BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 411: The Life-Changing Power of a Goal-Setting Retreat (+ Live Demo with Husband/Wife Investors Matt & Melissa) with Geoff Woods

Episode Date: October 25, 2020

Have you ever bought a whiteboard or a journal and thought, this is it... This is the moment when I REALLY commit to goal-setting... and then (as it tends to do) life just kind of gets in the way? This episode is about rethinking your approach to goals – and to do this, we've brought in an expert on managing your time and mental energy like a billionaire: Geoff Woods, VP of The One Thing and facilitator of their upcoming virtual goal-setting retreat Today, Geoff shares the blueprint that high-performing couples, teams, and individuals use 1) cast a shared vision of the future 2) work backwards to map out important steps, and 3) regularly recalibrate and track progress. Plus, we put this to the test, live! About halfway through the episode, you'll meet Matt and Melissa Miller – married parents of 3 who own 7 units but are struggling to define their exact vision... and the action plan required to realize it. Geoff leads them through a goal-setting exercise live, and the result is inspiring and surprisingly emotional. #MarriageGoals - literally! Whether you're looking to get on the same page as a spouse, business partner, or just chart out a clearer path for yourself... you'll get a ton of value out of this episode. Let us know what you think of it, and use the link below if you're interested in joining Geoff (and Brandon and Heather Turner!) at the retreat next month. In This Episode We Cover: How billionaires set goals What to do when your spouse or partner is not a natural goal-setter How to have an ongoing relationship with your goals A live goal-setting exercise with a real estate investor couple, Matt and Melissa Defining whose lane is whose when running a business with your spouse or partner What happens at a goal-setting retreat Geoff's personal story of leaving medical sales to work with Gary Keller and Jay Papasan Links from the Show BiggerPockets Podcast Virtual goal-setting retreat The 1 thing Website The 1 thing podcast Click here to check the full show notes: http://biggerpockets.com/show411 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets podcast show 411. Most people, when their idea of setting goals is sitting down on January 1st and asking, what do I want to achieve this year? And they put it on a PowerPoint slide or they write it down. And look, that's a great start. But the challenge is the world doesn't need a new way to set goals. They need a way to have a relationship with them. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio.

Simplifying real estate for investors large and small. If you're here looking to learn about real estate investing, Without all the hype, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and be sure to join the millions of others who have benefited from BiggerPockets.com. Your home for real estate investing online. What's going on, everyone? It's Brandon Turner, host of the Bigger Pockets podcast here with my call.

It's Mr. David Green. David, question for you. What are you reading these days? Any book you've been crossing your nightstand over the last few weeks or month? You know, I haven't had time to write a book because I've been, or sorry, reading books, because I've been writing books. So, no, nothing right now. How about you?

Actually, ironically, I am actually listening. I mentioned this on the show today. I'm actually re-listening to the book, the one thing. And I didn't say this on the interview, so I'll say it now. So I'm re-listened to the one thing, which I've read like 100 times probably now. I love that book, one of my all-time favorite business books. And I'm reading it and I'm like, you know what? I'm doing too much right now.

I'm doing way too much in my life right now. And so I actually, like, this week decided to severely parable. back my flipping here on Maui. You know, a lot of people, I mean, I mean, we made over a quarter million dollars last year on flipping or this year in 2020. But I decided, you know what, that's not my most important thing. That's not my one thing. And so I'm actually severely shutting down.

I'm not saying I won't touch a deal if it crosses my plate, but I'm going to devote almost no time to it over the next, you know, at least year or six months for, because again, I got to focus on my one thing. So that's, that's kind of cool. That's a pretty big commitment that you're making there. So you must have really thought this through. if you're taking time away from flipping, which is funny because Brandon never thinks anything through.

That's the joke. So you've been thinking quite a bit. What are you going to put that time into instead? So my one thing, actually Jeff brings up on the show today. Number one is family, obviously. Number one is I want to spend more time with my kids. But number two is I've been putting all my time into open door capital, which is the mobile home park fund.

I look at it and I look at like the big picture. And I've got, I can make, you know, quarter million dollars a year flipping houses, maybe a little bit more if I want to really push it. or I can like buy, you know, $50 million of real estate and raise money and have a fund and bring in employees and like those two things took about the same amount of my time. And so I realized one is significantly more impact than the other. And that is really the goal of today's show is to talk about like, how do we like, well, that's the goal of the one thing to figure out what are the most important things in your life?

And then today's show is how do you align that with your either your spouse? How do you align that with your business partners or with your, you know, your family? your coworkers, your employees, how do we align a goal or a vision for your life? And how do we work backwards from that to get down to what should we be doing today? What are we doing tomorrow? What are my actual day-to-day activities look like? And of course, in the book, the one thing, Jay Pappas, and Gary Keller, who wrote that book, talk about a thing called goal setting to the now. And so today, we are bringing in Jeff Woods. Jeff is an amazing speaker, entrepreneur, and one of the top guys at the one thing organization.

So the one thing is actually a company now that goes around and helps people with this exact topic. You'll hear more about Jeff today when I ask him to introduce himself. But essentially, Jeff is like the guy for teaching people how to figure out what their one thing is and how to figure out that vision for their life. And on today's show, we actually bring in a listener of the Bigger Pockets podcast, a couple, Matt and Melissa. And Jeff actually does like a 20-minute like breakdown of their goals, working backwards, figuring out what they should be focused on.

It's amazing. You're going to be a fly in the wall of that conversation. You're going to love it. And we talk about a lot more stuff today as well. So that's today's show. That was a long introduction. And now, let's get to today's quick tip. So one of the reasons we so urgently recorded this episode,

like we literally just recorded it a few days before releasing it, is because we found out that Jeff Woods, who again is the guy at the one thing organization, I think he's a president of the one thing organization, him and Jay Papazan, who you guys know Jay's been on the show a few times before, author of The One Thing, they are putting on a goal setting retreat here in just a couple weeks. It's in the middle of November. There's actually one for couples and then one for like singles or business. And so BiggerPockets decided to partner with them. So basically,

if you want to attend, we'll talk about more at the end of the show. But I'm going to attend. I'm going to be there. So if you want to come attend with me, it's a digital event. Just go to BiggerPockets.com slash set my goals. Again, that's biggerpockets.com, such set my goals, and you can get a ticket for this event. It's like a two-day goal planning retreat. I'm super excited for it. You'll hear more about that later, but I just wanted you guys to be aware of it. That's a quick tip. 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

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book your free demo at bill.com slash bigger pockets, and get a $100 Amazon gift card. That's bill.com slash bigger pockets. And now, I think we're ready to get to today's show. David, you ready? Oh, yeah. This is an awesome one. I can't wait. All right, here we go. Let's bring in Jeff Woods from The One Thing. Mr. Jeff Woods. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I'd guess it is good to have you here. How you doing, man? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So let's, we're going to, we're going to jump into your story a little bit. You know, you and I've known each other for a few years now, but I want, I want the people to know who you are, you know, what you do and how you got into this world of teaching people, whatever it is,

you're going to teach them today on this show. So, uh, let's go there. Who are you? I am a family man with a business, not a business man with a family. Okay. And what I do, I get to wake up every day and help people change the way they view time. It's our most valuable resource. And the problem is most people are spending their time. They're not investing it. They're spending their time not investing.

