BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 256: The Surprising (Scientific) Truth Behind What Makes You Successful with Eric Barker

Episode Date: December 7, 2017

Why do some people achieve incredible success while most others struggle? Why do some reach their goals while others give up within days of setting them? Why do some people make WAY more money at work while others are stuck in the mailroom for 40 years? Those topics, among many others, are the focus of today’s episode of The BiggerPockets Podcast, where we sit down with Eric Barker, author of the WSJ bestseller Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) WrongW. Eric spends his life exploring the science and psychology behind what actually makes an individual successful, and today we explore those often-surprising truths as they relate to real estate, business, and all areas of life! In This Episode We Cover: Eric’s background What you should know about his book How to align yourself with what you’re good at The issue of grit The “3 Ps” (personal, permanent, and pervasive) The secret to forming habits How to create external accountability A discussion on systems vs. goals What you should know about introverts vs. extroverts How financial success can serve as a great defense Tips for not taking the day for granted How to become a super connector What makes somebody successful at work What “work-life balance” truly means The 4 metrics of success And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets’ Low Budget (Youtube Series) BiggerPockets Youtube Channel Stickk Fincon Noah Kagan Marginal Revolution Ryan Holiday Tim Urban’s Wait but Why? Josh Kaufman The Vietnam War Icarus Netflix Original The Armstrong Lie Command and Control The Bomb Gym Pact App Books Mentioned in this Show Barking Up the Wrong Tree by Eric Barker The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan Deep Work by Carl Newport The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman Drive by Dan Pink The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz Give and Take by Adam Grant Tweetable Topics: “The single most motivating thing is the feeling of progress.” (Tweet This!) “The importance of the habit is consistency.” (Tweet This!) “In the end, it’s generally better to set up systems as opposed to goals.” (Tweet This!) “There is no fear with boredom.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Eric Eric’s Blog Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 256. So taking even your negative qualities and saying what context would allow these to be strengths, you know, all of these are really critical. So I think success comes down to alignment between your unique abilities and an environment that rewards them. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype. You're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from biggerpockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What is going on,

everyone? This is Brandon Turner. Today's host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my guest co-host. Is that okay, you're the co-host today? I'm usually you're the host and I'm the co-host. I know. You're usually the co-host, right? Usually, but today I don't know. I just took it. You know, what are you going to do Yeah, no, you own it. I'm definitely, whatever the inferior one is, that's me. I'm the co-host. Anyway, I'm David Meyer. And I have been, I think I was, I was, I've done a couple of these, but I think I was, I was sent back down to the minor leagues for a while, get some training.

And now I've been called back up to do this one spot start for, for Josh, because he's not able to be here today. Well, good. Well, I'm glad that you're here, I guess, up from the minors, if you say that. I thought you were, I thought you had graduated on to like, I don't know, sitting in the suites. Oh, yeah, that's what we'll tell people. Yeah. Okay. I'm too important now to be posting the podcast.

There you go. I'm off doing crazy things. Well, today was a good episode to have you back on. Today I thought it was actually one of my favorite episodes we've done. And it has, well, I don't want to say nothing to do with real estate, but it has, it's by not a real estate investor, right? But it does have a lot to do with real estate. More just entrepreneurship, just really good advice for entrepreneurs that can definitely

be applied to anything as it comes to real estate. Yeah, very much. And we use a lot of real estate examples in here, but it was cool getting like the perspective of an author who's written a book that I really like. We'll talk about that later. But before we do, let's get to today's quick tip. You want to take it? All right, so today's quick tip is to subscribe to Bigger Pocket's YouTube channel.

If you've not done this before. Why? Why? Why would I do that? Why? Because we are pumping out more. video than we ever have before. We're actually getting on a schedule where we're probably going to be releasing three to four videos per week. Now, if you already watch the podcast on YouTube, good for you.

That's awesome. If you don't, though, go on there and click subscribe. We have a new series coming out about Airbnb investing. We have a new personal finance show called Low Budget, hosted by yours truly. And we have all sorts of awesome content that's coming out. So if you are interested in learning even more about real estate than you are by listening to this podcast, podcast, go to YouTube.com slash bigger pockets, subscribe, and you will get all the newest content right there for you. That's awesome. Low budget.

I've never heard anything about this. What does this show? We filmed three of them. It's low budget because we have no budget and we started it with no idea. But it's me and actually my real estate agent, who's my friend, Andrew Keel, and it's mostly like news and personal finance. So we talk about everything from what Bitcoin does. and if there's any impact on real estate investing to the effects of gentrification in real

estate investing. And it's only about 12 to 15 minutes. So it's really quick. We talk a little bit. We make fun of each other a lot. So come check it out. It's a good show. That's awesome.

I'm excited for that. That's cool. All right. Well, before, that was a really good quick tip. So nicely done. Managing properties can feel like a full-on circus. You're juggling vendors, tracking payments, chasing approvals across multiple properties and maybe a few HOAs all while trying to keep tenants happy and owners confident. One delay can throw everything

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Talk to NREG and get investor-specific coverage from specialists who actually understand real estate at NRE.com slash BPPOD. That's N-R-E-I-G.com slash B-P-Pod. Most investors spend all their time talking about their high-level returns. But that's not the number that actually matters. What actually matters is what you keep after taxes, and that's where multifamily real estate quietly stands out. With built-in advantages like depreciation, the right deals can generate steady cash flow, while reducing the tax drag. Bam Capital structures its multifamily investments

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unless you got anything else. I want to get to the show. No, let's do this thing. All right, so today's actually a guest comes from, Let me back up today, back a few weeks ago when we had Tim Ferriss on the podcast. He told his story about how he first heard of BP was through a friend named Jordan Tibido, who's a good friend of ours, works at Google. And actually, that's how we ended up getting connected here with our guest today, Eric Barker,

because Jordan is a super connector, which you'll hear more about that later today on the show. But basically, Eric Barker has a really humorous, funny blog, Barking Up the Wrong Tree, also a book by the same title that is fantastic. Basically, he presents science-based answers, expert insight on how to be awesome at life. Like the tons of like psychology studies and science that show like what actually makes somebody successful. He's pretty awesome.

So with that, I don't know, like that's, he's awesome. Just we're leaving it there. He understands what makes people successful and he can back it up. So with that, let's bring him in. Alrighty, Mr. Eric Barker, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. How you doing? What's up? It's great to be here.

Thanks so much, guys. Yeah, this should be a lot of fun today. So, you know, as we mentioned in the introduction, you're not. a real estate investor. And so this is one of those shows that we talked to some of my favorite business authors or people that have written books that I think or that we think can benefit our audience as a whole. And your book really in a lot of ways.

Like as I was reading through it, I kept going, oh, man, it's so good. Like I highlighted and probably underlined and circled like a thousand things throughout your book. So we're going to go through every one of those in order today. It was going to be a set of a live reading of the book. Yes. Did you, did you, do you have an audio book version of this as well, by the way? Yes.

Okay, did you record it yourself? Oh, we don't even need to record this. We could just do that. No, no, I didn't. Okay, well, today's your chance. Yeah, okay. Let's start with page one. All right, so why don't we actually start with a little bit who you are?

I mean, who are you, what do you do, what you come from? And how did you get in this thing called, like, life? Oh, I basically, I went to college and studied philosophy, which really didn't seem to prepare me for much. And I worked in Hollywood for 10 years writing for studios like Disney and Fox, and those weren't transferable skills. And then I worked in video games. I didn't have any transferable skills there. And then I started a blog, which doesn't really require any transferable skills. So I was in good shape.

But basically, it's like I had, you know, bounced around a bit. And I had these big questions because I wasn't exactly short. I had such an unconventional career. And, you know, these old maxims on success didn't seem to spell out. it didn't work out so well for me. And that's honestly where the blog, the book came from. I had a lot of questions. And, you know, so I started this blog trying to find, like, what's true?

And so I started to go look at scientific research. And on the blog, I just started posting, you know, stuff that either confirmed stuff that we all thought or disconfirmed it. And luckily, you know, a blog got some attention. And then I really attacked the issue of success directly with the book and started to start crushing some myths that I had. that I found along the way reading all this scientific research. Well, maybe we can start with that. Like, what do you think, you know, what's like probably the largest myth that you think is incorrect about success?

