Sure it was. It was predictable and easy. There was no excitement and you were going to be a wage-slave for the rest of your life, but you knew were you stood. You always knew what tomorrow was going to bring.
More of the same.
You might think it’s not going to get you, but it gets you when you’re weakest. When you’re putting in the long hours and it doesn’t feel like you’re getting anywhere. When it’s midnight and you’re still trying to figure out what the council’s planning regulations actually mean.
And suddenly, from that side of the fence, the greener grass of the 9-to-5 looks a lot more appealing.
And it’s exactly at this moment that the motivational work we’ve done pays off…. If we’ve done it.
If we’re clear on our goals, we know what we’re pushing toward. If they live vividly enough in our mind, they keep calling to us, even us the dark power of council planning wraps around us.
And if we know our why, we will find strength. If we know what it is we’re trying to build, who we’re trying to help, the gifts we want to give our children, then we can endure anything.
Motivation makes hard work a joy.
But without motivation, hard work is just hard work.
And so we’ve got to tuck some motivation into storage so it’s there when we really need it. We’ve got to save some ‘pumped’ for a rainy day.
We might not need it straight away, but we’ll need it at some point.
And that is why I keep banging on about it.
Anyone had to draw on their motivation in a dark and storm night.