Explain that. Well, you ever had one of those days where you were super busy, Brandon? You looked up at the end of the day and you thought, I was busy. I get anything done? Never, never. Never, never. You definitely don't, don't resonate with that. that's most people. You know, they fire up their computers and they check email until they have to go to that meeting or that conference call. They get off. They've got five minutes. They check email again. Somebody calls, asks if they got a minute. And it literally repeats all day long. And so much about what we've done turning the book, the one thing, into a company is about how do we change the way that people view time? How do we help them wake up and actually invest their time with the expectation that it brings a return in their personal life and their professional life?

Now, how did you get associated with the one thing? You know, the one thing, one of my all-time favorite books, I like to say this on the podcast, that it was the first book and probably the only book I have ever read that I got to the last page and I went, oh my gosh. And I went back to the first page and I read the whole thing again. And then I got to the end. And I was like, I'm going to do that again.

And I think I read it. I'm not even exaggerating at least 20 times the first year, maybe more. I just kept, I literally told myself, my one thing is to understand and fully implement the one thing, which I still don't think I've succeeded at. I'm actually listening to it again right now. I'm almost my next time through it in preparation kind of for this conversation, but also just because I need that again. And just going through it, I made some radical changes in my life over the last week after going through it again. So every time I do this book, it's amazing. But how did you get connected now with the one thing,

with Jay and Gary and the whole tribe there? This is such a crazy story. So prior, to co-founding this company with Gary and Jay, I was in medical device sales, which was fantastic job. I lived in Southern California. I woke every day, put on a pair of scrubs, ran through hospitals, sold a device that actually saved lives, try to get my wife to call me McDreamy. She's excellent at saying no. And I was in that place, Brandon, where I think a lot of your listeners are, where things in their life might be good and yet something's missing. They know they're destined for more. yet they're not quite sure what.

And I didn't really know how to begin taking the necessary steps. Two things happened that set this in motion. First, a colleague had a stroke when he was 35. My wife and I had just about a house in Orange County, just had our first child, wife decided to become a stay-at-home mom, and I am asking if what happened to my colleague had happened to me, what happens to my family?

The next week, my company changed my commission structure, and I lost 40% of my income. You put those two things back to back. My perspective changed. I realized that my golden handcuffed job was actually not secure. And I heard the Jim Rohn quote that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I actually made a list of who my five were. And when I made the list, I was overwhelmed with gratitude because these are amazing friends. But the aha was they were not amazing mentors. They were not where I wanted to be. So that became my one thing at the time was to surround myself with the right mentors. And part of that was getting into rooms and networking events and masterminds and events. And the other part of it was podcasts. I literally started listening to Bigger Pockets.

Yeah. Because I thought at the time, I thought my profession was going to be commercial real estate investing. So everything I did was about learning how to syndicate deals, how to do due diligence, how to take deals down. And going down that road, I realize I'm actually not passionate about real estate investing as a career while I always wanted to be part of my portfolio. But what happened was it was our national sales meeting for my medical device company. I walked into the room and on every single chair was a copy of the one thing. And then Jay Papazan walked out on stage.

And for the next hour, he started talking about why he and Gary Keller wrote this book and why it's the surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results. The whole time I am sitting wondering, how could I get a guy like Jay to be one of my five? How could I get a guy like Gary to be one of my five? and when he came off stage, I sprinted across the room and basically tackled him. And what I did not realize is that the one thing had already become one of the highest rated business books of all time. And there was a problem because Gary's one thing is running Keller Williams, largest real estate

company in the world. Jay's one thing, writing books. They were actively searching for somebody whose one thing was one thing. Nice to meet you. That's cool. All right. So, Jeff, I want to know, I mean, going from tackle. I mean, the J. Papathan, right? I mean, like, this guy is like a mentor to me in a, in a, in a digital sort of way. And now in real life in a little bit. And I know, you know, David here has looked up to him for a long time. And he's a pretty legit guy. And then Gary Keller, of course, is like, you know, super famous, especially in the real estate agent world. But I also just, I mean, he's just like legit, right? How did you, besides the fact they were looking for somebody, how did you build that relationship? I mean, the reason I ask is there are people listening to this show right now that.

want to connect with these investors or a mentor or somebody high level, they want to join their company or whatever. Like what, I don't want to use the word tricks, but techniques or whatever got you into their world. Like how did they take you under their wing, so to speak? Or did you take, you know, did you do not feel like that's why it was? Like walk us through that. It's the right question to ask. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. when I started getting in the room with really successful people, I noticed something that surprised me. The average person when they show up to a networking event shows up looking to get.

They're having a conversation and they're not even listening. They're wondering, what can this person to do help me? In the moment they realize, they can't help me, they're looking over their shoulder for the next person. Transparently, I used to be that guy. yet when I really spoke to people who were successful, who are where I wanted to be, they were present. You were the most important person in the room.

And I kept hearing the same question asked over and over again. Out of everything you're focusing on right now, where do you need help most? How might I be able to help you? And the first time somebody asked me that shocked me. Like, what do you mean? How can you help me? You're up here. I perceive I'm down here.

What do you mean how can you help me? Yet, if I'm surrounding myself with people who are aware, I want to be, it would behoove me to start modeling their behavior. When I approach Jay, I said, Jay, my name's Jeff Woods. First and foremost, thank you. Your message blew me away. I've been at this crossroads in my life. This is exactly what I needed to hear. I feel compelled to help advance your mission. So I'm curious. Out of everything you're focusing on, where do you need help most right now? How might I be able to help you? That's what I said to him. That's cool. And he said, we're looking for more exposure for the book. And I said, well, I have this podcast. I started called

the mentee. I literally record private conversations with my mentors. I would love to feature you and share it. We did the interview. End of the interview, I asked a question, what are you focusing on? How can I help? And he said, we're still looking for more exposure. I said, well, I've got a lot of relationships in the podcast industry. I would love to get you booked on their shows. I got them booked. And then I circled back a a month later. What are you focusing on? How can I help? And he said, we're looking for more exposure. So without telling them, I wrote an article for entrepreneur.com and I blasted it on social. And I saw him sharing all my posts. So I commented back, what are you focusing on? How can I help? Let's pause. I've asked how I might be able to bring value four times. How many times did I ask for something in return?