Like, what do people, like, everybody assume about what makes somebody successful that just is not true that you know of? I mean, one of the things I talk about in the first chapter is just the issue that it's kind of one size fits all. And it's really not. You know, basically a lot of people, you know, it comes down to exercising signature strengths and in the academic research, that basically means doing stuff you're uniquely good at. And what it comes down to is the issue of finding out what you're good at and then aligning the

environment with that. We all have things we're good at, but you don't necessarily find a place that rewards those. So some people can be in a quote-unquote great company or in a great business, but it doesn't utilize what they're good at. Or some people can be good at something, but they haven't found a place where that is. It's aligning what you're good at, you know, with the right environment. And another interesting angle that I'm I found in talking to Harvard Business School professor, Gotham Oklinda, was this idea of intensifiers. And basically, we're always thinking about, you know, like I said, signature strengths, what you're good at. Intensifiers are qualities that at the average, at the mean, are negative.

So we always think about, like, oh, you got to get rid of those negative qualities. Well, no, actually, in the right context, those negative qualities can be positive. You know, if you're argumentative, you know, you might say, oh, my God, and that is terrible for your personal relationships. But you might be a fantastic litigator. You know, you might be stubborn. Okay, well, stubborn can be really bad. But if you're an entrepreneur and you're not stubborn, you're not persistent. You're going to give up.

So taking even your negative qualities and saying what context would allow these to be strengths, you know, all of these are really critical. So I think success comes down to alignment between your unique abilities and an environment that rewards them. That's great. I can tell my girlfriend all those negative qualities are actually. the strengths now. I appreciate that. I'm still working. It's a multi-day negotiation. I'm still working on that one. I make fun of it. I'll talk to you offline about that later. You guys can have a little

support group. It's good. I make fun of Josh a lot. I tell him that the reason bigger pockets, you know, Josh is the CEO of Bigger Pockets. And so he started BP like, what, 15 years ago now, Dave, I think, something like that. Anyway, and like, but the first like 10 years, like it was just a blog that was struggling. Like, you know, I mean, Eric, you built a blog. Like, you know, it takes a while to build up traffic and people there. And like Josh, like, I say the only reason Josh succeeded, I mean, besides being, you know, a smart guy at all it is he was just stubborn.

Like, he just, he's one of the most stubborn people I know. I'm like, well, like, like he even has joked that he was too stupid to know he should acquit, you know, like, you know, so like how. That's that perseverance kind of thing that a lot of entrepreneurs either have or don't have. So do you have any tips on, I mean, how can somebody become more perseverant? Is that a word? Am I making that up? Persuery.

It is now. Okay. It is now. How does somebody become more? Perseurisiness. In the book, I also talk about the issue of grit, because everybody's talking about grit these days. And I also set up the idea that, you know, grit isn't always great.

We do need to quit things. But in terms of grit, there are a few things that really do pay off in terms of the research. And the first one is an optimistic attitude, which, you know, everybody kind of promotes, you know, being optimistic. But when you think about it, it's pretty intuitive. If you are enthusiastic and truly believe that things are going to work out, persisting is easier. If you don't think things are going to work out, things seem futile, and you stop. So just so I don't sound like a bumper sticker or a T-shirt, there is research on how do you develop an optimistic attitude.

And what it comes down to is what Martin Seligman at University of Pennsylvania calls the three Ps, which are basically personal, pervasive and permanent. And that is, if you see positive things as personal, I'm responsible for them. I did this. Pervasive, hey, this good thing is going to affect all areas of my life. And this good thing is permanent. It's going to keep going on. Those beliefs build optimism. If you see negative things as personal, all my fault, you see negative things as pervasive. This is this bad thing is going to affect every area of my life and it's permanent. This negative quality I have is going to just keep on. Then you're going to tend down. So basically, it's listening to that self-talk in your head. We all say 300 to 1,000 words to ourselves every minute and basically taking those negative

3Ps and questioning them. You know, oh, it's all my fault. It's really all your fault? I'm sure someone else has some blame here, too. I mean, you know, questioning is just pervasive. Oh, it's going to affect every area. It's going to affect every area of your life. When you're home alone watching Netflix, this will not affect you.

You know, I mean, so questioning those and trying to make the, it was negative. that seem personal, permanent, and pervasive, making them more positive, that can help you develop a more optimistic attitude. And that has been shown to increase grit and persistence over time. All right. So let's use the example of, because this is a real estate show, or let's say somebody wants to buy a rental property. They want to become a landlord, start building, you know, wealth and passive income. Most people that I know, though, that get into real estate, that try to start investing, I would say the majority, if not the vast majority, quit. They stop at some point. So now we want to encourage them to do more. So the three P's, we're getting, it was personal, right? Yep. So in other words,

like, there was, like, they, is it like they can do it? Like, I believe I can do it or, you know, what I've done so far has got me here. Yeah, basically, it's like people, people want to see the positive things as personal and the negative things as less personal, you know, in that, in that, in that if you achieve something, I am responsible for this. I did something good. And when negative things happen to be able to believe that at least in part, hey, it's random chance. It happens. It's not my fault. Now, again, you have to be careful of going into utter delusion. But it's like if you want to persist to believe, you know, that everything that negative is your fault, you're not going to last really long. So you have to try to say to yourself, if things don't go right, you know,

hey, there's an element of luck here. Other people were involved. I can do this. Well, it sounds brandy. I I totally agree that people do quit. And I think people, like what you're saying, Eric, is that people need to take responsibility and be proud of the steps that they take, incremental as they may be, even if you haven't bought that property yet, maybe you're proud of yourself for going out there and analyzing 10 deals or learning something about real estate, take responsibility and be proud that you are moving towards that goal. You don't have to only see that final thing as success.

You're absolutely right. Teresa Amobli did research. She's a professor of Harvard. She did research that basically showed the single most motivating thing is a feeling of progress. If people feel like, hey, I took that step. I learned something. I analyzed those deals. I did this.

When you stop feeling like you're making progress, that's actually what leads to true burnout. And when you feel like you are making progress, that's what is the most motivating thing. I mean, when you look at the best example is video games. It's like you get that little thing. you score another point, you pass another level, and that's why people get addicted. And your taxes do not feel like that. It feels futile. And it feels like it's never going to end, and you don't feel like you've achieved anything.

And then it costs you money. That makes a lot of sense. So progress. So, okay, so let's go back again to the real estate analogy here. So you got somebody who's wanting to buy rental properties. And so, you know, if every day they're just sitting around thinking about it or listening to maybe a podcast on it, but they're not making progress forward, that's likely why they're not moving. moving, right? They're not moving forward. They're going to get burned out. They're going to quit,

right? So instead, we make little steps of progress. So maybe, yeah, like Dave said, you're analyzing some deals. You can be proud of that. You just did that. And then maybe you went and found a real estate agent, or you went and took the next step there. Or you went and looked at a property in person. Like, you know, each step kind of gets you a little bit further. I mean, am I thinking about this correctly? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what's really critical in terms of getting stuff done like that is is in terms of making it a habit because it's really hard to motivate yourself to always get it up and do something, as opposed to if something's habitual, if it's part of your routine, then it's, you don't have to think about it. It doesn't require that level of effort. And exactly what

you're saying is kind of that incremental, small approach is critical because BJ Fogg does behavior research at Stanford. And what he talks about in terms of building habits, which I just think is brilliant, is he talks about minimum viable effort. Basically, it's like, do the absolute minimum, because the important thing about a habit is consistency. So don't worry about how much you're doing at first. Just worry that you're doing it every day. So he'll say stuff like, you want to floss your teeth more? Floss one tooth.

One tooth, yep. Floss one tooth. Because if you can't do that, you've got bigger problems. You know, it's like you make the bar so low that you are going to, there's no excuse for not doing it. You're going to beat yourself up. You can floss one tooth. You do that for a week? Great.

Floss two teeth. I mean, just, you know, it's like, you can't close. a deal just yet? Okay, analyze a deal. Analyze one deal, analyze two deals. Okay. You know, what do you need to do next? It's just setting up that little minimum viable effort and then increasing it as you go. That's the other, one of the other things I talk about in terms of building grit and persistence is making things a game. Because like we were saying, games are addictive. And that feeling of progress, that feeling of that next achievement, those things are critical. They help to build habits, habits make things easier. And then the next thing, you know,

you're making progress and you're really not even having to think about it. That's funny. I mean, you know, I use that app of my phone, my fitness pal, use that thing at all, like, you track your calorie. Like, and every day it's like, hey, you logged in for 18 days in a row. And I'm like, oh, I got to get 19, you know, like, I, they've gamified that program so well that, like, I've got to do it. I got, I can't skip a day. And so, yeah, that's great.

