BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 307: The Science Behind Setting and Achieving Big Goals

Episode Date: December 6, 2018

Raise your hand if this describes you: You start working toward a new goal with excitement, only to watch it eventually fizzle out to nothing. If you’re human, it’s likely you’ve experienced this phenomenon. Why is it some goals are just so hard to accomplish, whereas others we’re able to conquer with ease? On today’s episode of The BiggerPockets Podcast, that’s exactly what you’ll discover. Diving deep into psychological research on goals, motivation, and time management, Brandon and David will pull back the curtain on how people set and accomplish big goals and give you a GPS toward changing your life forever. If there is one episode you listen to all year, let it be this one! In This Episode We Cover: The real estate G.P.S. system GOAL Specific Difficult Feedback Commitment Training your reticular activating system Make sub goals Reward yourself for small wins PLAN Why humans need processes and steps Lead measures vs. leg measures Learn the L.A.P.S. system on finding deals Keystone habits SCHEDULE Schedule meet-ups Set the behavior, time, and location ACCOUNTABILITY Why you may want to join a group that meets weekly with clear structure And SO much more! Links from the Show GoBundance BiggerPockets Podcast 226: From “D-Student” to $400,000 in Annual Rental Property Cash Flow with David Osborn BiggerPockets Calculators Realtor.com James Clear BiggerPockets Events Goals Research Summary (Graphs) Brandon’s Blog Posts StickK App Steph Curry Shoots ‘Til He Makes 500 3-Pointers Every Day: Here’s the Crucial Lesson That Teaches Us (Blog) Books Mentioned in this Show 90 Days of Intention by Brandon Turner (Journal) Handbook of Positive Psychology by CR Snyder & Shane J. Lopez 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute by Richard Wiseman The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Mason Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff Tweetable Topics: “When people wrote down their goals, they were 33% more successful in achieving them.” (Tweet This!) “Subconscious is a powerful ally, but a terrible master.” (Tweet This!) “Every goal you desire is preceded by a process required to get the results.” (Tweet This!) Connect with Brandon and David Brandon’s Instagram David’s Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast. Show the Rio 7. Every goal you desire is preceded by a process required to get the result. In other words, like if you want to lose weight, that's great to have a goal of losing weight, but what really gets you the weight loss is diet and exercise, right? If you want to buy real estate, there's a process involved in the process that David and I talk a lot about is the... You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio, simplifying real estate for investors, 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 to everyone? My name is Brandon Turner. Today's host of the Bigger Pockets podcast. And I am super excited about the show and I'm super excited about my co-hosting crime, David Green. What's up, Not much, man. This is a very good episode because we're not just interviewing somebody else about how they bought real estate. We are talking to people about how they can improve their own game to buy it for themselves. Yeah, yeah. So today we're looking at success in general on how people actually achieve a huge success. Like this has been an obsession of mine for the last few years. And I know, David, you're as well. Like we've been obsessed with the ideas. Why do some people talk about doing big things? They talk about investing in real estate. They talk about losing weight or started a business or whatever, right? Whatever their goal is. And then they don't actually accomplish it.

And so, like, you and I have had countless discussions about this, where we just like, why do so many people not take action and not do it? And it's not just desire. It's not just they don't have the, you know, whatever. There's a number of things. So we're going to go over that today. So this is a show that I've been looking forward to doing for several years. And we've finally compiled all of the information, the data, the science, the research behind

what makes people successful. And that's what we're covering today. Yeah, I think that it's probably a bit of a surprise for a lot of people. But Brandon and I, when we get together, we very rarely actually talk about real estate. We talk about what he just said. It's like success. What makes successful people successful? What holds us back from being successful?

What our dreams are, where we want to go in life and what's getting in the way of that. And because we have a solid friendship, we actually work with each other on areas that we think that the other person could improve. And we're actually very, very passionate about that. I mean, real estate is the way that we achieve. achieved our success. But we spend most of our time focusing on the 80% of the listeners who are just having a hard time getting over that hump. We want to go back to those people and help bring them up rather than just focus on the top 20% who are already doing great and it's easy. So this is where we spend all of our time like kind of mastermining and focusing on what are the things successful people do and how can people that are not successful copy it. And that's what today's show is going to be about. And I can guarantee you guys, you're going to have your minds blown because you probably haven't realized how much work Brandon and I have been put. putting in to putting together the tools that you need to be successful. Yeah, I think so.

I think people are going to love this. So with that said, like, keep in mind, like, we're going to give a lot of examples of real estate investing today, but this does apply, even if you have other goals in life that you want to accomplish. This is just, this is a goal setting, we'll call it a system or a success system that will take you from where you want, where you are right now to where you want to be. So before we get into that, though, let's get to today's quick tip. All right, today's quick tip is very short and simple, and I hope it's going to keep it short.

Basically, today, one of the reasons we're doing today's show here about setting big goals because the new year is right around the corner, but also because we are launching today a new, it's like a success journal is what they're called, but ours is called the 90 Days of Intention Journal. And I kind of led the charge on putting this thing together. It's available today. It's super fancy. It's got like this leathery kind of cover, really beautiful design.

And it's got like one goal in mind. to help you achieve your biggest goals. Like, this is not a book in, like, the terms of, like, you're going to read, you know, like a bunch of, like, hundreds of thousands of words of information. This is a, like, a 90-day, week-by-week, day-by-day guide that you're going to fill out. Every day, you're going to fill this thing out, and it helps you actually achieve your biggest goals.

It's kind of like, here's an analogy to use an analogy like David Green likes to use. If you go to the gym, right, it's good advice to work out, right? We all know we should work out. We all know should eat to diet and exercise. This journal is like, it's like, here's like a document that you can follow every day and enter in your calories and enter in your exercise and enter in your fitness goals and then think about fitness this way, but don't think about it this way. And then in addition to that, it's like going to the gym with a group of friends every single week. That's kind of what this whole journal thing is. And I had some people asking, well, how is this different than a notebook?

Just check it out, BiggerPockets.com slash journal. It is not a notebook. It is a system, a success-based plan that takes your biggest goals and boils them down into very actionable steps that you can work towards your goals every single day. So that was the not-so quick tip. But check it out, biggerpockets.com slash journal. And it's very important. We'll explain why later. It's very important that if you're going to get the journal, do it before the end of December.

December 30th, or December 31st, there's some cool bonus stuff you get before then. So there you go. That is our quick tip. Like that, David Green? Oh, I loved it. All right. A lot of property managers think their job is answering tenant emails and coordinating repairs. That's not the job.

The job of a property manager is protecting and growing your operating income and earning your trust while they do it. And that comes down to three numbers, occupancy, delinquency, and net promoter score. If those numbers slip, your income slips, and your trust slips, too. Most PMs don't hold themselves to performance standards. They focus on activity, not outcomes. Mind is different. They obsess over the metrics that actually grow your cash flow. Go to mind.co slash show me to see how mine performs and get a month of management for free.

Because if you're going to hire a property manager, hire one that manages your investment like an investment. Have you ever lost a DSCR deal because the financing just took too long? Red flags popped up late. The lender needed more time. The deal fell apart. Well, our friends at Dominion Financial just launched a program to help prevent that. With their new express rental loan, you can close in 10 days or less. And they still offer their price beat guarantee so you can get great pricing and a timeline you can count on. Fast, simple, reliable. That's Dominion. Check them out at biggerpockets.com slash dominion. That's biggerpockets.com slash dominion. Most investors spend more time chasing deals than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly.

That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily. They focus exclusively on landlords, whether it's a single-family rental, a burr builder's risk policy, or midterm holiday guests. You get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. Before we actually get into the GPS system, I want to talk about the problem here. And David, you can jump in here as well.

But we see this problem. We've talked about it before. Like, success really gets boiled down to like two things, right? Knowing what you want and then having the discipline to do it. And so people struggle with both those. The problem is twofold. They haven't defined what they want. And even if they have, many people, including myself in a lot of areas,

lack the discipline to get there. So, David, question for you, have you ever, and this is for everybody listening, have you ever started towards a goal, like something that you wanted, whether it was buying real estate deals or a new business venture or, like, weight loss, or you wanted to get in shape, or you wanted to run a marathon or anything at all. And then it fizzled out over time. Like it started with all this fanfare and you're all excited about it. And then over time, it wasn't like a sudden death.

It just over time fizzles all. Has that happened to you? Probably 95% of the time. Okay, me too. Right? Like actually recently, I was like, I'm going to do the whole 30 diet, right? For a whole month, do a 30 day, you know, no sugar, no bread, no dairy, no, basically like you eat like like I don't know meat and vegetables for like a month right and I started with so much

fanfare and I made it like two weeks in and then I was like I you know I had a little bit of this and a little bit of that and pretty pretty soon it just kind of fizzled out so today's show is about why that happens and how we can make that not happen and we're going to overcome those problems of like that of not defining and not getting there based on this acronym GPS and to be honest David Dillified this funny I'm sure It was actually GPSA. There's actually four things I want to talk about. So we're going to call it the GPS with a bonus of an A at the end.