No, never. Zero. The fourth time I asked, his answer changed. He said, we're looking for a publishing CEO for a company we're looking to start. And at the time, Brandon, I legitimately thought of three people I had come into a relationship with in the publishing industry. And I said, I know three guys that might be a really great fit. Let's talk so I can make the right introduction. When we got on the phone, he surprised me because he did not describe the three people that I knew. He described me. That's how. That's cool. So those five words you said there was like, what are you focusing on? I want to just stress that point. because here's what happens I see all the time. They don't ask that.

I like that question because most people just say they start with the second half of that, which was, How can I help you? How can I help you? How can it provide value? And of course, you're giving them a job in that moment. Yep.

Yep. But when somebody asks me, what are you focusing on? I'm trying to raise money right now for my real estate fund. Oh, now we have a direction to go in the conversation. What can help you with it? Well, I'm trying to buy this duplex. Okay,

now we have a direction to go. I'm trying to publish a book. Now we have directions to go. So asking that question, what are you focusing on? I don't know, I wish somebody would have told me that 10 years ago. So, you know, thanks for waiting 10 years to tell me that, Jeff.

But my apologies. My apologies. I am accountable. Okay. So really, really good stuff. So you got in there. You started helping. Let's talk about goal setting retreat real quick.

You know, we got a lot we can cover today. But this is one of them only talk about. You know, Jay and Wendy have been doing like this goal setting thing forever. They've been, yeah. They've been setting goals together as a couple of years. couple. Now, my wife and I do it every single year. In fact, the most popular Instagram post I do every year is always on January 1st because my wife and I have a date every January 1st. We take a selfie of each other wherever we're at, usually at the beach. And we're doing our annual ghost

and retreat. And it gets the like the most interaction of every post I put on Instagram, like 50% more than anything else I do all year long. It's like four years in a row now. It's been this way. And so my question is like, why don't, I mean, why don't more couples or even companies or people take time to go in goal set. And then how did that lead into this whole goal setting and retreat that you guys have been doing now for a number of years and now you're doing digitally? Sure. I think there's two ways to look at it.

From a high level, we were never taught to. Most people, when their idea of setting goals is sitting down on January 1st and asking, what do I want to achieve this year? And they put it on a PowerPoint slide or they write it down. And look, that's a great start. but the challenge is the world doesn't need a new way to set goals. They need a way to have a relationship with them. Explain.

Brandon, I mean, what's your wife's name? Heather. Heather. When you met Heather, there was a moment early on when you realized there was something special with her and you wanted to pursue it. Do you remember that moment? I do, very clearly. How ridiculous would it have been if in that moment you said, Heather, I really like you. and I could see this going somewhere.

So here's what I want to do. Let's get together in a year and see how it's going. Ridiculous, right? We fundamentally understand if we want to have a relationship with another person, we start to go on dates. And in between dates, we communicate. And in between communication, we're thinking about them. And when things are going well, we raise the bar for what's possible.

We talk about maybe moving in together, maybe getting married, having kids. And when things fall off track, you best believe we start to have conversations about how do we get back on track. We understand how to have a relationship with another person, but we don't know how to have a relationship with our goals. People set their goals, they put it on the PowerPoint, and then they fast forward, it's the end of the year, and they go, I'll do better next year. But they won't because they never learned how to have the goal be a compass to determine how they have to behave in the moment. And that's the purpose of the goal, being appropriate in the moment.

You take that to the next level. People set their goals by themselves, but no one succeeds alone. David hears this all the time from Gary. No one succeeds alone. Yet the thought of setting it with a significant other can raise some fears. What if our goals aren't the same?

What if my significant other isn't a goal setter? By the way, if any of you are saying, me, me, me, that's the majority of couples. One person is a goal setter. One person is not. So there's so much friction between not knowing how to and then having limiting beliefs about doing it that they just don't do it. So what do you do? You got one half of the couple wants to set goals and likes that stuff and reads the personal development books and loves the one thing.

And one person's like, hey, just come on. I just want to live my life. I'm just, I'm doing my thing. How do you reconcile that? I think first thing is you have to reframe it. It's what's in it for them. So if you are the goal setter and your plus one is not, it's not about saying, hey, honey, I want to do a goal setting retreat. That's not the way to approach this. It's you're the most important person to me.

I want us to have an amazing life together. And I have realized I'm not as clear as I would like to be about what really matters to you out of our life together. and I would love to be able to understand that. And I'd love you to be able to understand what matters to me so that we can actually support each other at the highest level. Would you be down for that? And if you need to transcribe that you can literally rewind and write that down word for word, it works. And if all else fails, just say,

this is really important. Will you do this with me? That's cool. That's cool. So now that you've been doing, you guys do these goals and retreats every year. and this year you're doing win digitally. Like, what do you guys?

What do you do? And I know late on the show, we're actually going to bring in a couple onto this podcast to talk about goal setting. But at a high level, like, what is a goal setting retreat? What does that like? What have you learned what works? What doesn't work? The thing that I've learned from, we learned this from Gary.

We called how billionaires set goals. The mistake a lot of people make when they set their goals is they set it looking forward. They ask, what do I want to accomplish this year? And the reason that's a challenge is because they're, be things that look attractive in a short period of time, like a year, that can actually be a distraction from where you really want to go. It's just like an airplane. If an airplane takes off and a wind blows it, 10 degrees off course, in the first mile of flight, that's not even noticeable. But over the course of hundreds or thousands of miles, you arrive in a massively

different destination. So the thing that we've learned from Gary is, first thing you do is you actually cast a vision for your life someday for now. And that can be 10, 20, 50 years, which by the way, if it's not facilitated correctly, people don't know how to answer that question. We help with that. And once you have that someday vision, you can then identify where would I need to be five years from now to feel like I'm on track. Again, those are big questions that are hard to answer. But once you got the five years, asking what do I need to accomplish this year becomes really simple. And that's when it gets fun.