Metrics are critical. Has your research, have you uncovered anything about accountability? Because I know I've read a bit about telling other people about your goals or having some external validation of your progress actually being helpful to achieving a goal? That's a really interesting area because it can be super powerful. You just have to be careful about how you do it. In terms of telling people about your dreams and your aspirations, bad idea because our brains can't really tell the difference. We're not so good at telling the difference between internal reality and external reality. That's why movies are so exciting because you don't

perceive them as stuff on a screen. If you said, oh, those are just things, those are just pixels on a screen, it wouldn't be exciting. On the other hand, if you, if you actually create external accountability, that can be incredibly motivating. So one of the, the thing I recommend to most people in terms of ultimate solution for procrastination is basically take $100, give it to a very trusted friend and say, if I don't do X by Monday, you keep the $100. If that doesn't work, give your friend $200. Keep upping it. Trust me. And in fact, there's a, there's a website. I think it's called stick.com. STIC. There you go. St.I.C. K-K. K-K. Oh, wait, they take it to another level. Basically, they will charge your credit card the amount. They'll refund it if you do the thing.

And they will donate that to like the opposite political party or to a group of people. Oh, my God. That's amazing. What's critical, though, is you give the money up front. You have to be behind the eight ball. Not I'll give you 100 on Monday. It's no, I already gave you 100. If I want it back, I got to do what I said I'm going to do. And it's an incredible solution. The only problem with it are many people understand immediately and viscerally how effective this is and are often scared to do it. But it's very effective if you implement it. So I recently did that. So I got a buddy in Chris Huntley. He and I met at this, we have a conference called Finn Comicote every year.

We met there and we're talking about fitness, how we want to both get more in shape. And so we both set stick goals for like the anti-charity. And we put $300 on the line. And $300, I mean, it's a chunk of money, but it wasn't like life changing. But it was to an anti-charity that I did not believe in. And so like for me, it was like a certain like waist width around like where the belly button is. Right. So like every day I monitor that.

And the last two weeks, I didn't eat. Like I was like horribly unhealthy. Like this is not what you're supposed to do. But, like, I was behind, and I was like, I will not give my money to them. So, like, I starve myself for two weeks. I ate, like, like, 100 calories a day, you know? It was, like, as little as I could. And I did it.

I hit the goal. I was in the emergency room, but I got my $300 back. No, I like, yeah, it's called Stick, STI, C, K-K. I use it. I actually need to set up another one for end of the year because that's like two weeks. I'm like, all right. What I like better, so there was two ways to approach. this like that goal thing there's the and i want to know your your thought on this you can set a goal

like i will lose 20 pounds i will buy a rental property right it's like an outcome goal and then there's also like i will work out five days a week now that's like i don't know you call that but like a progress goal okay yeah yeah yeah and so what do you do you know anything like which one works better does it doesn't not matter does it depend on the situation i mean in the end you know it is generally, it's generally better to set up systems as opposed to goals, because in the end, you can control what you do. You can't necessarily control outcomes. So, you know, a student can control how long they study. They cannot guarantee they'll get an A. You cannot guarantee that you will win the gold medal at the Olympics, but you can control how much you train. So in the end, over the

longs, and not only that, what can happen with a lot of goals, I'm going to lose 20 pounds. I lost of 20 pounds, now I gain it back. Yes. So to set up a system is I'm going to monitor my calories every day. I'm going to work out every day. That's something that's consistent that, you know, you won't guarantee results, but it will definitely guarantee progress if you stick with it versus setting a hard goal. You may or may not be able to achieve.

And then you need to make sure you set another goal to maintain it. So in the end, systems, habits, and then once it becomes a habit versus this all-out sprint to achieve something, which you that can probably. then quickly undo. It's better to set habits and systems. So that's exactly what happened to me when I lost that weight over those two-week period, right? Like, I went off carbs. I went up everything and I did it. And within like a month or three weeks, I was right back to where I had started like the entire challenge, you know, three months earlier. And it was because I was aiming so hard for this goal. I mean, the same thing to be like, you're malnourished.

Exactly. Yeah. And like totally dehydrated and all that. Yeah. It was probably horrible. But, but I hit the goal, right? But now going forward, what I want to do is, yeah, I've, will work out six days a week, let's say, or five days a week. And if I don't, every time I miss it, I'm going to give you $100 or give this anti-charity $100. That way, it's like, if you screw up once, like, okay, well, there goes 100, I better not do that again. And there is no end date on that. I'm just going to keep doing it. So the same thing can be said about rental properties or flipping, right? I'm going, if you said a goal, I'm going to buy a property, the chances are you could probably buy a property. You might overpay for one. You might buy one you should have never bought.

You might make no money on the back end, but your goal said you were going to buy one. And so, Like goals can be dangerous in that way quite a bit. Where I tend to, you know, I teach an online class every week teaching people, you know, how to buy real estate and stuff. And the thing that I teach all the time, and I know, Dave, you do the same thing is, like, it's more important to have that process where, hey, I'm going to analyze one deal a day. If I analyze just one simple property every day, I sit down and spend 10 minutes working on it, and I find a number that makes sense.

Like, if I just did that every single day for three months, like I've now analyzed 90 deals. Like, do I think I'll, I'll be better equipped to be able to offer on a deal? a hundred times more, right? Right, yeah. People always ask me, like, what's a good cash on cash return or a good ROI for an investment? And I would say, analyze 10 deals a day for a month. And by the end, you'll know what an average in your area is. And when you find one that's higher than that average, then you'll have the confidence to do it because you've built in a process.

You're confident in your ability to analyze deals. You know that your numbers are correct. And then you're when, then you'll actually wind up getting closer to your goal just by setting up that process. So I totally love that. Very true. It's kind of in that thing. There's a quote from Hal Elrod who wrote The Miracle Morning. He says something like, I'm going to probably butcher it, but basically every result that you desire requires a process to get it.

So whether you want to lose weight or whether, you know, you want to buy a property, there's a process that gets you there. And he said, when you define your process and then commit to it for an extended period of time, the results just take care of themselves. So in the words, you put up a picture of a guy with a six-pack on the wall that does nothing for you. You know, but you're eating 1,500 calories a day. and working out four times a week, the results, you're going to get where you want if you just stick with that process. Have you found the same thing to be true? Oh, well, I mean, there was, I remember there was an interview with a UFC fighter who said,

there's something about the fight, the fight to fight, and he said, the fight's fun. He said, the training is the really difficult part, is getting up, doing that every day, doing everything I have to do to be prepared for it. That's difficult. That's taxing. He's like, what happens when I eventually step into the octagon and, you know, compete. He's like, by then, you're either ready or you're not ready. You know, you're either trained or you're not trained. You know, so I agree. It's like that process, the system, it's like

the result will come as a result of all the day, the day to day process you've been engaging in. Well, one of the thing that's hard then about that is that, you know, like to go back to the Octagon example, you know, like, the UFC fighting, you're like, you get all the, like, you get all the fanfare, the excitement about the fight. But nobody's out there cheering you on when you go get up at 5 a.m. to go to the gym to work out and have a hard work. Like, it was cheering you. So, like, you don't get that immediate feedback. And that's why, again, it's hard to have that process because nobody's cheering you on them. You don't get the reward. No. And, and, and, but in a way, that's good. Because if we get the rewards too early, people, people tend to, people tend to,

if you're looking just for the reward, you get it too soon. It's like that's, we tend to, there's research by the, Gabriel Itgin did research on it at NYU in terms of that issue of when we share our dreams, our goals, our everything, then if we get rewarded for it, then our brains almost feel like we've done it as opposed to summoning the motivation to follow through. So the people you hear who, and perhaps in real estate, who talk about doing it, talk about this, talk about that, and then never follow through because they're getting their dessert before they've eaten their vegetables, you know? It's like, that's kind of the thing. So it's important, you know, to just put the day-to-day work in the trenches and then magically,

the results appear, you know, after a period of time of consistent effort. So on that note, then, would you say it's not a good idea to go to your Facebook page and say, hey, everybody, I'm going to be a real estate investor. I'm buying 10 properties this year. You know, until 18, I'm going to buy 10 houses. I think that's a bad idea. I mean, if you've got a consistent track record already of doing that and that's realistic, okay, fine.