Because I could not find, what's the word, what's the word an acronym? I could not find an acronym that was like GPSA and it didn't sound right. So whatever. We're doing GPS with a bonus A at the end. And actually, the A might be the most important thing. One of the most important things we're going to talk about today. In fact, there's a study, I'll talk about later, that showed that your odds of it increased, like, Your odds of accomplishing your goal can increase by almost 50% when you apply that last A.

It'll take everything else you did and it can increase by almost 50% versus just the GPS alone. So we'll go through all of that today. And I don't know. With that, are you ready to get into this thing? Let's do it, bro. So G for GPS, G stands for what we all know. It probably does stand for, right? Goal.

So before we jump at this, I want to talk about having a goal, right? What makes an ideal goal? So I don't want to just pull out like, you know, what I think makes a good goal, even though we'll talk about that and what David thinks. I want to know, like, what is research? What is scientists and psychologists? What have they studied to know what makes a good goal? And I'm sure we've all heard that smart goal. Have you heard smart before, David?

Like S is like specific measurable. Measureable, yeah. Attainable or there's a few. Anyway, I like smart goals. They're fine. But I really, I was doing some research and found that in the handbook of positive psychology, which is like one of like the textbooks for like psychologists. They have like this section on goal setting on what science and psychology has shown. And they have four things listed that makes a good goal.

Number one, this actually lines up with smart goals. It's specific. So in other words, when you have a specific goal, you take specific action. When you have a general goal, it's kind of you take general action and typically doesn't get you there. So I'm wondering, David, if you can jump in on anything having to do with like specific goals. Like for people listen to the show today who want a good specific goal for the year. What's a good example or what's some advice you can give for this? them. Yeah, so you don't want a goal that says, like, I want to get in shape, right? Because your

brain doesn't know what to do with that. And what you'll do is you'll beat yourself up because you didn't get in shape. You'll have a bad experience with your goal, so you just won't do it at all. A better goal would be, I want to go to the gym four times a week, right? Because you know what you can do with that. You can then calendar time in your calendar that says, I will go to the gym at this time. You can get other people involved that asked, did you go to the gym? You can put a strategy around something that is specific. If you put a strategy around, I want to get in shape, you'll have a bunch of things that are designed to help you,

but they don't really know how to help you. And the more general it is, the easier it is to justify not doing. There you go. So let's give a couple examples of real estate. Let's say you're a brand new. You're a brand new real estate investor. You have no properties whatsoever.

You want, like, what is a good specific goal for that person? We'll get to the actual process for getting that got done. But like, what's a good number or something that you think people should shoot for? Well, you're brand new. I'm really big into you should learn first. And so the goals that I set for myself, one of the things that I want to learn is how to get into commercial investing.

So the goal that I set for myself is I want to be able to explain to someone who has no idea how commercial investing works, how it works so that they can understand how to analyze a commercial property. That's a cool way to look at it. I actually have never thought of that before. A goal could be to understand something good enough that you can teach you. And in fact, actually that actually when I was doing research on all this stuff, one of the studies I found is that like they and I don't remember the exact number because I don't have that I wasn't thinking about talking about that today but basically they said the best way to learn something and it's like dramatic is if you envision yourself teaching that thing later like it increases your odds of actually learning this stuff if you if while you're learning it you think I'm going to have to teach this to somebody later yes it increases so for that exact reason that's that's perfect I love that cool all right so what about like what if you're passing education phase. You've already been listening to the podcast forever. You feel pretty comfortable.

Now you want to get into real estate. How does somebody know what goal is set for a specific goal? It should be specific. I'd say something like, I want to analyze 10 properties a week. Okay. So why not say I want to buy 10 properties this year? The problem was saying I want to buy 10 properties this year is that you're putting pressure on yourself to do something that may not be a good idea. And there's many different ways to buy. You also don't know what you need to know in order to buy. So saying you want to buy 10 properties in a year, that can be a good goal, but why wouldn't you buy 12 if you found 12 good ones? And why wouldn't you stop at 7 if that was the only deals that came your way?

That's an interesting way to look at it. I like that. All right. So you're saying so a specific goal might be like I'm going to, it's a process goal, right, versus a number goal. I think that's powerful, right? I got out, I don't think number goals are bad. I mean, I had a goal of, you know, for example, I wanted to buy a mobile home park last

year. And so I set the goal and I ended up doing it. But like, at the same. same time, in order to get that goal accomplished, I had to set a bunch of process goals. I was analyzing one deal every single day, and I was hoping that would result in the deal, you know, getting it accomplished. So very cool. Okay, so specific goal, we now have gotten a specific next difficult. That's the next thing the handbook of positive psychology said about goals is the goal should be difficult. And here's what they actually said in there. Given that people are committed to a goal,

they exert effort in proportion to what the goal requires. So an easy goal stimulates low effort, a medium goal, moderate effort, and a difficult goal, high effort. Do you find that true in your own life? Has there ever been like a huge goal that you set for yourself and you accomplished it because you put in massive effort? Oh, absolutely, 100%. And I'd also say the times where I didn't have to put much effort into a goal, I didn't really experience much growth.

And so it wasn't very much fun. That's a good way to look at it too. Yeah. Like I actually, yeah, when goals are simple, it's like, you know, I want to do this one little tiny thing. It's not that exciting and invigorating. So the bigger goal you do. Now, there is obviously going to be too big, right?

If it just deflates you and you're just climbing a mountain that you can never climb, that's a bad idea too. So for somebody who's brand new, a good example of that, if your goal for the year was, you know, a specific goal, I want to buy 700 properties this year. You know, I'm going to analyze 400 deals a month. Like, it just would get overwhelming, right? But if you could analyze, you know, would it be difficult to analyze one deal a day for 90 days straight? You know, like, that's actually a difficult thing to every day for 90 days to be able to do it.

But is it impossible? Of course not. Anybody could do that. It's just, it's difficult, right? It's also a process goal, which I think is kind of cool. All right. The third one on here is feedback. That's the third one that the handbook of positive psychologist said is a feedback.

In other words, can you at any given point see where you're at on pursuit of your goal? Is it trackable? Is it can you have knowledge of your results? So if your goal is to buy a property this year, if your goal is to analyze a certain number of deals this year, can you see where you're at? With real estate, that's actually pretty easy. With weight loss, that's actually pretty easy. If your goal is to be a better person, is that trackable?

Can you get feedback on, I want to be a better person? I want to be a better husband, right? That would make the goal less likely to accomplish if you can't get immediate feedback. And a lot of people make a mistake. They want to be a better real estate investor. They want to buy more properties. What does that mean, right? It's not specific.

It's not necessarily difficult. and you can't contract feedback on it. And I'll just move on to the fourth one. The last one is commitment. In other words, they say, I'm going to actually read this because it was really good. Action is the ultimate proof of commitment in that people can say they're committed and not really mean it. Two types of causal factors are critical in commitment. One, the belief that the goal is important.

And two, the belief that one can achieve or make progress towards that goal. I thought that was kind of interesting. One, you have to believe that the goal is important, right? And you have to believe that you can actually do it. If you don't believe those two things, you're not going to have commitment. That's what commitment is based on. That's what action is based on as knowing those two things. So let's go back to real estate again, right?

You believe that real estate investing is important. Why? Why is it important? Well, real estate investing to me is important because it's a way of knowing that I'm preparing for the future. 30 years from now when I look back, I'm going to have bought a house for 100,000. It's going to be worth 300,000. It's going to be paid off.

It's going to be providing me with income when I'm no longer able to work a lot. There's a lot of reasons why it's important. But it's very easy to put off. And so that's why I have to make it a priority because 30 years from now when I look back, it doesn't matter if I intended to do it. If I didn't do it, I don't get the benefit. Yeah, I love that. Actually, there was another, I'm going to scroll on my picture because there was another

study that related to this. Oh, yeah. All right. So it says here. And I hope you guys enjoy, like, I don't know, we're doing something kind of new today, but I love seeing what, like, studies and research and psychologists say. Because, like, it's one thing to get, like, subjective advice. from people, which I think is helpful.

It's another thing to say, like, mathematically or scientifically, this is what's going to help you. So check out this out. A study in the journal of research and personality suggests that there are material benefits to having your goal aligned to your purpose. Researchers followed the same sample of people over a period of nine years, and they found that during that time, individuals who reported a greater sense of purpose had started to accumulate greater wealth. I thought that was super cool.

Like, not only like does you have it a good purpose and a good reason behind what you do, not only is that a good idea in terms of like getting your goals done, but it actually scientifically can make you wealthier. Now, if you ask what does it mean purpose? They defined it this way. They rated people and they had them answer this question. Do you agree with this statement? Some people wander aimlessly through life.

I am not one of them. So people who said, yeah, I'm not one of them. I don't wander aimlessly through life. Then they are most likely to be more wealthy, which I think is. is just good hope for all of us who are listening to a podcast here on being intentional about goals because we're all not wandering aimlessly through life. Well, I can say I a thousand percent agree with this because I see it play out in my own life.