Because if I know these are the things that we're focusing on this year, now it's how do we have a relationship with the goals. What do we need to accomplish this month to be on track? do we need to accomplish this week to be on track for the month? And how is a couple do we have a rhythm where we can sit down and date our goals and date each other so that we're on track? That's really good. Yeah, I found that in my, you know, quest to bring Heather into the goal-setting thing because she's not a super goal-setting kind of person, when I had to get her into that, I did kind of the same thing as you did, you were just saying is I approached it from, look, like, I want to be, I want to be a better husband to you. Like, I want to be a better husband to you.

like I want to be more aware of your needs and I struggle with that. And as I basically just said, like, this is how I operate. And so I'd love as you'd help me, like basically help me help myself serve you better. And she was super open to that. Plus, we combined it with, hey, you want to go to the beach for a weekend and go hang out and eat good food. It was a pretty easy sell. And now, like, it's like her favorite thing of the year. One of her favorite things she does all year is because it's time where we sit down and just go through.

like how did we, how did the last year go? You know, what did we do really well on? What didn't we do so well on? How can we do better this year? And honestly, we don't have a real great structure when we do it. And people always ask me like, well, what do you guys do? Like, walks through your exact process. And like, I've always been like, I mean, leaving last year, I was like, I don't have anything good. Just talk to J. Pappasette. Like, go to the one thing retreat. Because like, I don't. So anyway, I'm excited to actually attend this year yours because like I'm to hopefully have a little bit better strategy. So here's the thing that I'll share with you.

I actually made this mistake. We have a saying, think big, go small, trust the dominoes will fall. Think big. Imagine what it looks like for you and your significant order to be on the same page and make this an annual ritual where you're constantly growing together. The opportunity is to go small. Imagine it's like a two inch little domino. You don't have to do everything.

You have to start by doing one thing. Because the truth is, if you line the dominoes up, correctly. If you knock that one down this year, it should unleash some momentum so that when you come back to do it next year, you can go a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger. And over time, you can really build this out. I did not take my own advice. I sat down with my wife and said, as the face of the brand of the one thing, we have to do the whole shebang. And my wife is not a goal setter. And the first two retreats, there was real resistance there. And finally, I realized she never gave me permission to be her coach.

She never gave me permission to be her accountability partner. She didn't want that. She just wanted somebody to listen. And last year, we really scaled it back. And I just said, let's connect. Let's have honest conversations about where we want to go. Let's set goals that matter to you this year. And let's help you have a relationship with those goals.

Let's set mine aside. And we accomplished so much more in this last year. because I just scaled back what the mark of success was. And now she's on board. Now she's like, when are we doing our retreat? And I'm like, oh, so that's what this looks like. That's funny. Yeah, you know, it actually reminds me of a story when we did our goals for retreat.

Like my goals are usually something like, I'm going to write a New York Times bestselling book. Right. And I'm like, what do you want, what do you want, Heather? And she's like, I want to drink more water. And I'm like, oh, come on. Like, think bigger. Like, what do you, what do you want? She's like, I want to like drink more water and maybe exercise.

Yeah, exactly. I want, yeah, that's exactly what she said. It would be nice to, like, be able to, like, go to a coffee shop once a week by myself. And so, like, I wanted to push her to like my level of goal, which I value, which was, you know, write a new book or buy a $50 million of real estate. But it's like you can't decide for someone else what their goal is going to be. Like that's a completely internal personal thing. And so it was my, it was really like, I needed to just walk with her and talk with her and listen about what her actual goals were. So her goal was to drink more water.

I said, you know, I think that's a great goal. I'm going to go along with that with you. So we did it together. So let's both drink a gallon of water a day this year. Let's make that our goal. And so we went on Amazon and found, I should have brought it out here because it would, it's funny. This stupid big one gallon jug. And it has these like times on the side.

It says 8 a.m. Getting warmed up like 10 a.m. You're getting started. Yeah, 12. And I drink a gallon of water every single day and so does my wife. Because we have these stupid big jugs you carry on. And we do it together. And now, like, we're hitting her goal and she feels great.

Her skin is flawless and she feels good all day because she's drinking. She hit her goal and she's super pumped about it. I was going to say, like, flip it. Because rarely is it about the gallon of water. What has that done for your relationship? Yeah. Yeah. It's true.

Like, she hears me, like, helping her and working together on a goal for her. So what I find also is that now she's not that she was ever against helping me, my goals, but now we look at our goals not as this is her goal and my goal. It's these are our goals. And even though it's her goal, I'm doing it with her. And not every goal has to be that way. She doesn't care about my $50 million real estate fund, but she's supportive of it. It's like when you had Jay and Wendy on last year, Jay wanted a ranch.

Wendy could have cared less about a ranch. But because every year when they sat down, Jay kept saying, I want that ranch when in like year four, the opportunity showed up, it was an easy way for Wendy to say, okay, I'll support you. That's cool. That's it. So let's talk about singles. Yeah. I'm going to let David take a couple of questions here because, you know, David's the not married one of this crew.

Speaking of singles, that's pretty much. Well, if you're looking to mingle, David, the ideal place to go is a goal setting. Yeah. Do you have to be a couple to be able to set goals? No. That's funny. No. The third will.

Yeah. Here's a question I'd like to ask. For people that are listening. that either haven't done this before, aren't quite sure what they want. I remember when I first got into Go Abundance, I heard people like Hal Elrod and Dave Osborne saying, well, tell me what you want your life to look like

and we'll come up with goals. And it was so intimidating because I didn't know what I wanted my life to look like. I was thinking, how do I get through today? How do I get out of this position I'm in? And that's all I thought about. I didn't think about vision. I'd love to get your feedback on maybe some of the better goal setters

you know and how they pair setting goals with the life that you want. It's, um, I heard the, the podcast you guys did with Tarrell. And he talked about the challenge that people have where they build a business and then wake up realizing it actually doesn't deliver a life that they want to be living. It's a real problem. And David, what you shared in terms of what do you actually want out of life? What do you, what does success look like? But people at, when they're asked a big question like that, they hit a wall called, I don't know.

And because, I mean, if you look back to the way our education system is designed, we were taught to have the answer not to search for it. Searching for the answer is very much a skill and it's a muscle. So when you ask something like, and we'll get to probably see it with Matt and Melissa, if we ask a really big question, like, what do you want your life to look like in 20 years? you're going to immediately think I don't know. But if I challenged you to close your eyes and take a deep breath and say, what do you really want your life to look like 20 years from now and search for the answer? You'd be amazed. People come up with answers.