But if you've never done this before, I mean, you know, again, I like the stick model better where, No, I'm not getting rewarded from it. I'm going to get penalized for this. If you want to put words out there, great. Put your money behind it. And then we'll see how happy people are about posting on their Facebook page, you know, in an anticipatory way versus keeping quiet, do the work. And then, you know, you're one of those people who, oh, my God, every time I see this guy, you know, he's achieved, he's accomplished something as opposed to just always talking it up. And, you know, nobody wants to be one of those people.

Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Well, cool. Well, I want to shift over to a couple other sections on the book that really stood out to me. One of them was introverts versus extroverts. Who becomes more successful long term? Can you talk about that a little bit? Like, what did you kind of come up with? I mean, across the board, it's like when you initially read the research, it's like, man,

extroverts seem to have just a huge, huge advantage. I mean, you know, they build their networks faster and networks are huge across the board. You know, they're happier. There's even research that shows when introverts act like extroverts, they get happier. It just seems so clear. But then what you see is the big effect is that introverts are far more likely to become experts in their field. Because they're not spending all that time with other people, they have time, if they use it wisely,

to get really good at stuff. And so you just see across the board, introverts are more likely they get better grades. They're more likely to get PhDs. a surprising number of high achieving athletes are introverts because again shooting those free throws into late at night, you know, staying in a batting cage instead of going to a party. You know, all of those things are really critical. So again, you know, it depends on what your strength is. Because people, I mean, some people are at the margin.

A lot of people are what are called amberverts. They're in the middle. They're a little bit of both. But people who are at the extremes, again, understanding what your personality type is and utilizing that, where it's like, am I going to be an expert in my field? Am I going to be really great at this, but maybe I'm a little socially awkward or I just get exhausted by people? Or I don't feel like studying case after case after case, but I am really good at getting out there and getting people like me and making friends. They both have their strengths. And it's

really important to understand where you naturally fit and then understand how you can utilize that to be better at what you do. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Do you consider yourself, and I'll ask Dave this to you as well. Do you guys consider your yourself as introverts or extroverts? I am an extreme introvert. I really? You have no idea how hard this is. I'm just kidding.

I was going to say, you are asking as well. No, no, no, no. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a very extreme introvert. You know, writing, writing the blog, writing books. Man, if I was an extreme extrovert, man, my job would be so much harder. But no, definitely introvert. Okay. What do you do?

I feel like I've had really conflicting ideas about this in the past, But I guess people define it very differently. But the one way I've heard it define is like if you're upset or frustrated with something, like do you want to talk it out to people or do you want to just be by yourself? And I'm totally the be by yourself kind of guy. So I sort of tend to think of myself as introverted, but I'm very outgoing. So I don't know if those are in conflict with one another or those are, that's even possible. I mean, usually when they look at it, it's basically, you know, everybody needs time to themselves and everybody

needs some social interaction. You know, it's a spectrum. Usually it's an issue of, similar to what you're saying, it's an issue of how do you recharge? You know, it's like, is, do most people say, oh, my God, you know, it's been so stressful. I got to go out and meet friends for a drink. Or, oh, my God, today's been so stressful.

I'm shutting the door and just leave me alone. I mean, so, you know, we all, like I said, most people cluster somewhere in the center, but some people are, this has been, this has been so difficult. I got to see my buddies. And some people have, this has been so difficult, you know, phone, do not disturb, you know, just let me just sit here in the closet, close the door in the dark and try to stop trembling, you know, it depends. That makes sense.

What are you, Brandon? Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm probably more introverted than anything. I mean, on the podcast, I can, you know, we can talk and have fun. But, yeah, definitely more introverted. Joshua makes fun to me because I'm the guy, like, a real estate meetup. I like find a corner to go stand in and then people can come talk to me. And I'm like, but I don't go into.

Like when I think of like the scariest things on earth And I think of like you know Like fire breathing dragons were real And then like groups of people at a party Like they're about the same scaryness level Like I can't approach a group And get into that group Like that just terrifies me so

Oh no I hear I give a I do a lot of talks And like public speaking and stuff And it's like I'm energetic I tell jokes okay And people come up they people think Oh you must be like such an extrovert And I'm like no no no you don't understand Public speaking

I get to talk, they don't get to talk back. You know, that's not a problem. I'm on stage. You'll be quiet. You know, I can do that just fine. But like, you know, conversations, oh, geez, other people, they have opinions. And it's really difficult. That's funny.

So you mentioned earlier that introverts can act like extroverts and become more, do you say happy? Was that what you said, the study show? It actually shows, I mean, one of the most demonstrated effects in social science research is that extroverts are are happier, you know, on average. And, you know, introverts, when they act like extroverts are, you know, are happier. Interverts might be underestimating how much social time, you know, they need. But on the flip side, you know, you just see these kind of bounces. A lot of the myths that we have around introverts and extroverts, a lot of inaccurate beliefs. Like, for instance, with leadership, you know, people believe, oh, you got to be

extroverted. And that depends. With a less motivated group of people, extroverts are great leaders because they get out there. They talk to people. They energize them. They stay on top of them. It's great. With a team of self-motivated A players, introverts are much, much better leaders because they'll give direction. They give this. They keep it short. They get the hell out of the way. They're better listeners. So that actually works. So again, it depends upon, you know, the group. And, you know, introversion does not necessarily mean shyness. Someone can be, have a double dominant personality, but not really enjoy extended amounts of social interaction. So, you know, there's a lot of myths we have surrounding it. It's just a matter of really understanding your personality type

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Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. So we've talked a little bit about happiness. You just touched on it and goal setting. In your research, I was just checking out your blog this morning. It seems like you have a lot of topics about what goals are actually worth pursuing. I was wondering if you could say a little bit about that. I mean, you know, you can be more specific? Because I think it depends on what people are doing.

Yeah, just like, what make me? Like, I saw a couple of articles that were saying, like, what actually make people happy? Yeah. And that there's sometimes contrarian in nature that they don't, aren't what you would normally think are the things that actually make people happy. Yeah, I mean, people usually think it's like, you know, money and financial success are going to are going to bring happiness. Money and financial success is a great defense in the sense of it. It reduces problems. You don't have as much downside.

However, you know, the biggest results in terms of happiness typically come from relationships with people. Now, again, that doesn't necessarily mean extroversion, but emotional intimacy, be that with a partner, with friends, you know, is emotional intimacy, closeness. And, you know, gratitude, you know, is huge. Feeling grateful, you know, takes us out of that loop of, you know, I have to have to have more, you know, what am I going to do next? Do I have enough? Am I measuring up versus feeling really thrilled with what you do have, appreciating what you do have, and showing gratitude to other

people, huge benefits, you know, in terms of happiness. I mean, one of the simplest and most replicated studies over and over again on happiness is before you go to bed at night, just having a piece of paper and a pen by the bed and just writing down three things that were good that happened to you that day. Something as simple as that. That way you don't take it for Every day you're thinking about, it's like the principle of advertising where like, you know, people need to see something seven times before they do it. Just keeping the good things top of mind is really critical because otherwise we tend to take good things for granted and only focus on the bad things. You know, I mean, like I'll see that on like, you know, comments on my blog on social media. 99 people will say fantastic things.

One person will tell me I'm an idiot. And the result in my head is, well, I guess I'm an idiot. You know, so, I mean, you have to, you have to take the time. to keep those good things top of mind, show gratitude, you know, be close to people. And not only does that increase happiness, but there's some really fascinating what they call longitudinal studies where they follow people for their entire lives. So like the grant study at Harvard literally followed a class of men from like the 1930s. The study is still ongoing. Some of the men are their 90s. And so rather than just seeing like, oh, we did X and then four weeks later, you know,

these college undergrads were happier. This is something where they did X when they were 18. We saw their personality when they're 18. This is how it affected them four weeks later. This is how it affect them middle age. And this is how it affect them longer in life. And just what you see is that ability to having close relationships with people was just across the board.

Not only did it increase happiness, but it actually also increased success metrics. Those people did better. They got along with others. You know, they formed collaborations. You know, they just across the board. That was really critical. So relationships are something to really think about, both in business and in personal life. That makes a lot of sense.