So I'll give you an example. Working out is a goal that I have and almost everybody has. We know we're supposed to exercise. Do I exercise right now? It's very intermittent and not like consistently, right? When I was working as a full-time police officer and I knew I'm going to get in a fight this week, I'm going to be in a struggle for my life. I could seriously get hurt or my partner could get hurt.

I had a purpose to stay in shape and I was in the gym every single day before my shift started because I was so scared if I'm not in shape and he gets away from me and he hurts somebody else. I'm never going to forgive myself, right? I had a very strong purpose for why I was doing it. When I was a basketball player, it was the same way. Working out wasn't, oh, I know I'm supposed to. it was, I don't want to lose that next game. And if he's in better shape than me and he gets to the ball before I do, I'm going to be so upset, right?

So when you tie your goal to a purpose, it makes it a thousand times easier on yourself to accomplish it. And it stops being just willpower that's trying to push you towards it. And instead, it's this like deep desire you have inside to accomplish this goal that frankly kind of makes it a downhill struggle instead of an uphill, or a downhill coasting instead of an uphill climb. Yeah, that's great. That's great. One more final thing before we move on to the P of GPS. It says a 2015 study by psychologist Gail Matthew showed that when people wrote down their goals, they were 33% more successful in achieving them than those who formulated outcomes in their heads.

And I'm going to get to that a little bit later, talk about another way to even, the A, I talk about GPSA. The A will help you even more than just writing them down. But writing them down does help you become 33% more successful than those who don't do that. So why do you think that is, David? Why riding it down helps? Well, I know. Yeah, why does writing it down help? I mean, everyone kind of knows that, but why?

So when we were training police officers, we would teach them that when they get stressed, their brain is going to push aside everything that is not extremely important in that moment. So I saw guys, especially newer guys or that were not as familiar with being in a stressful situation, not recognize their own name in the middle of it. I'd be saying, Jared, Jared, and he would not even recognize his own name because he was locked in on the gun that we were looking at. that the suspect had or whatever the problem was, right? And what I learned through that training was that our brain has what we call a reticular activating system that determines of all the stimuli that's hitting us, what matters

and what doesn't. And if your brain in your subconscious determines, I don't need to know this right now, it pushes it aside. So right now in this moment, as you're listening to this podcast, you're hearing traffic go by you, you're hearing the hum of a refrigerator, you're hearing people talking and your brain is ignoring all of it because you're focused on David's voice and Brandon's voice and maybe you're thinking about how this stuff would apply in your life, right? The minute I say that, boom, you become aware of it.

You need to train your reticular activating system to help you, not hurt you. And that's what we would do with cops is we would teach them to take deep breaths, slow your thinking down, slow your heart rate down, so that you can hear the guy next to you saying, I need you to cover me, I'm going to move forward. Or I'm going to cover you, you need to go forward because that's what's actually going to help you in that moment. It works the same way with goals. When I write my goal down and I look at that goal every single day, I'm telling my reticular activating system, hey, buddy, pay attention for anything that's going to help me to accomplish this.

This matters to me. So when I'm hearing someone in a conversation next to me, mention the word house flip. Normally, my brain would be like, who cares? I only want to know about what the next dancing with the stars episode is going to be, right? But when you've trained yourself to pay attention to that, you're like, oh, yeah, so are you in a house flipping? Why, yes, I am. And that leads to you getting invited to a meetup, which leads to you meeting more people. And it kind of steamrolls that way.

If you're not writing things down, it's very difficult to train your reticular activating system to know what it should be warning you about. Yeah, one thing, another example of the reticular activating system that I've heard explained, and it's so true because it worked for me. So I was looking for to buy a new car recently. I wanted a Toyota rev four because I really liked them. I looked at them a couple times. And all of a sudden, everywhere I drove was RAV-4s all over. Like the entire world was made up of RAV-4s. And it was the weirdest thing.

I was like, I did not realize there's so many RAV-4s. Then I bought one. I have it now. This is like six months ago. I bought it. And I don't see RAF4th anymore, ever. Like, they're never around. So is it because like, they're just miraculously disappeared?

Of course not. It's my, I tricked or I focused my RAS into focusing on that one thing. I knew that my goal was to buy a Rav 4. So I saw them everywhere. My brain is taking millions of pieces of data that are going through its head at any given point, millions of stimuli. And it's pulling out things that it thinks are important for me, because I've identified what that is.

This is why it's so important to not just write your goals down, but to reflect on them all the time regularly. This is why I love recommending and why I've used success-based journals forever. Because, like, I mean, for years and years, I've used these journals. And finally today, we're launching Bigger Pocket's own journal based on what's worked in my life and in the other journals that I've used. Because it's like, hey, every morning you're writing down what that goal is. So it's in the front of your brain.

So you're subconsciously finding ways to make that happen. If I give one more example of this, So every year my wife and I do a goal-setting date, we'll call it. Every year we go out to the beach at Seabrook, Washington. It's one of my favorite towns in the world. It's amazing. Seabrook, Washington. Very cool.

Check it out. And we rent a little house out there sometimes, or maybe we'll just go out there and go to this restaurant. Either way, on the 1st of January, we'll go to this restaurant together, the same restaurant. We sit in almost the same spot, and we review our goals for the year. What do we do last year? What do we want to accomplish this year?

It just became a tradition. We've done it now for five years, I think, going to row now. Last year, January of 2018, we sat down and wrote down our goals for the year and we wrote some five-year goals. One of those five-year goals was to move to Hawaii, to buy a house in Hawaii that had at least one extra unit that family and friends could come stay. That was a five-year goal. We wrote that down. And as most of you guys know, we just moved to Hawaii. We bought a property that had an extra unit.

We accomplished our five-year goal in like seven or eight months. Now, a lot of things fell into place to be able to get the house that I'm in right now. A lot of luck fell into it, a lot of cool things, and a lot of like random happenstance. But it all happened because I had that goal written down and I reviewed it all the time that that's what I wanted in life. And so it took what was a five year goal and made it a half a year goal instead. And that's that razz working in real life. Now, Brandon talked to me about that goal that he had, right? So a lot of conversations that he had kind of spun around what would it take to get you there?

He had to learn a little more about house hacking because he didn't want to pay out the teeth to live in Hawaii. He wanted it to be more affordable. He had to restructure his life so that it wasn't so dependent on being in Washington. He was able to make money and provide for his family in different areas, right? There were some tax implications of moving to Hawaii that you had to put in place so that it wouldn't hurt you quite as much. There's a lot of things that go into this that make a goal seemingly insurmountable or very difficult. And Brandon started systematically knocking out all those barriers. and what he found is that within a year,

he had them all knocked out and it was a viable option for him instead of the five years that he was planning on. None of that happens if he doesn't write it down, talk about it with somebody else, and let his subconscious start turning in the background to accomplish it. One of my friends and mentors, Brandon knows him very well. He's in Go Abundance with us.

Dave Osborne says that your subconscious is a powerful ally, but a terrible master. You are either training your subconscious to help you work towards your goals or it is holding you back and keeping you in place by telling you, you could never do it. This is too hard. You don't have what it takes. There's all these things that could go wrong. And if you speak with high, high performance coaches, this is always where they start.

They want to know what's going on in your subconscious because unlocking that unlocks the power that we all have. Wow. That's deep. That's deep. I like that. So we got to move on past goals. The last thing I'm going to say because it kind of leads into the next thing, psychologist Richard Wiseman, who is a, he has a bunch of YouTube videos, but he also writes a lot of books.

In one of his book, books is called 59 seconds. I would highly recommend it. It is fantastic. It's about a bunch of little things you can do in your life to change your life in under a minute. It's really, really cool. But anyway, in there, he studied goals a lot. He's a psychologist. He did a bunch of research and studies on him.

And he found these five tips for setting goals. And this leads us into the next section. But the first one, make a step-by-step plan. Break your goal down into concrete, measurable, and time-based sub-goals. So that's where we're actually moving to next. And that's another reason that this journal that we're launching today is so important because that's exactly what it does. It gives you a section first to define what your goal is. And then it helps you break them down into weekly battle plans and then takes them down into daily action plans in which you can actually put what those little things are into your calendar, which again, I think is super cool.