So part of it is just recognizing that we don't have to have the immediate answer. We have to be willing to search. Because when we arrive at an answer, now we've got a goal post. Now we can refine it and try to make it more specific, more measurable, more vivid. You've got to be willing to search for the big answers. And I think one thing I was trying to do for a long time was I felt like there was a should that I was pursuing rather than a could. In other words, I felt, I've used this analogy before and I'll repeat it here, that

I felt like I was like a, I was one of those like gold people. They have like the little gold metal detectors on the beach, right? And I was looking around for like my destiny. Like, where is it? Like, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to be into commercial real estate? Am I supposed to be an author? Like, what I finally realized is it just doesn't matter.

Like, it's not a script I'm trying to figure out. I'm not trying to play a part in my life. I am like, I'm a artist that can paint whatever I want. So as soon as I realized that, I feel like it got a lot more clear from me that it's not about what should I be doing and what's the right thing. It's like, what do I want to do? What would be great? What would be fun to paint today?

over the next five or 10 years. So owning a big real estate fund, I thought, well, that'd be fun. Like, it wasn't my destiny. I made that my destiny. Like, doing the bigger pockets podcast, wasn't my life. I just made it part of my life. I chose it. And so I think that that's one thing to help me a lot in terms of the relationship.

And it helped my wife is like when I was talking to her about this stuff. It's like, like, like, what would be fun? I just ask a question rather than like using the words like goal setting even. I would just say, what sounds awesome? What should we do this year? And be like, yeah, I think drinking a gallon of water would be cool this year. Like, every day if I could do that. I feel pretty good.

I'm like that. That's all that's great. I love it. And here's an important distinction that we, David, kind of asked, but we didn't hit, this is not just for couples. Yeah. You know, if you already have a business partner, that is a marriage. So business partners do this.

You can do this with members of your team because if you are a part of a team, you do not succeed alone. You have interdependencies. You can do it with a group of friends or you can do it by yourself. Anyone can do this. but recognizing that none of us are going to succeed in this life alone. We're going to want people with us that matter. That's what brings the richness of life.

Who are those people? And how can you enlist them on this journey with you? Yeah, it's really good. One thing that I really like that you mentioned is about a partner is a form of marriage. When you're choosing your partner, you should be looking at it exactly like what you just said. You don't rush into a marriage. You take a long time to date somebody. You don't just look at what do you like about them. You wait and see what comes up after you give this a lot of period of time. And some people are a lot of fun, but your goals are not aligned. And that is not apparent the first month of time knowing somebody. So in any form of partnership, business, investing, relationship, it's very, very important that you get to the bottom of what the other person's goals are. And I think that's why you kind of have to know your own too. If your plane is going this way, and I think my plane is going the same way as you, but I'm 10 degrees off and we don't come a line, those planes grow apart over that long journey, like what you mentioned.

And business deserves the attention and the respect of going into this slowly and getting to know the other person so that you don't find yourself an investment. You can't get out of easily five, 10 years down the road and you're miserable. And I think there's another level to this, David. I started even getting emotional while you're talking about it because it strikes that level. of accord with me. We have to ask why are we even doing this? You know, why are we trying to build wealth? Why are we trying to build passive income? There's a bigger reason for all of it. And if we realize that no one succeeds alone, that we're going to have partners in business, or we're going to

have teams, who you do business with matters. You know, in this experience that you guys are going to get to go through, we ask the question, who are your wealth determiners? Who do you determine wealth for? And how do you feel about that? Are they the right people? and who's determining wealth for you. And are those people appropriately showing up in your life if they're that important of a person? And I'll share a real example of this. Every week, I sit down with Jay, Monday afternoons, 430,

to do my 401 with him. That's a tool that we use to have a relationship with our goals. I walk into Jay's office. I hand him a copy of my 411, and I've got one for myself. And that is me making a public declaration. These are my goals for the year, personally and professionally.

And in order for me to hit those, this is what I have to do this month. And in order for me to hit that, this is what I have to do this week to the point that I know it's on my calendar. And Jay, as my partner, understood that there was no way I would show up as the highest professional if things were suffering in my personal life. So he always looked to the personal side first. And the number one thing on my 411 that year was to have a certain number of finance meetings with my wife, Amy. because Amy and I were not on the same page with money. And week after week, the very first thing he would ask is,

how was your Sunday finance meeting with Amy? And sometimes, guys, that answer was not good. And I would break down into tears. Because I just didn't know how to get on the same page with her. And I kid you not for an hour, we did not earn the right to talk about anything else. We didn't talk about business. All he did was pour into me to figure out how can he help Amy

and I get on the same page about money. It happened. And we had some extremely big wealth building goals this year that we hit because we were on the same page. Now let's pause. What do you think I think about Jay as a result of that? You think I ever leave that man? No, no. No way. I would go to battle. That's cool, which is a good lesson just for anybody who's leading a team, whether it's a official, you have an employee, whether it's you've got interns, whether you have just friends that you're working alongside. Like, when you go with people on their battle with them, no matter what it is, like you solidify those relationships. But like so many people are good at telling people what to do, but they're not so good to come alongside them to guide them and to get them there. So, yeah, Jay is a good guy. You have to ask the question.

Why are you doing what you're doing? doing. And how are you pouring into the people that you care about most and how are they pouring into you? Because that's where real richness comes in life. So just don't try to do it by yourself. Yeah. That makes sense, man. If you want a short-term rental, here's something worth knowing. Not all landlord policies are built for your type of property. And with holiday bookings, chilly weather, and higher guest turnover, having the right coverage is more important than ever. Steadily offers insurance designed specifically for short-term rentals, covering property damage, liability, lost rental income, and even unexpected issues like bedbugs. Steadily works exclusively with

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two individuals. So Matt and Melissa, before I bring them in, I'll give you a little backstory. So I put on my Instagram the other day. And I just said, hey, if you want to be, you potentially featured on the Bigger Pockets podcast, we're looking for a couple. And I thought we'd get maybe, I don't know, a dozen people to be interested in, you know, maybe coming on the podcast, a couple to be kind of coached through this goal setting thing with you, with you, Jeff. But we had what, I think over 200 people apply, 200 couples. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. So they were like, I want to talk to Jeff and to get through this thing. So it's just, which is amazing. So. Anyway, we are going to bring in Matt and Melissa.

And by the way, my Instagram audience is like, I don't know, 80, 20, like male versus female. Yet about half the people that wrote in were actually female, which shows that it's like, it's both sides that are like that should be involved in this and are involved in this and that do care about it, which is super cool. In fact, Melissa was the one. I think that you were the one that pulled Matt in. So let's bring in Matt and Melissa right now.