Well, so I wanted to talk a little bit about networking. And you made a line in the book that said some kind of joke about like, let's stop saying the word networking called making friends. I think is what you said. Yeah. Because when I read that, I was like, oh, my gosh, that sounds so much easier. Like, in the past, I was like, like, I got to go network and get the stupid business card. And like, I don't know, it felt like weird and like, I don't know, I'm like, oh, anybody can go make friends. friends and chat. Anyway, I want to talk about that a little bit about how do we network? How do we

make friends? I mean, there's a number of things. But what's really funny is when you read the really good networking advice or advice on how to connect with people, what you see is that it all is just like making friends. You know, it's just like, you know, it's like being nice to people. And people ask, hey, we have this in common. It's like, no, it's called making friends. But when you break it out into contacts, it's like, contacts, it's like, yeah, it's great. If you got a million contacts and no friends, yeah, I mean, if you, if you need to go to the hollible, hospital, two o'clock in the morning, your contacts are not going to help you. I mean, that's a critical distinction.

But there are a number of things that people can do. Like the easiest thing from the research in terms of broadening your network is reconnecting with old friends. You already know them. You don't even have to build a relationship. There's all those people on Facebook or LinkedIn that you know them. You were friends for a while. You lost contact.

You haven't talked in five years. Send them an email. Hey, there's a source of potential contacts. works, they can introduce you more friends. That's the easiest thing in the world. Anybody can do it. We all have relationships that we've let fall by the wayside. So reconnecting is, you know, an insanely easy way to do it. And the second thing that I thought, this was research by Brian Uzi was really fantastic, is the concept of super connectors where basically if you look at your contact list on your phone or whatever, what you're going to see is a disproportionate number of your contacts

came from a handful of people. There's like that one super social person who has, introduced you to 10 or 15 people. And you're just going to see that there's these clusters. Okay, well, those super connectors, if you only have a short period of time to devote to that awful word networking or to the better phrase making friends, reconnect with those super connectors. Those people who are at the hub of every network, they know everybody, that's a great way to get started because those are the people who know everybody. So you'll get disproportionate results from talking to those super connectors. So when I read that, I actually went and did that. I worked down, like, everybody I, I joined, and everybody I knew and, like, people.

And sure enough, there's, like, there's, like, three people in my life who, like, most people I know because of those three people somehow. And then, interesting enough, those three people actually all knew each other as well, which, like, tell them there's something, yeah, about that. I don't know. There's some deeper study you can do there someday, but. How did you meet those three people? Yeah. Say what? Where did I meet them?

Yeah. How did you meet those three people? Online. Most people online. Like, yeah, in various communities, you know? Like, for example, one of the guys is no. Kagan. Like Noah's introduced me like 50 different people. I don't know. No, no. Okay, yeah, you know it all. Exactly. Noah is a super connector and everybody, like, everybody knows Noah. I don't know.

He's one of those guys. I mean, he's been on the podcast here. He's one of the guys is very happy to like, oh yeah, you need to know this guy. Hey, meet this guy. You know, like, I mean, yeah, Noah Kagan. I became friends with him, which then led to, I mean, I don't know, Tim Ferriss was on our show because of that connection. Ryan Holiday was on because of that connection. Like, yeah. Just kind of. That would be really interesting to check out on bigger podcast. Brandon. That would be fun to see if we could figure that out because so much of what we do is create a community where people connect and we could see who's doing the most connections and if there are like super connectors on the site. That's funny. That's a really interesting thing.

Everything we've, anybody we've ever met, it always comes back to Gary. Gary, it's just a just Gary. Just me Gary. Gary is all right. What's funny is there's another study that's, that's, it's illustrative, but more important, I think it makes people feel better. And it's, we all the times feel like, oh my God, our friends have such a better social life than us. Like, my social life just isn't as great as my friends. That's a very common feeling. And the reason for that is because of superconnectors, these are the people who know everybody. And so we know them and they're superconnectors.

So your friends typically, on average, will have more friends than you only because that's the person that knows everybody. And that's why they know you because they know everybody. So it sets up this false kind of dichotomy. where they're the hub, we're all spokes. And then it's like, my God, it just seems like no one knows everybody. Well, I mean, yeah, it's like, but that's like Noah's known for that. And that's why he knows you.

So it's funny. That's funny. Well, cool. So, okay, so we talk about network and talk about all that. One thing I want to talk about before we move on to kind of the fire round and famous for the last sections of the show, you mentioned something. And forgive me if this was not your book, but I'm pretty sure it was. It's been, you know, a couple months.

Okay. We talked about what makes somebody successful at work? Like, studies, like, I, like, I'm a, I read about a study that, like, what makes one employee more successful? Is it education or whatever? That was in the book, right? Yeah. Okay, can you talk about that?

What makes somebody, because a lot of people listen to the show, I know, obviously it's a real estate show, but I would say 99% of people have a job. And it would do good to earn more money at that job so they can put more in real estate. How do we make more money at our jobs? Well, this is something that some people might find depressing. But basically, the critical thing, you know, in a job is your relationship with your boss. is across the board. If you look at work by Jeffrey Pfeffer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business,

basically he sums up the research by saying, you know, if you have a great relationship with your boss and, you know, then hard work doesn't matter as much. And if you're a really hard worker and you have a terrible relationship with your boss, your hard work won't save you. Doesn't matter. So, you know, it's really, really critical.

And that isn't necessarily saying that, you know, you need to kiss up, although it doesn't hurt, but is that be really particular about where you go, what you work for. And in the same token, by the same token, people don't leave bad companies. People leave bad bosses. So, you know, the company you work for is not going to affect your happiness and your success as much as the boss you work for. And that relationship is really, really critical. So to be blind your relationship with your boss and only focus on the work, those are a lot of people who get very frustrated.

And so you can't, you cannot avoid politics, you know, unless you are, you know, a freelancer or in some, or in some way, I mean, sales can be an exception because there is a hard metric. You know, I sold twice as much as anybody else. There's the number. That is a way that allows you to get around some of the things, as long as that number stays high. But, you know, overall, relationship with the boss is critical. Yeah. I remember reading that. I thought that was fascinating because I look back in my life, every successful job I've ever had.

where I felt like I did a good job at it. I climbed the ladder or whatever. Like, it was all ones where my boss liked me. And the ones that I struggled were the ones that I was like, my boss is a moron. And like I was like, I'm doing good work and they just don't get it.

And like, you know, we butted heads. And I realized like, yeah, my ego of trying to like show my boss, whatever was was hurting my ability to even progress in that job. So yeah. Well,

people, people forget like how little of their work and their achievements are visible, you know, as you go up the ladder to, to sea level, CEO, whatever. And they forget how much of your perception is at the discretion of your boss. If your boss says to the CEO, oh, yeah, he's a moron. You know, it doesn't matter.

Like, it's really going to be hard. You're not going to have the access to overcome that. So it's really critical. You know, your boss can protect you, can defend you. And a lot of promotions is, again, if you don't have hard, hard metrics, if you're part of a big department, fog of war, it's blurry. what is the very busy senior vice president going to say? Just, I don't care.

Just who do you recommend? And the first name that comes to mind is going to get that promotion and it's going to be done. And it's not always fair, but that is how it works. And people need to be Caga's into that. Yeah, I love that. So listen up. Yeah, if you guys are trying to make more money at your work, go kiss up a little bit. It's okay.

There's a little bit. But also, like, on that note as well, like, I think there is something too. Like, if you are a good worker, that's just. typically what makes the boss likes you as well. So it's kind of a two-way street, right? Like, not always the case, but in a lot of ways. I mean, if you're good at your job and you do the research to make sure ahead of time, hopefully that you're going to be working for somebody that you respect and that you like,

you know, it's like that's the perfect setup. You know, it's really the perfect setup. But it's like we all have our quirks, you know, and it's just a matter. That relationship, you know, really matters. And some people have a boss who is just focused on do a great job, you know, get the numbers and you're And, you know, other people are more socially oriented and they want somebody who they're friendly with who they enjoy spending time with. And if you're the, if you're if you're the inferior position on the relationship, you need to make sure that happens. You know, they need when Deepak Mahhotra teaches at Harvard Business School and when he's talking about negotiating salary, what he tells all the Harvard business schools, the NBA students, his first rule is not hardball negotiation or anchor high or his first rule of salary negotiation is they have to like.

you because in the end it's going to come down to do they want to give this to you because they may have more options are they going to offer them are they going to say are they going to go to bad for you are they going to want to do it or are you going to be strong arming them and they're going to resent you or they have to like you that's so good so true all right well last question I got I don't know what Dave you guys say more but like I want to know what work life balance talk a lot about that as well what does that what does that mean How do we achieve better if that's what the goal is? Well, the issue with work-life balance is that it didn't even really exist.