Anyway, so that's the first thing, make a step by step plan. Next, he says, tell other people about your goal. Make it a public declaration increases motivation. Third, think about the good things that will happen. if you achieve your goal, but don't fantasize about it. This is actually really interesting studies they've done. People who do a lot of like, you know, like, I am rich, I am powerful, I'm visualizing myself as already achieved the goal, have a less likely chance of achieving their goal because

their subconscious thinks they already got it, right? So when you fantasize about already having it, you have a less likely chance of actually achieving it. A lot of people don't know that in the kind of personal development world, but science has shown that it's not good to fantasize, but it is good to know what good. things are going to happen. For example, when I got into real estate, I said, I wanted to get financial freedom because I wanted to have a kid someday. And when I had a kid someday, I wanted to be the best father ever. I wanted to be there for them for every event, every soccer game, every whatever,

right? Every ballerina recital. I don't know what kids do these days, but like swimming lessons. I wanted to be there, right? And like, that was a good thing I thought about. And I, I dwelt on. I didn't fantasize. I am already successful. I just said, this is what's going to happen if I get there. I'm going to have that life and it pushed me towards achieving it. So number three, or level number three, number four, Wiseman says, reward yourself for making progress in your goal. Small rewards help push us to major successes. And this is something I think we'll talk about later. There's another study that shows that as well. That's just like small wins are one of the greatest I guess chances of continuing on a goal and not phasing out, the way that we talked about earlier,

where people just kind of phase out of their goal. Small wins, the more you can make that happen, the better. So maybe your first goal, again, this is why we take down big goals to smaller chunks. Maybe your first goal is to learn enough to explain somebody and your goal is to sit down and explain it to your spouse perfectly. Once you do that, you just got a small win. Now your next goal is to analyze 20 deals. Okay, great. Once you do that, you get a small win and maybe you reward yourself with something small. Like, hey, you're going to take a weekend trip away with your wife as soon as you analyze 20 deals, right? And then the last one that Wiseman, psychologist Richard Wiseman says, is to record your, this is like his word.

It's not mine. Record your process. Keep a journal, graph, or drawings that plot your progress. Again, we just keep coming back to this idea of writing down your goals. And again, even if you don't end up getting the bigger pocket success journal, there's a lot of them out there. Get something that you can keep track of that on a day by day, a week by week basis. It'll make a huge impact. So one of my favorite people is Jocko Willink. He's a former Navy SEAL. He wrote the book Extreme Ownership. I love it, right? I love the way Jocko thinks. I listen to him all the time. and one of my goals is to get on his podcast. So if anybody out there knows Jocko or knows how to get on his podcast, please reach out. I would love to be able to talk to you to make that happen. He speaks about something that I'm very passionate about, which is that on the battlefield, he would say this is the mission. He had this big, hairy, crazy, audacious goal that they'd have.

How are you going to do it? And he was very good at taking this really complicated concept and breaking it into very small submissions. And he knew if he won every single small submission, he would end up winning the big mission, right? So what he found is successful people developed the skill of taking a complex thing and breaking it into several simple things and focusing on that, right? And that will lead into the power of a checklist, which I don't know why our brains work this way, but there's something we love about making a checklist and checking it off. In fact, Brandon loves this so much that he will make a checklist and he'll make the first thing make a checklist just so that he can check it off and say, I made a checklist, right? And then the second thing will be check something off on the checklist.

Well, he gets to do that because he just checked the first thing out, right? So what you're doing is you're harnessing the power you already have to make things easier for yourself that will help you accomplish your goal. I love it. I don't make checklist that weird. Okay, maybe I do. All right. Let's move on to the second one. So that was goal.

You got to have a good goal set. And we can talk about more about that in the future. But for now, I want to move on to the P, which is plan. You have to have a plan, right? I think there's a quote. I can't remember the guy's name. He's like a French name. But it says basically, I'm going to butcher it now.

But basically a goal without a plan is just a wish. I think that's what he said. A goal without a plan is a wish, right? I have a goal to buy a rental property this year. Well, what's your plan to get there? Well, I don't know. That's my goal. You're not going to get there then, right?

You got to have a plan. So what is your plan to get there? So actually, I want to read you guys another study I read that. I found fascinating. So researchers wanted to see if they could get more students to get their tetanus shots, their tetanus vaccinations. So they printed up two different leaflets and they measured the success of each one. The first had a scientific explanation on why students should get vaccinated.

The second had gruesome pictures of the effect of the tedness. Which one do you think worked better, David? Which one would you guess? Ooh, I have no idea. I wouldn't even know where to start. It's a trick question. Neither worked. They were horrible, right?

So they made one more trial. This one, they simply put a map on the paper showing the location of the campus' health care center and its opening hours. And that one worked like magic. Why? Because the researchers added process and steps on how to exactly achieve the desired outcome. Isn't that great? Isn't that great? Like just by having like we need a process.

We as humans like to follow a plan, whether we admit it or not, we like to have something kind of spelled out for us. Which is why like when I say like today's thing, today's show is GPS system. Because people like a system. They like a process. Like a goal, got it. Plan, got it. S. We'll get to that in a second.

and A, right? So, GPSA is our system. So what does a plan mean? Well, we talked about this earlier. And in fact, when Richard Wiseman said, you got to break down your goals, that's what he means. If you have a big goal, for example, my goal, for a lot of people, their goal, and my goal was and for a lot of people is financial freedom. Okay, well, what does that mean? Let's get specific about that goal. Okay, my goal is to have $5,000 per month in income from rental properties. Great, that's a really good goal. Great, we're getting specific now. When do you want to accomplish it by? Well, I want to do it within five years.

Okay, so in order to be on track, this is something the one thing, the book, the one thing, talks a lot about goals setting to the now. If you want to accomplish that goal in five years, what do you think you need to have accomplished in the next 12 months to be on track? Oh, well, if I want to have, you know, within five years, I want to have $5,000. I'd like to have up to $1,000 a month and passive income by the end of this year. Okay, great. In order to be on track for $1,000 on passive income, what would you need to do this quarter? Oh, man, okay, well, I probably should have at least one property under contract this quarter. Great.

Let's break that even smaller. Weekly. If you need to get a property under contract this quarter, what would you need to do this week to get that? Well, I probably should, you know, start sending out, or, you know, get my leads coming in. I need to get leads coming in. Okay, great. Well, how are you going to do that? Well, I'm going to, every day I'm going to spend at least 10 minutes looking on.

realtor.com or talking with my agent on getting leads and I started analyzing it. You see what we just did there is we took down a big goal that people have, which is a wish, right? And we attached a plan to it. And now we have something that might get accomplished. Right. So we took this big goal down to I'm going to start analyzing deals or I'm going to start looking at deals or I'm going to call a real estate agent or whatever. You need to get there and then you need to be able to actually do that stuff, right? Because at the end of the day, every single thing you try to accomplish in life. In fact, this is the quote, Hal Elrod's does this in one of the miracle morning books. Every goal you desire is preceded by a process required to get the result. In other

words, like if you want to lose weight, that's great to have a goal of losing weight, but what really gets you the weight loss is diet and exercise, right? If you want to buy real estate, there's a process involved, and the process that David and I talk a lot about is the lapse funnel, right? You have to get leads. You have to analyze those leads. You've got to pursue them, go after them, and then sometimes they work out to success, LAPS. And so if you don't have a process, you're likely not going to get there. Now, I know, David, you're a real estate agent and, you know, a pretty darn good one, I hear. I know this is huge, especially with Keller Williams and the agency that you're part of,

is this idea of a process. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, so one of the guys that I look up to a lot is my friend Ben Kinney. He's a big real estate agent within Keller Williams, and I'm really trying to get him on the podcast because he has an amazing success story where he went from like living in a cabin in the woods without running water to being a multi-multiminar that owns tons of property, sells tons of houses, a very humble guy. And he teaches a different kind of GPS. It's very similar to this, but his GPS stands for a goal priority strategy. And I guess as Brandon was talking a little light bulb

went off in my head. And what I realized is everything that we are discussing is a way of converting a goal into a plan, right? It's all the tools and the systems that we use to transfer it from a desire into a process that will get you that desire. And that's really important, right? So at Keller Williams, Ben Kinney teaches this idea of the goal priority strategy, one three-five. So you have one goal. You come up with three strategies that will help you get there.

And then you come, or sorry, three priorities that will help you get there. And then five strategies for each priority. So it might look like my goal is to sell 100 houses a year. Then I would come up with three strategies, how I'm going to do it. One of them would be talking to everybody in my sphere and telling I'm a real estate agent. another one would be holding open houses. Another one would be holding seminars and teaching people about real estate in the hopes that they send me deals.

Then I come up with five strategies for each priority. How am I going to hold open houses? I'm going to hold this many every week. I'm going to find them from this location. This is what I'm going to do at the open house to make it work, right? Now, those actual strategies are something that I can measure, that I can track. I can write down and know, am I hitting this or not? Did I hold this many open houses this month?

why not? What do I need to do to change it? Did I make sure everybody signed in that came to my open house? Did I follow up with all those people? Because if I miss any of those steps, then I'm not going to accomplish that strategy, which means that priority won't work, which means I won't hit the goal, right? It's the very same thing we're talking about now. And these are all tools that successful people use to take what seems like a crazy mountain top goal you could never get to and break it into things that you can control,

which are the strategies. There you go. Yeah, because a lot of times we can't control the outcome, but we can control what we do. And that's why having a plan is so important. So let's get specific and talk about real estate real quick. You know, I already mentioned that maybe the strategy or the plan is I'm going to analyze X number of deals per month. I think that's a really good lead measure.