Matt and Melissa, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. Thank you. Hi. Thanks for having us. Yeah, so tell us real quick about yourself and kind of your history and then I'll turn the mic over to Jeff and we'll let him go from there. But yeah, tell us about who you are and what do you do in real estate specifically, but just tell us about yourselves. Yeah, I work for our local high school. I started off as a math and science teacher and had been doing that for eight years and then transitioned into high school counseling, which just public education in general, really secure, really comfortable.

and the whole, I guess, migration towards real estate came with getting into podcasts and starting to listen to them. You know, more of the self-improvement type stuff and just becoming a better person. And when it came to, and I think Jeff mentioned it earlier about his colleague having a heart attack and the golden handcuffs and that kind of thing, I just found it really easy to just. say, hey, I'm going to ride out this job in education and it's a great health care and good retirement and yada, yada, yada, yada. But that was easy when it was just me. And then you add in Melissa, and then you start adding in kids and you think, you know, what happens when, you know, if you don't wake up tomorrow. That was what started to get me thinking that we need to approach

some things a little bit differently. And there's some other stuff too there. But I'll let Melissa, So I kind of give her perspective on all that. Yeah, so I do ultrasounds at an OBGYN office. You know, and like Matt said, you know, we, we have your typical American story. You know, we met, we got married, you know, three years later. We built a dream house, you know, we have three kids. And then Matt, you know, starts listening to these podcasts. And he's more of the dreamer and the relationship.

And I'm like, we have it. We're fine. We've got great jobs. you know, we can afford our mortgage. We know we have cars. We don't need anything else. And it was almost an argument, why can't we be content with what we have? And then, you know, then I started listening to the Bigger Pockets podcast with him.

And I just saw that, that, you know, the quote, unquote, American dream, you know, that we have in our heads maybe isn't how it should be, you know, that going to work, you know, to your 65 and retire. you know, putting into your 401k that there's more out there. The timing of all of this is, I mean, pretty incredible. You know, we mentioned that we started to get into real estate, had this beautiful home, sold it. When we move into this duplex with our three kids and our house hacking and all of that,

that has kind of been a little bit of like a watershed moment of us aligning with the goals of growing this and and moving this forward what were the last two dates we've been on just the two of us in the past two weeks were like goal setting dates that was the purpose of the date like the one week we were just I don't know we weren't quite on the same page with any just normal stuff yeah yeah we weren't we just weren't vibing that week and we said we need to date and button heads with working with the kids. Yeah. To get back on the same page.

Yeah. And so we took a notebook and a pen, you know, and started writing goals. And that was just two weeks ago, you know. And then we saw this Instagram post and I said, this, yeah, this is unreal. This is perfect. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, Jeff, I'll bring you in here if you want.

My last thing, just so to bring everyone up, you have now, Matt and Melissa, a few rentals now, right? How many, what do you have now in your real estate portfolio? We have three duplexes and then a single. family. That's cool. And your house hacking one of those duplexes, right? Yeah, for about a year now. That's awesome. All right. Very, very cool. All right. Well, with that, now people got a little background and you guys, what you're doing, Jeff, I'll hand the mic over to you and let you do what you do. Yeah, appreciate it. So here's where we're going to start. What I'm going to do is just walk you through

an experience where we're going to go out someday from now in an area of your life. You know, there's a lot of areas we could focus on, whether it's spirituality or your physical health, your personal life, like your hobbies, your key relationships, whether it's your job, building a business, your finances. But what we're going to do is we're going to pick one area. And we're going to go out someday from now. And I'm going to ask you some bigger questions that you may not originally know the answers to. But what will be cool is how a few really simple questions will bring an immense amount of vision and clarity. And once we have that, you'll see how with just a few simple questions, we can reverse engineer that back to something that's really small that is like a

two inch little domino that effortlessly with the flick of a finger to fall. And then your job is to go and start having a relationship with that goal. Sound good? Yeah. Sure. If we could only focus on one area of your life right now, whether it be spirituality, physical health, your personal life, key relationships, your job, your business, your finances, if we could only focus on one, which would it be?

I know that, oh, probably over the past, I don't know, three months. It's been on the business side is, is I'm very restless. I figured that's where you're going to go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely, definitely a business. Let's go there. So here's the question. And I'm going to ask a big question. So I just want to get you guys in the right state. Do me a favor. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. I want you to fast forward and imagine your life someday from now, whether that's 10 years from now, 20 years from now, further out. How will you know if you're successful when it comes to building an extraordinary business?

Search for that answer. Would you come up with, Matt? I pictured something that my level of involvement was on my terms so that if more of my time and commitment was needed with my family, I could do that without, without the business hurting or or tanking, that the involvement of the kids, that there was a place for them to be involved if they chose to be. So let me repeat back back what I heard.

You're in a place where the business can thrive without you. It's not required on you showing up, but it's also in the way where you can actually involve your family or your kids to be a part it. Cool. Melissa? Yeah, actually I had the same answer. Less legwork on our end, but still reaping the benefits of the business. Because right now, you know, we're on the ground level. You know, we self-manage and we don't have great strategies yet to running a business. We kind of, we talked on this last purchase that we were kind of on the threshold of doing it as a hobby, investing in real estate. And now we're like, this is working. We can do.

do this, but, yeah, our business end, yeah, has not set up. So I'm going to consistently balance between playing coach and then also playing narrator for the people who are listening. If I pull the curtain back, the thing that you who's listening to this needs to know is it's not about your answers being the same. It's actually unique that you both came up with the same answer. That's not always the thing. And part of what we facilitate is asking these big questions and giving each person

the individual space to search for their answers so that then they can compare what came up. And it's not about them being the same. It's about having an understanding into what matters to the other person. This happens to be an area where you are aligned. So we fast forward. You will know you're successful someday from now when it comes to the business.

If you can build a business that is successful without requiring on your time, yet also is the type of business that allows you to weave your kids into it. that's not crystal clear clarity and that's okay. You don't need it to be. You just need it to be directionally correct. You need to know that if I'm getting on a plane, I'm going to this city. What am I doing when I get there? Don't know. I'll figure it out. You now know the direction you're going. That will bring more clarity as we come backwards. So now I'm going to ask you the next question. Where would you need to be in the next five years to feel like you were on track for that

someday vision of having a business that does not require you to show up, yet also allows you to weave your kids in. How many properties is that? I say 10. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So again, this is not about us being 100% bullseye. This is directionally correct. Five years from now, if you have 10 properties, currently you have three. You'd feel like you were on track to having that someday business where it could scale without you because now you've got the number of properties where you're really going to have to start building a team. You're going to have to start mastering, succeeding through others. Awesome. What do you need to do by the end of this year to feel like you're on track for your 10 in the next 12 months? I think that we need to either flip a property

to get more capital to invest in another property. You know, we sold our house and so we freed up a lot of cash to invest, but now we need to replace some of those down payments that we've we've used on prior properties. So, yeah, a flip in my mind would be a goal for the 12 months. So there's an option. Matt, what came up for you? I feel a little more sense of urgency to start building that team. At least some of the pieces, especially on the bookkeeping end that I know we don't do a good job of. So starting to build some parts of that team that we know we're weak in. I think that can happen sooner than later.