We didn't think about it in the past. You watch Mad Men, you know, it's like back in the 60s it wasn't as big of an issue. And now, you know, it's because basically we can work 24-7. And that's difficult. You know, oh, I left those papers at the office. I'll get them free to mark. No, they're in the cloud. You can get them right now.

Oh, I'll have to check my mail. No, the email's in your pocket all the time 24-7. can check it right now. You always have the option to work. And so that's stressful to just know that you could always be doing it. And that sets up this situation where, you know, Cedars Paribus, all things being equal, if somebody else is going to work 10 hours a day, you're only going to work eight. So it becomes very difficult because we're living in a 24-7 world. And that just keeps you on the treadmill. And so people end up using what they call a collapsing metric, where it's like they use one metric to determine success. And that's really dangerous.

because what metric do we end up using? Money. And it's just make the number go up. And that doesn't take into account all the other things in life that we all want, like happiness, relationships, not dying. You know, there's a lot of things that you need to think about. So what they found is that the people who had something who were unsuccessful, high level, you know, high paying jobs is basically they had four metrics, you know, that they went by where they were, they were enjoying their life. They were giving back. They were important. They were doing things important to the people, around them and they were achieving. So it's like to be thinking about all of those things where it's kind of am I enjoying what I'm doing? Am I getting ahead? Am I doing, am I providing value to the people I love and who love me? And then do I feel like I'm giving back? When people look at, if you look at your calendar, you'll, you can kind of see like how many hours am I enjoying? How many hours am I achieving? How many hours am I providing value to the people around me? How many hours do I feel like I'm giving back? And often people find one's really high, one's really low and trying to find a better balance. It is a personal balance. It's something you need to work on for you that works for you. But usually if people look at those four buckets, they'll see maybe one of them's lacking or maybe two of them are lacking. Or some people go all in on one, hey, I'm completely happy. I'm also unemployed. Or I'm achieving so much and I hate my job. And so it's really finding that balance. But in the end, the onus, and this is the shift in the 21st century, the onus is onus because the office never closes. The doors don't close at 5 p.m. anymore. So,

you kind of need to draw a line in the sand for yourself. And that can be really difficult because people want to say, oh, well, I'd love to work harder, but I can't. It's like, no, you always can. And that's the hard part. So it's a matter of drawing a line for yourself that you're comfortable with. Yeah. I think it's especially hard, too, for entrepreneurs, because so much of it falls to you because

it's just you, especially when you're just starting or if you're a real estate investor. So both of you, obviously entrepreneurial, curious if either of you have any, tricks or tips that you use to try and maintain that balance. I mean, that's a really critical issue. One of the biggest ironies for me was, you know, the work-life balance is the final chapter in my book and just killing myself to get this done. And I'm like, I am writing about work-life balance and I am grossly overworking. This is not, luckily this is not like, my book is not like my personal story because then I'd be a total hypocrite. I'm presenting the research. I'm presenting the research, do as I say, not what I do. It's like you're realizing that. But no, that is really

critical because as an entrepreneur, it's not like there's nobody else. And that's why entrepreneurs do have to work harder, but, you know, it's a matter again of kind of drawing lines for yourself, which in some ways, you know, can be, you know, can be healthier in the sense of you don't have to, you don't have anybody else telling you or you don't have any other standards, but you do have to draw a line for yourself. And most people, that line is very blurry. And that's where they get into trouble is they're not kind of saying, hey, there's a point where I need to stop. Hey, there's a point where I need to shower. Yeah, I think that's the key right there is like making the lines less blurry as much as possible, right? And I'm horrible at that because I want to grab my phone out and check my email

because I'm just sitting there and my daughter's watching Clipper on TV. So what's the big deal, right? But all of a sudden now I've blurred the lines. Even though she doesn't even notice I'm checking my phone, but like now the lines are blurry. So then 10 minutes later when she does notice, my daughter does notice that I'm no longer paying attention to her. You know, like, as long as I can create those clear lines, I'm horrible at it as well, but I try to keep those clear lines. The other thing that I do a lot, and the book, the one thing, Gary Keller and J. Papp is then, they talk about work-life balance scene.

They had IMG on the end of that. They say it's not, there's no such thing as that you're never going to be in the middle. There's never going to be like a balance. It's a balance and act all the time. So what I tend to do is if I see myself going way too far one way for a while, I'll push back the other way as much as possible. You know, like, mainly what I mean, but yeah, if I'm working a lot, I'll take a week off. Or I'll spend a week just working very minimal hours and try to do it all before the family is up and active.

So, like, I try to balance it that way as well. Oh, yeah. No, it's finding a system that works for you is really the critical thing because in the end, everybody's tolerances are different. Some people get, you know, a disproportionate amount of their fulfillment from their work, telling them to work less. David Epstein wrote a fantastic book, The Sports Gene, and he was talking about some apps. athletes, you know, yes, many athletes, as we're used to seeing, need a coach to tell them, you know, go train, push yourself harder. But there also exists the other side. There are some athletes who the coach needs to tell them, you need to rest, okay? Like, they will keep going.

They're like sled dogs. They will keep going until they die. And they need somebody to say, you need to stop. You need to chill. So, you know, it is individual, but it's a matter of kind of like setting boundaries and then adjusting them, you know, incrementally kind of setting, but most people don't set them. And so then it's like people get into really bad habit loops where it's like, oh, things went pretty good today. I can stop early. Things went bad today. I'm going to work twice as hard, which in many situations is the reverse of what you want to do. It's like things are good. Well, then keep going, you know, and things are bad. You know what? Maybe this part of the business isn't working out. And I should stop that all together and double down.

on the things which are working and push harder on the days which are good. So, you know, it's a matter of setting lines for yourself in pencil and realizing I'm going to move them, but you have to draw the lines in the first place. Yeah, I love that. I love it. All right, well, let's shift gears

and head over to the next segment of the show, which we lovingly call our fire round. It's time for the fire round. All right, let's jump into the fire round. These questions usually come direct out of the Bigger Pockets forums. However, today, because this isn't like a real estate necessarily related show, I kind of twisted some of the questions from the forums to be a little bit more general, but I think they'll make sense here. So they'll apply both to real estate and just life in general. So number one, how do I schedule events on my calendar?

Do you have any recommendations for how do you, what should I schedule, what shouldn't I schedule? Everything. How should I use my calendar? Schedule everything. To-do list are evil. This comes from Cal Newport. as Professor Georgetown wrote an awesome book on productivity called Deep Work. I love that.

And he said the problem with to-do lists is that you can easily have a to-do list for today that has 26 hours of stuff on it because to-do lists don't take time into consideration. If you schedule things and you have a ballpark idea of how long things will take, you can realize up front, I'm not going to get all this done. And then you can prioritize and say, since I'm only going to get five of these things done, let me pick the most important five, let me schedule them, and that's realistic. And then I can tell people realistically that you're not going to get it until Friday. And that's a much better way than, oh, I've got my to do list and you never, ever seem to get to the bottom of it.

So schedule everything. That's been huge for me. I'll do that. I'll do that. I'll do all this today. And then when I sit down, I've been doing that because I read deep work. I've been plugging each thing on my calendar. I'm like, how can I only fit four things out of 12 on my day?

Like, I can't even get all this done in a week. And then I actually do exactly what my calendar says typically. I'm like, oh, yeah, I was right. You know, so yeah, I'm 100% in agreement on that. Very cool. All right, number two. All right. Question number two.

What does your day typically look like? My day ranges widely because I, basically because there's a lot of times where I'm giving talks or I'm traveling, that messes things up a little bit. But I do all. I have to read a lot to find. the gold that I want to post about. So I spend a lot of time reading. I spend a lot more time, I spend a lot more time taking stuff in than actually putting stuff out. And I take I spend a lot of, and in terms of writing, I spend a lot of time planning, you know, because I don't want to sit

there in front of the keyboard and be like, what am I going to say? You know, so I literally spend a lot of time taking in as much as information as possible. And again, leveraging my introversion very happy to read to study to analyze to plan so i i spend a lot of time taking information in distilling it and then trying to to make it a succinct and clear for for other people but i spend enormous amounts of time alone and reading all right number three how do i get a mentor without being creepy you go hey will you be my mentor that's i get i get a lot of those emails i mean the first thing to do is is to study them as much as possible, you know, and know their stuff, know them.