I've been talking or learning a lot lately about lead measures versus lag measures. Lead measures are things that predict the result. The result is a leg measure, right? So losing weight, the lag measure is the scale number. Like, what do you actually weigh? The lead measure is how many times you worked out, how many calories you weight, right? So lead measures are things that you can influence. We can't influence getting an offer accepted.

That is a lag measure. We can't influence that. I mean, we can't direct that. But what we can do is we can direct and we can influence our lead measure. So I'm going to analyze this many deals. I'm going to attend this many real estate meetups. I'm going to take this many investors out to coffee. I'm going to have this many conversations with lenders.

Those are lead measures things that we can do. And if we do those lead measures, If we follow the process, the results should take care of themselves automatically. Now, that's not always true. We might need to shift how we're doing our lead measures, right? We need to make adjustments along the way. So again, if your goal is to buy a single rental property in 2019, like, what is the process needed to get you there?

Like we said, you're going to need leads. You're going to need to analyze them. You're going to need to pursue and make some offers. And then that should take care. Those three lead things should take care. of the success at the end. This is so good. I'm making a course right now.

This was Brandon's idea, actually, because we were masterminding on ideas for how I could hit my goals. And he said, you should make a course for real estate agents that teaches them how to become a top producer and make a bunch of money in their first year, right? And one of the things that we're talking about is exactly what Brandon is saying, but I've never put it into this context before. If you focus on the lag, it is very easy to get discouraged. Did I get a deal?

Did I get an offer accepted? No, this sucks. It's not working. If I focus on the lead, there's things that I can do to me. make it better. Well, I could write more offers. I could write better offers. I could target houses that are more likely to get offers accepted, right? So just the subtle difference on what your brain focuses on impacts how much success you're likely to have. And I use this analogy of I was a big basketball player, right? And you want to shoot better. If you focus on your shooting percentage and

it's not improving, I just need to shoot more, right? You're not actually going to make any progress. You're just going to get discouraged and want to quit. If you focus on the lead measures, that would be things like, did I get my elbow in? Did I flick my wrist? that I spread my fingers, or my feet squared up, things that you can control, and you practice and practice those until their habits, well, the lag measure is going to take care of itself and you're going to see it in the form of a better shooting percentage. If I did everything right and the ball still missed, I can't worry about that. I just have to make sure I did everything right.

You can't look at the results and say, oh, I should quit because I'm not getting the results I want, because we don't control results. Once that ball is out of my hand, I don't control whether it goes in or whether it doesn't. All that I could control was that I take the steps. that I should have taken before the ball left my hand. And that is what successful people do. So what we're talking about now are practical steps that you can take to shift your focus onto the things that will make you successful,

rather than all the things that you focus on now that discourage you so that you don't even try. Yeah, that's really good. That's a good analogy to the basketball thing because, again, we can control some things that we get discouraged, right? I mean, how many people out there listening to this have been discouraged because you made an offer and it didn't get accepted, right? It's like, oh, man, I tried. And like by by knowing that you're just following a process, it takes the, it helps take the emotion out of it.

It's okay if you get an offer rejected or if you go after something that doesn't work out because you're just working a numbers game. If you stick with that, you're likely going to be fine over time. And so again, stick with that plan. One more part of the plan I want to bring up here is the idea of habits. So I recently write a book, The Power of Habit, and I can't remember the guy's name who wrote it, but it was a really good book. It's all about how like habits define most of what we do. I think they Duke University did a study that said, 40% of what we do during the day, our waking hours, 40% are subconscious habit driven.

Like, I mean, everything from what shoe do you put on first every day, David? Do you even know? Yeah, I do the left first every time. You put on the same. Okay, every time, right? We do so many things, habits. Now, the great thing about that is, I mean, habits define who we are and what we achieve in life.

Like, almost entirely, our habits define who we are and what we achieve in life. And the great thing is we can build and destroy habits as. needed. Oh yeah, Charles Duhigg, I think is his name, Power of Habit. We can control habits, right? We can build them into our life. And if you want to know how to do that, there's a really, again, that book is fantastic power of habit. But what habits are you doing in your life that are getting you to where you want to get to? For example, a habit of waking up early, and I'm saying you have to wake up early to be successful. There is a lot of data that actually shows that, but I'm not going to get that today. But let's see your habit is to wake up an hour earlier,

so you have more time to spend on your real estate investing before the kids wake up or before the spouse is up and needs your help with stuff or before work, right? That might be a habit you can build in. Now, again, building your habits is going to be key if you want to achieve great things in life. And that's part of this whole plan thing. So as part of the journal that we're launching today, there's actually a section in there on habit tracking. You actually list down some of the habits you want to build. So, for example, some of my habits are I want to read a little bit of a business book every single day.

That's a habit I'm tracking. I want to drink water every single day. I want to read something spiritual like the Bible every single day. a little bit, at least if I can get every day get into a habit. It doesn't have to be hours and hours of work. I want to drink, the first thing I do every morning when I wake up is I drink a glass of water, a huge glass of water. Why?

Because I read a study, a research study that show that people are more effective in all areas of their life when they drink a large glass of water first thing in the morning. So we actually put that right in the journal. Did you drink a glass of water this morning? Because it's, like, it's studies show that helps. It helps dehydrate you, get your brain working better, get you, wibated. up better, help you accomplish more and better things. So again, figure out what habits you want to build in your life or what habits you want

to kill in your life and start tracking it. What you track, what measures usually gets done. And I find that in almost all areas of my life. If you track it, it usually gets done. If not, you just help me figure out something I've always been trying to figure out with that brilliant piece of insight. I've always wondered why when somebody has success in one area of their life, it often translates into success in other areas that they weren't having.

I'll have a friend that gets really into fitness, they'll get in great shape, and the next thing I know they're getting promoted at their job or they're starting a new job and they're doing great. And I'm like, it's not like being fit was something that made you a better salesperson. I don't get why that happened. I just assumed it was confidence, right? But I don't think it is. I think that they developed habits that made them good at getting into shape. And once they became habits, they applied them in a new area, which made success in that area better, which supports your idea that habits are what determine how successful you'll be. and that by disciplining yourself in something,

you will then have developed habits that will carry over into other things. And that's why Brandon and I often talk about things that have nothing to do with real estate investing, because we know they will have everything to do with real estate investing success. It's not always that you need just to be a better analyzer of properties. You need better habits that will then carry over into your real estate investing business and make you more successful. Yeah, that's great. There's a blogger out there named James Clear. I think is James Clear.com.

One of my favorite bloggers, he's just fantastic, all about like research and psychology and all that. Anyway, he calls that a keystone habit when you change like one habit that makes everything else kind of fall in line. It's just fantastic. So again, track that. And the way you can do it, again, if you're using the bigger pocket 90 days of intention journal, you can do it right in there.

But if not, just grab a piece of paper, make a grid, right? Write down what the habits are. Maybe you have five, six, seven habits you're trying to build in your life. And then every day on the, you know, going across the kind of spreadsheet or grid, check off, did you do that habit or not? And set a goal, right? So, for example, drink a glass of water every morning. Right.

So great. Now you have, did you do it today? Check. Did you do it today? Check. At the end of the week, after having to seven days, add up. What did you get? Did you get three out of seven?

Five out of seven? Seven out of seven? Add all that up. And you can kind of gamify it, right? And so at the end of the week, you can add up your whole score for the week and say, hey, I got a 75 out of 90 this week. Next week I'm going for a 76. Because science shows, study show.

When you gamify things, when you put numbers and score, cards of things, you're more likely to accomplish as well, which is why we built that into the habit tracking part of the 90 days of intention journal. So, speaking of that, we got to move on and get to the S of this. We already covered the G, which has set a good goal. P, which is plan. You can also call it process. And the third one, but before I get to that one, I do want to mention because one last time, or I'm sure I'll mention at the end again, but today, the 90 days of intention journal is for sale on bigger pockets. So the question I ask you guys is, I want to know, what do you, I'm going to read off a couple statements here. I want to know what you think about

that. Like, how do you feel when you hear this? What if you could achieve every goal you set for yourself no matter how high? Or what if you woke up every morning knowing exactly what levers you need to pull to get closer to those goals? What if your uncertainty on what the right path is? What if that disappeared and before you was a step by step path towards your goal? Or, or you, you're Or what if your dreams of success could be road mapped in just a couple minutes of work every day? What if you could approach the day like a walk on the beach, calm, steady, and beautiful? And what if the key to all of this was intention? So that's what the goal of the journal is, is to make your life work like that.

Because when you intentionally plan out your life on what you're trying to do, amazing things happen. And we put together this journal, it's 90 days. There's a bunch of weekly reports in there. we call them weekly battle plans and then daily action plans. And as you work through it every day, just five minutes a day of reviewing, what are your goals? What is the most important next step you can do on those goals? You know, where are you at on your laps funnel? What does your calendar look like?

What are your habits look like? There's a spot for a schedule in there. There's a spot where you can write down what your most important thing is for tomorrow to do. Because studies show when you, the last thing you do at night, if you write down what you're going to do the next morning, you'll actually sleep better at night. All this stuff is designed to give you the most powerful, amazing 90 days of your life. And if you do it, run it for 90 days. See what happens.