And then we don't need to wait until it's not manageable to do that. Well, let me guide you guys here. You're bringing up really valid points. One is more capital. One is start building the team. How do I leverage some of the things like bookkeeping that aren't my one thing off of me? But let's go back to the five-year goal. The five-year goal is how many properties?

10. So this year, is it that you need to get rid of properties so you have more cash to get more properties or is it actually to get more properties but think of maybe a creative way, i.e. I'm looking at two guys who know a few things about borr investing. Yeah. Is capital really your issue? Not right now. David, Brandon, is capital ever really the issue? I would generally argue no. I mean, I think there's always no matter how much you have. I mean, if you're flat bro can't pay your bills and you're under a bridge. Maybe you've got to get a job. But I like, yeah,

just point is right on. Like, your problem is probably not capital. What's the old Tony Robbins quote? You don't lack resources. You like resourcefulness. Well, I saw in the room with Gary Keller when he was teaching a wealth building class. And he said, people say that they just don't have enough money. It goes, great, I'll cut you a check for 100 grand.

What are you going to do with it? And then people look at them like a deer in the headlights. You go, see, that's my point. it's actually not the capital that's the issue. You don't have the deal. You don't actually know what to do with it. So if your goal five years from now is to have 10 properties, what's one thing you can do this year to feel like you'd be on track for your five year? Well, Burr would work, you know, buying a property that you could refinance without having, using any of that capital, you know, that I was talking about. So if you went from three properties to four properties in the next year, would you feel like that you'd be on track to getting to 10? 5.5.

So I feel like we would be heading that right direction. But this is a point of like incongruency between the two of us. Like I don't want to buy anything until we have some structural things in place because I just don't feel comfortable expanding until. I love to analyze deals. I'm on Zillow all the time. I was just looking at some sheriff's auctions today. And, you know, I'm bringing Matt all the, I'm like, hey, this looks like an opportunity.

And he's like, pump the brakes. We still haven't done what we said we were going to do. And I'm like, but do we want to pass this up? Is this something that we're going to miss out on? Because we keep talking about setting up, you know, the business side and it never happens. But what about this deal here? You know, so I'm always pushing to buy more. Here's the beauty of where you're at. What you're already starting to lay out whether you realize it or not is your business plan.

We have a very simple format for a business plan called a GPS. Just like the GPS on your phone, you plug in where you want to go and it tells you how to get there. And when there's detours, it tells you how to navigate it. It stands for goal, priorities and strategies. If your goal were to get to property number four, you have to ask the question, great, what are the priorities that need to happen for that to fall? You've kind of already listed them out. One, deal flow. Do we actually have access to a true deal to the point that we might be able to leverage OPM so that we can make it happen?

Two, structure. How do we start to get less entrepreneurial and more purposeful so it's not eating our lunch and our time? Because that's why you're doing this to begin with. And Matt, you could get really nitty gritty around from a structural standpoint. What are the strategies you'd have to happen? Well, bookkeeping shouldn't be done by us. So let me find that person.

What else might there be? You can make the list of what those strategic things are that would build the structure in so that you'd feel more comfortable saying yes to number four. But the purpose of the goal is actually not to achieve the results. It's to be appropriate in the moment. It's to have that goal of a fourth property be that compass to determine how you have to behave. She needs to be hitting Zello to find the right deals. You need to get clear on the structure. that you can put in place. Now you guys just divided and conquered,

yet it's all aligned around a same goal. And the thing that might have created tension for you might now create connection. Oh, I'm watching your faces. What are you thinking? I know that we have had this conversation of, what do you think about, you know, dividing up the roles and trusting

that other person with that particular part of the business? And your response? I have trouble relinquishing control. Sounds like you're an entrepreneur. I get frustrated because I want to be a part of that process of building the business, but there's parts of it that I don't understand that Matt understands better. And we get a little bit frustrated with each other because he is trying to explain and I'm, you know, sometimes don't get the concept, but I still want to be a part of it.

Well, this is where this, when we talk about whether you're a couple or a business partner or a team, the principles are the exact same. Let's strip away your romantic relationship. And imagine this was an actual business that you were both employees of. Someone has to be the boss. You both don't get to be CEO. And we see this with husband, wife, teams all the time. You have to decide at the end of the day, who is the CEO and what's their job description, which, by the way, for us, that means the two to three things they have to do exceptionally well,

otherwise they get fired. And based on that, let's say it's Melissa, for just example, what's her job description? Matt, based on that, what's your job in the business? What are the two to three things you are responsible for? And here's the thing, Melissa, if you guys are aligned on these are the two to three things he has to do exceptionally well,

and you've established, here's what I need to hear from you in order to feel like we're on the same page. Great. My wife and I are going through this right now. We're moving to Denver in two days. We bird our house here in Austin and it gave us the cash to actually buy the house in Denver. We want to do a remodel. My wife wants to be in the driver's seat. I am the money man. That's hard for me. So I actually had to sit down and ask what are the two to three things I need Amy to communicate to me so that I would feel comfortable with her driving the budget. And that's less about her and it's more about me. I had to stop and slow down and ask, what do I need to hear so that I'd feel comfortable letting go? I communicated those things to her. She's got it. She can run. It's the exact same

things with your employees. If I followed you around with a camera and documented your every move, how much time would I see you sitting down and asking these types of questions and searching for the clarity? No. Not a lot. Not much. No. And that's, and, And by the way, you're not alone. Yet when you wonder why you're not on the same page or wondering why you're not growing together, it's because if we followed you around with a camera, we would not see your actions showing you doing the work to get on the same page. There's no judgment in that, by the way.