And the next thing, you know, you want to do is, you don't have to reveal that you've done that. It definitely sounds creepy, you know, and you should only follow them around for a few weeks. But yeah, we'll look through a couple windows there. habits, their movements. But the best way to alienate a potential mentor is to ask them a question that they've been asked 10,000 times or to ask them a question, which is easily available. They could Google themselves. But to ask them a question that's interesting, you know, to asking questions is really critical,

keeping it short, appreciating their time, you know, asking them a question that's interesting. And also showing the homework you've done is. critical is just basically if you say, hey, how do I get happier? You know, if somebody sends me that, it's like, I got a thousand articles about happiness. You know, why do you need, you know, you don't need Arnold Schwarzenegger to show you how to lift weights. You know, it's like, that's basic stuff. You know, if you say, though, hey, I read Seligman's book on this and I had a couple questions on that. So then I went over and look at Sonia Lubberowski's research, you know, she teaches at Riverside. That answers some of my questions. But then I thought about

this. And then when I looked some of the stuff on your website, it didn't seem directly addressed. So I ask, that's the person I'm going to reply to because they exhausted every possibility and they're only coming to me with something that, you know, really, it's like, okay, wow, holy crap, like you did your homework. I appreciate that. You're not wasting my time. I appreciate that. You asked a smart question, which is making me think and making me curious. I appreciate that. And then, you know, following up, but you don't ask somebody to marry you on the first date and you don't ask somebody to be your mentor on a first email. But if you, there are so many people I've become friends with through my blog because we

communicated, we talked, they said something interesting, I said something interesting. And again, most of stuff, any kind of relationship usually develops organically, you know. So don't try and make it into an arranged marriage. It shouldn't be. So really do your homework, get to know it, ask interesting questions. Don't waste anybody's time. If I can translate that for a minute to real estate investing, a lot of new real estate investors want to find a mentor.

And I think a lot of that is because they want somebody to tell them exactly what to do step by step because they're, I don't know, lazy, maybe isn't the right word, but maybe it is. They just don't, they don't want to go and do it on their own, or they're scared, right? So, but, but to exactly what you just said there, the people who have helped the most have emailed me or called me or whatever and said, hey, I'm looking at a property at this neighborhood, this street, here's the address. I talked to the agent and a property manager, they said this about it. I'm wondering your opinion of that neighborhood. I mean, why would I not respond to that? Of course, I'll be like, yeah, I think that neighborhood's, you know, scary. I'd stay away from that.

Now we've got a relationship. They can ask me another question. What about this one? And, hey, maybe you want to get some, you know, lunch sometime. Now I'm much more open to going out to lunch with them because now they've done their research homework. Yeah, a thousand percent. So very cool. No, no.

I mean, when somebody email, when somebody knows, you know, like what I'm interested in, they send me an article, just a link. And it's like, hey, here's something. And I go, wow, this person really knows. Like they're at, they know what I've covered, what I haven't covered, and here's something at the edge. Because it's really easy to buy somebody a bad gift and demonstrate to them. I have no idea what you like. You know, and it's really hard where somebody gets you something perfect, get you a great gift. And you're like, holy cow, this is amazing.

In that same way, you know, you just have to imagine all the other people that are email. Whoever you want to be your mentor is probably somebody successful. There's probably a lot of people who want them to be their mentor. You want to stand out. And if you're asking the same questions, doing the same stuff, not doing your homework, you are going to fall into that very large bucket versus doing something which says, I've done my homework. You know, I am I am ready to be a Jedi. You know, look, I've done my work. Teach me, great one.

You know, it's like when somebody has done that, you want to help them because those people are rare. And then you're open to spending that time because those people are so rare. There you go. Awesome. Great advice. All right. last one. What is the best way to overcome fear of something new? The best way to overcome fear of something new, I mean, is at first step would be just learn about

as much about it as possible. You know, just understanding. Here's how it works. Here's the ins and outs. Don't go into it blind. You know, talk to people, read stuff on it, study it, understand it. We're not as afraid of things that we understand well. You know, initially, there's still a rational fear. The next thing I would say is, Is there any way you can simulate that environment? You know, so again, it's kind of like, I talk to another author who, when he's scheduling, like, podcast interviews and stuff, he deliberately schedules really small, like, don't have a big audience, don't have a big reach, all of those initially. Because then if he screws up, nobody's going to hear it. But that allows him to build up kind of his immunity.

And then he's got his message all on target. You know, to have that. And then so if you can get out there and try it and test it in a small way, you know, what is a much less threatening way to expose yourself to it? And honestly, it's supported by the psychological research where it's kind of like that exposure therapy. You know, I'm going to get 10 feet away from a snake. Okay, I'm going to get five feet away from a snake. Okay, one foot.

Okay, I'm actually going to touch the snake, you know, is how you overcome fears. So exposure, first by information, next by some kind of a simulated environment. Next is by a low stakes encounter and then finally put yourself out there and then put yourself out there repeatedly until, until frankly, it gets boring. And then there is no fear with boredom. Yeah, I always say nobody's afraid to like drive. Like if you've been driving in 20 years, you're not afraid to get your car to go drive down to the mall, right? Because you've done it so many times. It's just a boring thing.

The first time you drive, though, you know, you're nervous. And just do it so many times that you're not afraid. Fear is just like basically a lack of confidence. So just find ways to build up your confidence around that thing and you're not going to be scared of it anymore. No, absolutely. It's like when you realize how irrational fear is, and I don't mean like fear is wrong or fear is, I mean, in the sense of the things we are often afraid of, aren't the scariest things. Like you're saying, where it's like driving. Like driving is one of the things most likely to kill you. You know, it's not afraid of driving. You know, we're afraid of terrorist incidents. And those almost never happen. You know, it's like, I mean, Bruce Schneier is a security expert. And he's just got a great quote where he says, like, anything on the front page of the newspaper, I don't worry about because that's never going to happen to me. You know, you know, a 60-year-old guy dies of a heart attack is never on the front page of the newspaper.

Some electrifying plane crash is. So same way, it's like the things that scare us are often the things that, you know, are actually the least threatening. And then we get in a car and drive 75 miles an hour on a highway. And yet you think you're in control. Yeah, but the guy next to you could be drunk. You know, and you can't control. So, you know, our fears are often grossly misaligned with the actual threats involved. Yep.

I love that. I love that. And just because I like translating this general into specific real estate again, like, imagine you're trying to buy a piece of real estate. You want to flip your first house, we'll say, right? Like, you can learn a ton about it, right? We've done tons of podcasts. There's a million books out there.

Go to your library. Go to Barnes & Noble. Find a book or two or five or ten. Learn everything you can about it. Find some local flippers in your area you can get to know. Like, all of a sudden that, then you know everything. about it. Then a low-stakes way to kind of get involved very easily is work with somebody who's already doing it. Like, go volunteer to be on their crew cleaning out ugly, nasty, gross properties,

right? And that, like, if nothing else, you got a little bit of low-stakes. Or just go and analyze a bunch of deals that we talked about earlier. If you analyzed 100 deals over the next few months, like, there's no money involved at all. And you can't screw that up. But you'll gain the confidence to know that you're not going to screw it up when you actually pull the trigger. And then when you actually do a deal, do something small. Start with something small. It's not a, it's not bad to go by one deal that's not going to make you a lot of money. At least you got something next time you can go bigger. So very cool. All right. Let's get out of here. Head over to our last section of the show, which we call our Famous Four. This is the world famous famous for. These are the same four

questions we ask every guest every week. But of course, being that this is not a real estate show, specifically, I'm going to tweak the first question a little bit. Normally we ask, what is your favorite real estate book? And Eric, if you have one, you can say it. But I'm almost to hear you read like blog-wise, what do you enjoy reading? Like, what are the sites that you just get a kick out of reading blog-wise? I mean, one of the best websites I really enjoy reading is a marginal revolution, which is basically the best economics blog on the internet. And some of the posts are, like, way beyond my ken in terms of economics. But Tyler Cowan, who, uh, and Alex Taberick also writes on there, is, uh, he do just collect so much interesting information, you know, just a variety of real

cool, insightful stuff. He has links every day to really interesting articles. And I always learn something whenever I go there. So Marginal Revolution is a great site. Ryan Holiday, a fantastic source of interesting stuff often about, you know, history, productivity, a lot of great stuff about Stoicism, Stoic thought. You know, Tim Urban's, Wait But Why, has some very awesome, Tim's a great, great guy. Tim Urban Sight is, you know, is phenomenal. And, you know, and in terms of business-wise, Josh Kaufman puts out some great stuff as well. He wrote the personal NBA, which is, you know, phenomenal, phenomenal book. So those are a few of the people I do my best to never miss on the internet. Awesome. Awesome. All right, Dave. Right on. All right. So

what is your favorite business book? Oh, that's tricky. There's a lot of them. One I would definitely say is Dan Pink's book, Drive, which is all about motivation, which is really, really critical. In terms of leadership, the hard thing about hard things is a great book by Ben Arowitz. Adam Grant's book, Give and Take, is a really great book. If you feel like you're a little bit too nice and maybe you're getting exploited in the business world, that is definitely a book to read. And, you know, again, Josh Kaufman's personal MBA is phenomenal. Cal Newport is great for productivity. His book Deep Work is phenomenal.