If you love it, then get another 90 day journal then or if you don't love it. In fact, we even have a guarantee. If you don't love the 90 days of intention journal after 90 days, just email support at biggerpockets.com and get a full refund. Because again, we believe that strongly in this thing. So again, 90 days of intention journal, you can get it at biggerpockets.com slash journal. And that said, we're moving on to the S. of GPS and that is schedule because if it's not on your calendar, it's not likely to get done.

Do you agree, David? This is something that I've had to have some like real honest talks with myself about because now my life is crazy. I'm a real estate agent. I'm building a real estate team. I'm hosting this podcast. I'm writing articles for different websites. I'm writing books.

I'm coaching people. I'm speaking. I'm doing seminars. There's a lot of different things I'm doing. Right. And so what I've had to learn is if I'm going to do. this well, it needs to be scheduled that I'm going to do something or I will miss it. So what I've had to learn is everything is funneled to my assistant, Krista, Krista puts it on

my calendar. She gets me the things that I need to do it well, and I follow the calendar that she sets for me. Every time I've strayed from that, I've dropped balls, I've lost track, I've failed at things. When it's on my calendar, it gets done. And I've just had to give up, throw up my hands and say, this is the only way I'm going to be successful is it has to be calendared, right? And too many people think in their own ego that they can handle it without that and you won't do it. Yep.

It's so true. It has to go. If it's on my calendar, it likely will get done. And if it's not, it probably won't get done. And so, yeah, huge. So we're going to schedule it into your life. You need to have a calendar, whether it's an online one, whether you use a journal, whether you use a combination of both. You got to have it done.

In fact, here's another study you guys are going to love. A study in the British Journal of Health Psychology found that 91% of people who planned their intention to exercise by writing down when and where they would exercise ended up following through. Meanwhile, it said people who read motivational material about exercise, but they didn't plan when and where showed no increase compared to the control group, which in other words, means like, those people had, I will do this at this time in this location. And 91% of those people actually accomplished it because they set that intention, right? I love that, right?

Like, if you want to accomplish something like, hey, I'm going to analyze some deal. Great. When, where? How? Right? Oh, I'm going to sit down at my computer at 3 o'clock today from 3 to 3.30, and I'm going to analyze two deals that I found on Realture.com. I'm going to use the bigger pockets calculators to do that. Boom. Now it's more likely you're going to get that done. In fact, like the psychologist has found, chances are you will get that done because now you plan it. But so many people, they just have this like, I want to get this one thing done sometime, right? Sometime never happens. Someday never happens. It's I will blank behavior at blank time in blank location. And then you're going to get it done. And again, put it on your calendar. So when you schedule things, like, there's a good chance to get done. So again, if maybe your goal is, hey, I'm going to go to a real estate meetup, right? If you say, you keep, for years, you've been saying you want to get together with other real estate investors.

How many people listen to this show right now have been saying that they want to get together with other bigger pockets members, but just haven't done so. A lot of you, right? So I will go to biggerpockets.com slash events as soon as I get home and find a meetup in my area and click attend and then I'm going to put that on my calendar. Do you think maybe you'll get that done if you do that? I think there's a much better chance than saying someday

I want to get together with some bigger pockets people. Again, biggerpockets.com slash events, totally free to go there and find an event in your area. And if there's no event in your area, if you are a Bigger Pockets Pro member, you can start an event in your area, post an event. And then you can be the hub of,

there. So again, schedule it. GPS. Anything you want to add on that before I move on? As I'm thinking about this, I'm realizing in my relationship with you, we are the same way. We'll say, yeah, we need to talk about so-and-so and we never do it. When we're like, hey, Wednesday at 7, are you free to talk about whatever? We put it in our calendar. It happens almost every time. Yep. Yep. It's so true. You got to schedule it and you got to be consistent with it. I mean, this is like basic like tortoise and the hair stuff, right? Like if you just do a little bit every day or a little bit regularly at process and you have it on your calendar, and you just keep knocking this stuff out,

you're going to get to your goal accomplished. You're going to get what you want. But you can't rely on just, I hope this works out, I hope I buy real estate. You got to have a goal, you got to have a plan, you got to schedule it.

And then to really boost your chance of success, to really maximize it, studies show that this one thing can increase your chance over written goals. Like, you know, written goals are good, right? We already looked at that. But they can achieve even a 50% increase over written goals

by doing this final thing, the A. If you own a large or complex rental property, congrats. And I'm also sorry. One day you're building a portfolio. The next, you're reconciling six accounts, five states, four LLCs, three partners, two property managers,

and running your portfolio starts to feel like running a median size accounting firm. And if you got into this to get your time back, that's not ideal. That's when you need Stessa Pro. Stessa Pro is built for investors who've outgrown other tools. One dashboard, every property, every entity,

real-time performance, clean reporting, tax-ready documents in a click. If your portfolio has grown up, it's time your tools did so too. Go to stessa.com slash mkTG slash bigger pockets to try Stessa Pro and get six months free. Most investors spend more time chasing deals

than reviewing their insurance. But a quick coverage check can be fast, easy, and one of these smartest ways to protect and even improve your property's cash flow. As the months get colder, frozen pipes, icy walkways, and seasonal wear and tear can increase the likelihood of claims. And traditional insurance companies aren't always built to handle these claims quickly or smoothly.

That's why more real estate investors are turning to steadily. They focus exclusively on landlords, whether it's a single-family rental, a burr-builder's risk policy, or mid-term holiday guests. You get fast quotes, flexible coverage, and protection for property damage, liability, and even loss of rental income. Now is the perfect time to review your rates and coverage. Get a quote in minutes at biggerpockets.com slash landlord insurance. Steadily, landlord insurance designed for the modern investor. Wouldn't it be great if your house plants paid rent while you were out of town? I mean, they've got the whole place to themselves, lots of sunlight, zero

responsibilities. But no, they just sit there waiting for someone to spray them with some cool mist like a bunch of leafy loafers. But guess what? Your home actually could be earning you money while you're not there. Airbnb has a great feature called the COVID, host network, which makes hosting your home so easy. If you live far from your property or are away for extended periods, you can hire a local co-host to take care of the hosting for you. These co-hosts are vetted locals who already have experience hosting on Airbnb. A co-host can handle all the details like messaging guests, creating your host space, and managing reservations. So everything runs smoothly. It's a practical way to earn a little extra money, maybe even some cash toward your next trip.

Plus, you get to share your place with someone traveling to your area while you're off making memory somewhere else. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com slash host. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed, sponsor job posts help you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it will, works. Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored post. The best part,

no monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Rookie. Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie.

Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need. With that, let's get to the final. We had G stand for goal. P stand for plan. S stands for schedule to really maximize that process. You've got to have what we call accountability. So I want to read this study to you because this just blew my mind.

It's a little bit long and complex, but please stick with me because this is like life-changing stuff right here. So there's this woman who did this study, and I wish I could have her name. I'll try to pull it up in a minute. But anyway, she did the study where she grabbed a bunch of people and put them into five different groups. Group one, you don't have to memorize it, but I'll just say group one had to just think about their goal. Group two had to write their goal. group three had to write it and then come up with something that's some action plan group four they had to send that action plan and their goal to a friend like an accountability

partner and group five had to do all the same things but they had to send weekly reports in other words they had to meet weekly with this accountability person and here's the results basically and i will actually put this graph this chart that i found in the show notes of this page at bigger pockets.com. So, show 307. But basically, here's what worked out. The group that had just, you know, I want to accomplish something in their head goal had a 42% chance of accomplishing their goal. People who wrote down their goal, a 60% chance.

That's pretty good. People who had a written goal and they determined in their head what their action plan was actually dropped down to 50%. People who told their friend that they were going to do something, what they were going to do, had a 64% chance. and people who did weekly accountability had a 76% chance of achieving their goals. So let me just re-explain what that means. If you just, according to the study, if you just have a goal, you have a 42% chance. You have almost a double chance of achieving it if you have accountability. Now, if you are somebody who has a goal, you have a plan and you have, you wrote your goals down,

you still have a 50% increase in chance of accomplishing your goal by having a half, having weekly accountability. So what does that mean? Well, there's a lot of ways to do that, right? So some people have weekly accountability groups. Some people have weekly accountability partners. Some people have just a weekly call with a friend. Some people have, like the journal in itself can kind of be an accountability,

but only if you send it to somebody else, right? And this is the last thing like I want to cover today is this idea of accountability because this has been probably the biggest impact of my life. As most of you know, David and I are part of a group called Gobundance. It's kind of a accountability group you could call it that, but it's larger. It's really just like a giant group of, I don't know, 150, 200 people that are just crushing it on their goals. This has been really helpful. But with the ingobundance, they actually were setting people up with small mastermind groups of like three to five people.

So at bigger pockets, we're like, hey, maybe we should do the same thing because we know that scientifically people who have accountability groups are more successful. So here's the thing. If you buy the journal that we're putting out before December 31st, you actually, will be able to opt in to your own real estate investor mastermind group. We call them intentional mastermind groups. We will actually pair you up with three to five other people who have opted in who are excited about real estate at your experience level. We're going to base people on beginner, middle, and experience, like, you know, super experienced, medium and low. And we're going to put you in a group to be able to work through this thing weekly because we at Bigger Pockets want to

make sure you have the greatest chance possible. So again, anybody who picks up the journal is going to be able to get that as long as you do it before December 31st. Now, let's talk about accountability real quick. What makes a good accountability group? I'm actually working on a blog post. It'll probably be out actually by the time this show comes out. So I'll put the show notes at bigger pockets.com slash 307. But here's a summary of what a great accountability group, in my opinion, how it works. First of all, number one, you have to have the right group. It doesn't mean everybody has to to have the same goal, but it should be in the same field generally, right? The same field. So if you're, if you're trying to do real estate stuff, get in a group of other real estate investors.

Secondly, you have to have a standard weekly time to meet at most every other week. But it's got to be regular and standard. Why? Because weekly accountability is what's going to get you to your goal. The studies show that, right? So set a weekly standard time. Put it on your calendar, schedule it, right? Number three, I recommend establishing roles. Like, somebody needs to be the facilitator, the leader, the person who says, hey, guys, guys or girls, right? I would say guys, but then people get mad for me saying guys. So guys and girls, like, this is the time we're meeting. You didn't show up last week. What's wrong? We need somebody to be a facilitator. You need somebody to be a note taker. It could be somebody within the group, or you could hire a virtual

assistant to show up to your calls and take notes for everyone. You need a timekeeper, right? Because mastermind groups fall apart when they just go on forever and they're not very structured. You need structure, which we'll get to in a second. And the timekeeper can do that. Hey, man, we're at the time. Let's move on to the next section. Fourth, you need to prioritize this event through penalizing this event. In other words, if you say you're going to show up, studies show that punishment is

300% more effective than reward at accomplishing something. Now, there's a lot of studies that have different ways of looking at this, but one of the ones I was looking at earlier, it said 300% more likely, which means, so for a while, I was in a group, I mean, I've had a group now for four years, the same group I've been a part of. And like, we have like these, like, silly little things we've done over the years that are like, hey, if you miss a meeting, you got to do 100 pushups, right? If you miss a meeting without calling. Or I know one group, a friend of mine, actually, David, one of the people in Go Bunnance, one of their groups, it was like, I think it was like 10 grand. If they missed a meeting without calling ahead of time, it was like

$10,000. They had to donate to somebody, to like a chair. There's also a app out there called Stick, STI-K-K-K-K-I-K-I-K, I think it is. It's an app where, like, you donate to an anti-charity if you don't accomplish whatever it is you said you're going to do. So, like, if you're Democrat, you can support Republicans or if you're pro-choice, you support pro-life. It's a funny app, but I did that for a while. In fact, I lost a bunch of weight a couple years ago with a buddy where we had weekly accountability calls on each of us trying to lose weight, and we use the stick app. So again, there's that, prioritize it by penalizing it. So it has to be, I mean, it has to be the number one priority in your life, or at least one of them.

And the fifth thing is you have to have a regular agenda and a clear structure. If you just get together and say, hey, guys, what's up, you know, hanging out, we're just talking. Hey, what's going on in my life? Those always fall apart. Every group I have ever been a part of that didn't have a clear structure fell apart. And the only group that I'm still part of four years later has a very clear structure. And this is how generally we operate and how the ones that I've seen operate. Here's how they work.

The first five minutes, it's like chit-chatting on high and lows. What's been awesome this week? What suck this week? Next, for the next 10 minutes or so, everybody identifies three things. What big goal are you working towards? What did you commit to last week and did you accomplish it? Everybody goes out in the circle and quickly says that, just two, three minutes apiece, right? What goal are they working towards?

I'm working towards buying a rental property. Last week I committed to sending out a thousand direct mail letters. Did I accomplish it? Yes. Next, for the next half hour of the session, so we're at five minutes, then we're at 15 minutes. Now from 15 to 45, one person each week and it rotates every week is in the hot seat. The entire group dives in and helps this one person with their problem. Or if they don't have a problem, they can just go through their general life, like, you know, what their plan is or what they're working towards.

But one person each week gets to be the hot seat. and in the last few minutes of the call, every person has to answer two questions. What are they going to commit to this week? And then what is the most important next step that they're going to accomplish? So that is my full synopsis of how a great accountability group works. So again, if you're part of the bigger pockets, 90 days of intention groups, we'll be sending this out to everybody in those groups. But if you're part of just another group, maybe you want to adopt part of this in your own

life. So, David, I've been talking for an hour now. Yeah, the very first article I ever wrote for Bigger Pockets, I wrote it right after I was interviewed the first time. That's what I met you and Josh in person, right? Or as close as person as you get, it was in Skype. And I don't remember the title, but it was something like, this is why Steph Curry shoots 500 three-pointers a day. If you Google Bigger Pocket, Stefan Curry, you'll see it, right? And I tell this story of what I was in high school and how my coach stopped the practice. He said, who here agreed in the beginning year they wanted to be a better shooter? Everybody raised their hand.

He said, who stayed late after practice yesterday to practice their shooting? I was the only one that raised my hand, right? We were shooting bad that day and all of us had to run, me included until we were throwing up. It was a horrible, horrible day, right? And at the end, he said, you guys all said you want to be better shooters. Well, why didn't you stay late to practice to improve it? And it really put me, I wrote this article because it impacted me a lot as I spent time trying to figure out, well, of course we all want to be better shooters who doesn't want to be better.

But, yeah, why weren't they staying late to work if they really wanted it? And what I realize is there's wanting and there's wishing, right? If you're not taking action to accomplish your goal, you don't want it. You just wish it would happen. If the goal fairy came and touched your head with her wand and said, you now have your stuff, you would accept it, but you're not willing to go take the steps to make it happen. So it's a lie to tell yourself, I want to be a real estate investor. I want to build wealth because you really don't if you're not taking steps.

And that's something I would challenge everybody who's listening to this. if Brandon is laying out this argument that this is how an accountability group should work, and you're not going to go form one, don't say I want to do this because you're tricking yourself into thinking something that's not true. Start saying, yeah, I would like to be a real estate investor, but I don't want it. And that's what I do, right? When I'm not taking action, I start telling myself, I don't want to do this. And it bugs me because I know I should. I should be doing that. I'm capable of it. So when I start saying, I just don't want it bad enough. That's why I'm not doing whatever. it starts to build something up inside me that eventually gets me over the hump to where I'm like,

F that, I am going to go do this, right? And that's what I would say. If you guys hear the stuff that we're telling you and you're not taking action, it just means you don't want it. There's many reasons why you might not. So why are you listening to this podcast every week if you don't want it? It's because you wish you could have it. Move your wishing into wanting. Start taking those steps and the results will take care of themselves. Two notes on that. First of all, Michael Jordan has a quote. I actually have the sign. My wife bought me a sign because I love this. quote so much. It said, some people wish it would happen. Some people want it to happen. Other people make it happen. Right? So I love that. Again, I love it so much. I got a sign up. My wife got me one.

But the second part of that, there's a guy named Mark Manson who wrote a book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F. And it's actually a really, really good book, if you don't mind the swearing. He mentions the thing in there about goals. He's kind of a goal, productivity, kind of an author. But he mentions this really great point that there's goals. And when you look at goals, you shouldn't look at, do I really want this goal, but am I willing to sacrifice to get this? He said it's a shift, right? Like, instead of thinking, do I want the result? You think, do I want the pain associated with the result?

Do I want the pain of shooting 500 free throws a day? Do I want the pain associated with dealing with tenants? Do I want the pain associated with having to analyze 400 real estate deals every year in order to get three of them to work out? And if not, that's fine, but it means that you might not actually want the goal. It's a good way of looking at it is don't look at do you want the result, look at you want the pain. He also says in that same book,

he says that people who are successful fall in love with the process. If you look at somebody in the gym that's ripped, they love working out. Like, I do not love working out so I don't go to the gym. However, I love surfing,

and so, like, it's not worked to me. I fell in love with the pain of surfing. I fell in love with the pain of playing racquetball. So those I will do all day long any day of the week, right? Because I love the pain associated with it.

I honestly love the pain of analyzing deals and putting together a real estate deal. I love that pain. Like, it's fun to me, right? But if you don't love the pain, it's going to be hard to do it. So what you need to do is find a real estate strategy that you can fall in love with. Maybe it means you're just going to do the marketing for somebody else because you love

the marketing and you can fall in love with that pain. Or maybe you're going to fall in love with the pain of raising money or something. But find what you can love the pain of and work that. That's good, man. I pay good money for what I just felt when you said that. You know, no exaggeration. She's a moment coming, okay? I've spent a lot of time with Brandon.

He's one of my best friends in the world. He's more like a brother, right? He is the best father I've ever seen in my life. It scares me what a good dad you are. I don't understand where it comes from, how you're as patient as you are. But like, you clearly love being a dad, and that is why you're so good at it.