There's a lot of great business books. Awesome. I've read Deep Work and I haven't read the other one, so I'm going to pick up a bunch of books now. All right, Dave. All right. What are your hobbies? What do you do beside this stuff? Well, we were talking about my work-life balance problem earlier.

No, I'm just kidding. No, I guess. Yeah, my hobby, none. None. I should be working right now. No, I, you know, my, my hobbies, I love to read, I love to learn. So luckily that is really well aligned with what I do that. Besides that, I'm a huge documentary buff.

Love, love good documentaries. And I spend a lot of time at the gym. That way I burn off all of this stress, which is constantly accumulating. But no, I mean, so basically going to the gym, spending time with friends, and I love to read. and yeah, documentaries are the guys. Still have not gotten to Ken Burns, Vietnam, just like 18 parts. How was it? It's long.

It's good. I was just really hung over one day, so I just watched it for like six hours. It's a perfect thing to watch. I'm not moving for a day. And this will take all day. I plant myself on the couch and just watch this for a really long time. There you go, man. All right, so on that note, before I move to the last question,

Just two very serious questions. Number one, what do you bench? You're a gym guy. You're a gym guy. And while you're thinking of that, the second question was, oh, shoot, what was I going to ask? Oh, yeah, favorite documentary. Oh, geez. Favorite documentary?

I would have to give that. I would have to give that a lot of thought. I can tell you, I can tell you some recent ones I absolutely loved. Icarus, which is Netflix original, is phenomenal. The Armstrong Lie is phenomenal. Command and Control was a PBS documentary. It was really great. The bomb was a great one on PBS.

There's a lot of them. I don't know at the top of my head, but any of those is gold. I don't watch any documentary ever, so I'll have to check some of that. Okay. Yeah. Cool. The Armstrong lie, I will call out as fascinating

because basically Alex Gibney shot a whole documentary about Lance Armstrong's final tour to France before the steroid scandal broke. And then when he went into the editing room, the steroid scandal broke. And he's like, oh, my God. Like, what am I? Like, this, I have, I just shot hundreds of hours of lies.

And he went back to Lance Armstrong and said, you lied to me. And then, so basically he has all the footage. And then he adds in Armstrong telling the truth during it. And it's just life. There's no way you could have delivered he made this documentary. So, like, you have Lance Armstrong. on camera during it saying like,

oh, I've never cheated, never anything. And then you have Armstrong going, oh, yeah, you see that truck in the back? Yeah, that's where we kept the testosterone. And it's like, it's mind-blowing. Wow. All right. I'm definitely left that one now. Oh, and can you bench me?

I'm like 200. What? You mean one arm? With your mind is what I meant. Come on. If you could keep it undistracted and I could focus. focus on the bar for more than four seconds, then maybe. But I don't, what were we talking about? We were talking about Benji. I'm going to move on the last question, though. At least my last question.

Overall, what do you believe, if you had to sum it up in a sentence or two, what separates successful people from all those who give up, fail, or never get started with what they're trying to accomplish? I think it's really that critical issue of alignment. First and foremost, knowing yourself. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? And the best way to do that objectively is ask your friends. They know you better than you know you very often. I've done this. And if you can, and if you can do it anonymously, even better. So if you have a friend, send like a four question survey to five of your best friends. And then they respond to the one friend who strips all the names off the answers so they can be anonymous and you don't know who said what. You will get some

very objective feedback about what you're knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses, and then quote unquote, as Boris Grosberg, Harvard Business School says, pick the right pond. So I know these are my strengths. Here's a company. Here's a field. Here's a role that rewards those. So, you know, you could be the best drummer in the world. That's not going to help you if you work for Apple. You know, Apple does not big on drumming. And on the other hand, you know, hey, if you are the greatest, If you're great at statistics, then, hey, fantastic. Maybe you should look at a job in econometrics or you should look at all the jobs in marketing these days, acquire that.

What companies, what roles value those strengths. And like I said, with intensifiers, value your weaknesses. I'm argumentative. Okay, great. You know, be a litigator. I am stubborn as hell. Okay, great. Be an entrepreneur.

So really, it's a matter of know thyself, honestly. And then pick the right pond, the alignment. between those two, I believe that leads to success in almost any area. I love it. Great. All right, Dave. Will take us out? All right.

Where can people find more about you? My book is Barking Up the Wrong Tree. It's a Wall Street Journal bestseller. You can find it on Amazon or any bookstore, Barnes & Noble, you know, iTunes. And my blog has a really difficult to pronounce URL. So if you just Google Barking Up the Wrong Tree blog or Google my name, Eric Barker, that will take you to the website. And the best way to follow what I'm doing is I send out a weekly email.

every Sunday with my, with my latest blog post, and that's the best way to kind of keep up with the research I'm looking at. Everything there is evidence-backed. I either look at research, talk to experts, and talk about how to improve in every area of life. And I try not to make it boring. Awesome. I like it. All right. Well, Eric, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks, a lot of fun. And yeah, I look forward to everybody else getting to read your book as well, because it was fantastic. So thanks for being here. Thanks. Thanks so much. It's great to be here, guys. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thanks, thanks, man. Bye. All right, big thanks to Eric for coming on the show today.

That was pretty awesome, wasn't Dave? Yeah, I really liked it. He's a funny dude. I learned a lot. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, you know, it's funny because he says he's an introvert, but it's like a lot of introverts are actually pretty funny. But, you know?

Yeah, and I wouldn't have guessed that. When you asked that question, I thought he was going to say extrovert. Me too. He even made a joke about being an introvert. So I don't know. Maybe my understanding of what's an introvert and what's an extrovert is completely off. Yeah, maybe. Maybe it's one of those things that's like a label that we had tax that.

there is no such thing like, I'm a millennial. I don't really like labels, which is, anyway. So anyway, all right. So, yeah, very, very cool. I thought it was great. Yeah, I think it was a lot of stuff not just about real estate investing. Obviously, there's great information in there if you're looking to get started and how to make progress every single day towards working towards your goal. But I just thought the conversation about work, life balance and how to, you know, have goals that are not just financial was really interesting and it will help you become a better investor as well. Like if you have a well-balanced life, you're going to be able to stay at it longer. You're going to be happier while you're doing it and probably more

likely to be successful. That's true. And are you going to do any stickles? Those, the donate money to the anti-charity. So I wanted to say, but we moved off, but I had heard of the gym one. There's actually an app called, I think it's called Gym Pact or something. You like bet someone, right? You're like, oh, if you don't show up, you get their $5. So it's a competition. No, I should definitely do it. It's coming up to New Year's resolution time, so maybe I'll think of a good one. I'll come up with a stick hole for it. Do it, do it.

I'll let you know mine whenever. I got to come up with them, too. I got to go and do some planning for the new year. So anyway, well, yeah, right on. Let's get out of here. Sweet. Well, yeah, it was good to be back on the podcast. I'm happy.

And again, check out the new YouTube channel that we got. And our new show, this comes out on Thursday. It comes out on Saturday. It's called Low Budget. Check it out. There you go. All right, guys, thanks so much for being a part of the BiggerPockets community. And see you all right.

We'll see you next time. For Biggerpockets.com, my name is Brandon. This is David. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, without all the hype, you're in the right place.

Be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for Real Estate Investing online. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K, copywriting is by Calico content, and editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.com.

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