It's that simple, right? You love the painful process of being patient with Rosie and guiding her along the way and putting up with stuff that make little kids difficult. And that's such a good point is that you got to find out what you love. You got to fall in love with the process of greatness and what you want to be great at. And then you won't catch yourself frustrated thinking, oh, I just need to do better. I need more willpower.

No, it's not willpower that's going to get you there. It's love. Wow, that's really good. Well, thank you for the kind words. I do love being a father. It is very fun. So, all right, y'all, I hope you guys have enjoyed our show so far. We're not quite done yet, but I just want to say the GPSA, right?

I want to revisit that. Goals, plan, schedule it. and then get held accountable to it, whether it's an individual accountability partner and accountability group, get some way to keep moving forward week by week by week by week. Look, if you just, if it's like if you always just keep inching forward, here's an analogy I use all the time. If you're playing football, imagine if you're a football plan, right? If you're in football, if you always consistently move the ball three yards down the field,

every single play, you would be undefeatable. I mean, you could not lose, right? Because every time you made it, you know, three yards, three yards, three yards, three yards, you get another first down, then you do it again and again and again. If you just keep little by little by little, people oftentimes think that the way to win a football game is to do a bunch of cool hail marries. But the best football players, they don't do the teams, they don't do that. Like watch a football game. It's like run, get two yards.

Run, get three yards. Pass, get five yards. It's just let's keep moving the ball down the field. And your goals are the exact same way, right? If you just take a little action consistently, you have a goal, you know where you're going. You have a plan. You plan every single day, working a little bit at a time towards it.

It's on your schedule. You've scheduling it, and you've got somebody holding you accountable to actually doing the right levers. Like, you're going to achieve what you want in life. You're going to get there. Like, David and I have experienced it in our old life by following the same process. You're going to experience it as well. And I'm sure you have in many areas of your life.

But you've got to do it. You got to get out there and do it. So I just recommend, I mean, just take something you learn today. Maybe listen to the show over again if you want to take notes when you get home, if you're driving right now. But this stuff doesn't work if you don't apply it to your life. So hope you guys are enjoying this. Now, before we get to the end of the show,

we're going to do a kind of a fun little famous for. Famous for. First, let's hear from Mindy on what's going on this week on the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. Thanks, Brandon. Our guest this week is Patrice Washington. She's America's Money Maven. And the beginning of her story is going to be a little bit familiar to you or listeners. It's 2007.

she was on top of the world selling real estate literally as fast as she could list it. But then 2008 happens, and I bet you can guess where this is going, her world kind of changes a little bit, and she shares what happened to her during the crash and how she rebuilt her life afterwards, basically doing anything it took to make ends meet. But now she's back on top of the world and doing what she truly loves, teaching people how to use their money to build their own best lives. Okay, I'll let you guys get back to the famous four. All right, and today's famous four, we're going to do something kind of special, actually. I am going to change the famous four questions around, and I'm going to ask David for brand new questions.

All right. You ready for this? Throw them at me. We're interviewing you today, David. All right, David, what is your least favorite real estate investing strategy you've ever done? Ooh, God. It's going for the cheap, easy deals that look like they're going to have a great ROI, and then become a horrible headache later in life.

I've yet to ever squeak one out that was like, I'm just going to buy this house for $30,000 and I'm only going to put $6,000 into it. They always end up being in the worst neighborhoods with the worst tenants and the worst experience. Trying to skip on the fundamentals of real estate, and one of it is what location, location, location has always come back to hurt me. All right. That's a good answer. Number two, what's the latest business book that you've been obsessing about?

Oh, that's a good question. Okay, it is called Pitch Anything by Orrin Clough. It is a completely revolutionary idea that I never even thought of. He's really in a frame control, which it basically, to sum this up, your frame is the way that you look at life. It's the perspective that you carry, like looking out a window frame. Brandon and I can be looking at the same thing from two different locations out of different windows. We're seeing different things, right? So we often see this with a guy like Donald Trump.

He's very polarizing. One person looked at him and he says, oh, he's making America great. He's fighting for our interest. He's a strong leader. Another person looks at him and thinks he's a crazy psychopath who's going to blow us up at any minute, right? The very same person with two completely different perspectives because people have different frames.

Well, in the book, Orrin makes the argument that when two different people come together, our frames do not meld and become some kind of hybrid frame of a little bit of each of our views. No, the stronger frame overtakes the weaker frame. And that is the frame in which both people in the relationship will see the topic that is being discussed, right? So this is a really good way to get people to see things from your side of view and help them understand what you're passionate about. If you want to raise money for real estate, the people you're talking to are going to come with a frame of, this is scary.

What if I lose my money? Do you really know what you're doing? Can I really trust you? They're never going to let you borrow their money until you sound so confident and in control and you've taken the alpha position, that relationship that they see. This person knows what they're doing. I feel safe. I'll let them borrow the money, right? And I never realized how many ways I was giving up the alpha position or putting myself down to make other people feel better, which was then making it harder for them to trust me or see things from my point of view.

So now that I've read that book, I'm like all about, man, what are the ways I'm sabotaging myself? What are the ways I can strengthen my frame to make it easier for people to understand what I'm trying to teach them? Because we want to help people. We want you guys to accomplish your goals that are real estate related. That is why Bigger Pocket's podcast exists. It's why Brandon and I are like incessantly strategizing about how we can make this easier. The better I get at that, the better I can help you guys see this from our perspective because our perspective works.

That's why we're successful investors. Wow. Good answer. All right. Yeah. Pitch anything, Oren Clap. We heard that a few years ago, Josh Dorkin and I, both read it. We just loved it.

All righty. Next question number three, right? What hobbies do you wish you were good at, but you suck at? I wish I was better at surfing because you love it. And it is fun. But I just don't know why you have fun doing it. To me, it is just an exercise and exhaustion the entire time that you try to go out there and do it. It's like 99 units of work for one brief moment of almost fun and then you fall and have to start all over.

That's what it is. I know the consistency is the key. I got to keep doing it. When we went surfing in Austin, you were there, right? Yeah, you were there in Austin. We did the wave pool. That was a ton of fun, right? Like it removed a lot of the things that made surfing hard.

So we actually got some experience and I got up a couple of times. But if I could have the magic fairy come touch me with the wish of I could be better at something, it'd probably be surfing. Good answer. All right. Number four, this will be the same last question. What do you think separates successful people from those who give up, fail, and never get started in regards to goal studying? Why do some people accomplish their goals and some people don't? Some people set up their goals to where they focus on the lead indicators, not the lag indicators,

and they break a complex problem into simple solutions, and they fall in love with the process of conquering very small goals, overcoming them, and then taking the next step up the ladder and wrestling with that specific goal. If you have the ability to take a very complex, scary concept, what do we call it in the beginning, a dream or a desire, a wish, right?

And you can convert that into a goal that has a process that you follow. It is almost impossible to fail. And I'm serious about that. If I did the workout that the rock, does and I ate the food that the rock eats, I may not accomplish his physique because genetically and physically were different people, but I would get a hell of a lot closer to where he is than where I am right now, right? The problem is it's hard to get in the gym. I don't know what to do. I don't want to go through the workout. I don't have my diet set up so that that kind of food is around,

right? But if I broke it into small little pieces, getting my diet under control, scheduling time to go to the gym, learning the workouts, there is no way that I couldn't look more like the rock if I did the exercises. And if I'm not doing it, it just means I don't want to. So I have to start telling myself, I just don't want to look like the rock, which then our subconscious will start to get involved.

Like, no, that's not true. You do kind of want that. And you'll start that mental battle that will eventually get you over the hump. All right. That's a great answer. And a great way to end today's show. So that's all we got, guys.

I hope you all enjoyed today's podcast episode, show number 307. If you want to ask any questions or jump into the show notes, give it because of comment, go to biggerpockets.com. slash show 307. And of course, follow Bigger Pockets everywhere. You can find BP at Bigger Pockets on Instagram, at Bigger Pockets on Facebook, all that good stuff.

Follow David at David Green 24 on Instagram and me at Beardie Brandon on Instagram because we're like 13-year-old girls when it comes to Instagram. And that's all I got. I don't know. Anything you want to close us out with, David? Nope. I thought this was a great episode. Brandon, thank you very much for putting the work you did into putting this together and sharing some of the stuff you've learned. I learned a lot just listening to you talk, so you should do that more often.

Well, thanks. Oh, I will say it one last time. Go to biggerpockets.com slash journal. Order the journal today. Try it out. See what you think. It's like $39, I think, and you get a bunch of cool stuff if you order by the end of the year, including the access to that mastermind group, which I think is going to be one of the most

revolutionary things we've ever done at Bigger Pockets. I'm super excited for you guys, for y'all to try it out. So with that. Thank you, buddy. Thanks so much. Yeah, we'll see all later. This is David, David Green for Brandon the Bearded Wonder Turner. 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 Calicoe 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.com. The content of this podcast

is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results. BiggerPockets LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.