So here's your homework. For this area of your life, when it comes to business, you happen to be aligned. You want the same thing, a business that provides for your family without requiring you to be there, allows you have your kids involved. You both were aligned that five years from now, you need to have enough properties that you need to start really having the team, which means from this year, you actually need to start building up the number of properties. You're done an amazing job. You made some incredibly tough choices to give up the dream home, to downsize, to house to house to to get three properties under your belt. That is so admirable. My wife will listen to this podcast. I promise

you. And now you've got the opportunity to ask great if this is going to be our goal for this next year. What we talked about here doesn't have to be it. Your homework is to sit down and to start dating what might that goal be for the next year to be on track for our five. And once we're clear on that, if you actually need a business plan, which it sounds like you might, because both of you have different needs in order to make that happen, get them on paper. What are the two to three things that would have to happen in order for both of you to confidently say yes to that next property, get clear on them, and then list them in order of priority. If we could only do one, which would it be? Should we earn the right to do a second? Which would it be? Should we earn the right to do another?

Which would it be? And who owns it? Whose job is it? What's Melissa's? What's Matt's? And think about, if it's Melissa's, what do I need to hear from her to know that I could confidently trust that she's got it and vice versa. What do I need to hear from Matt to know that he's confidently got that, be able to communicate that? And you've already laid the foundation. You're already having mornings where you get up and have conversations, but now your conversations can be structured around the plan that you've created. That's having a relationship with your goals. Good job. That's good stuff. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. My pleasure. That's cool, guys. All right. So this is Brandon again, jumping in. So Matt and Melissa, I'm

I'm wondering, what do you guys see as like your next steps from here on out? Like in your own words, what do you think will change or what are you going to plan to do differently in your life? I'm already kind of formulating a conversation that's going to surround this a little bit. And I think that, I mean, certainly, even though it wasn't positively met when I brought it up, I do think the divide and conquer is something we need to work towards and kind of laying out what we would be comfortable handing off to the other and, and, you know, having faith in fully trusting that the other one will take care of it. Can I jump in here because there's an important distinction?

There is a difference between delegation and abdication. Delegating is saying, you've got this. Abdicating is saying, you've got this and I'm out. A lot of leaders abdicate. their roles as a leader. I have been that person, transparently. Yeah, me too. Just because she's got it doesn't mean you're not in it.

It just means she's the one who wakes up and says, what can I do today to advance this? You're still accountable to each other. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, you know, in my mind a little bit, I'm thinking that, you know, Matt, Matt's a lot better on the business end, you know,

in making processes. And I just like finding the deals. I like searching, you know, the MLS and bringing the properties to him that we can evaluate. So, you know, in my mind, I'm already thinking about what what those specific individual roles look like for us instead of having to do it all together all the time. And what's funny is that Melissa says that, you know, I'm better on the business end and the processes. and that's where I feel like we are the weakest, you know. And so I don't know that there's, I guess, where I feel we need the most work is where she feels I'm the strongest. So I think that that alone is kind of lending it's, I mean, that's kind of showing a little bit of the direction just in that little tidbit.

Yeah, I like the fact that that leads toward like, okay, well, if you think that's the weakness right now and you know that that's what you're best at, that you get to take ownership, you get to jocco-willick that thing, right? Like, you're like, this is my baby. I'm going to take this. And that's what you're going to build. And when you have that ownership and the clarity within you, now you can go just crush that piece because you know that she's got your back, but you're the one leading that piece. And I know, like, whenever I can have those areas of my life where I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, fine. We got clarity now. Like, this is my thing.

Like, my wife and I have been struggling with, like, really struggling with a sleep training lately with our baby. It was 11 months old now. Just does waste up like eight times a night. You guys remember those days, right? We've sleep trained three times. Okay, yeah. So you remember those days.

We had terrible sleepers. Yeah, terrible. And so, like, but the problem was neither of us took ownership of the problem. We kind of did it together. And we both kind of felt it was kind of our thing. And therefore, neither of us took any kind of ownership of actually owning the problem. And it's led to it. numerous conflicts in our relationship, numerous, like, headbutting of, like,

where I'll be like, you're finally ready to, you know, do my thing yet? And she's like, well, I don't want to do your thing. Like, we just, anyway, finally the day, like, we talked about it and just realized, like, this, like, she basically said, I'm taking ownership. Like, this is my thing. And now, like, I was like, perfect. Like, now somebody's got it. Like, I don't care if it's me or you.

Somebody's got it and they're running with it. And they're, and she's going to kill it. And I think we'll have much more clarity. So that's the way I kind of looked at your, you guys right there is like, if that's the case, Matt, you got that part. Go crush it. Melissa, you got your part. Go crush it. Yeah. Give you something to work towards. It's exciting. Yeah. David, what do you think on all this? I think it was very cool to get to watch you guys kind of work your way through this. Jeff, you did a great job asking the right questions.

What I, when I'm in your shoes, like the advice that I'd give you is once you know where you want to go, which is where you have to start, Jeff, you made a great point. I want to highlight. everybody likes to start running around and pushing over dominoes and hoping that they knock another domino over. But the right, the people that are best at this know where they're going and they line their dominoes up backwards. And that's really what Jeff was showing us is how you start with the end in mind and you build it back to where you're at.

Once you get it, the majority of the work is done. But the 20% that you still have to do is to furiously knock those dominoes over as fast as you two agreed to do. Right. Now, you don't want it to ruin your relationship. but if you know, we know what we want to do, I would be asking each other, what skills, what is the one thing that we need to get better at to do this faster? That's the what I'd be thinking.

So how do we develop a synergy with each other? What one skill could we learn that would make every domino that we got to knock over, go down twice as fast or something? And to me, that's when it gets fun. It's hard right now. It's just like painstakingly slow trying to trudge through this quicksand. I guess you don't trudge through quicksand, do you just die. trying to dredge through like the sand of the beach you're trying to run through it and it takes a long time but once you get there when you actually knock the dominoes over that feels like you're on pavement and you can go really quick so if you can get through this part eating the vegetables the fun part comes when you guys start progressing so much faster than you ever would have thought was possible and maybe we have you back on the podcast in a year and you're like oh yeah we've got 40 units by now this is how these stories all end up going so uh thank you very much for being

being willing to go through this with us and share your story. And I just want you to remember, while this part can feel painstakingly difficult, it gets very fun once your dominoes are lined up. And the first domino knocks over the next. And now you've got the momentum of two dominoes. It knocks over the third. And the next thing you know, it's picking up speed and the dominoes are getting bigger. And that's when it just gets awesome. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. And you know what, what's cool is like, first of all, we just did this, you know, obviously live in 30 minutes of you. I mean, I think you guys chatted for, yeah, about 30 minutes total. I mean, not even quite that, 25 minutes.

And you got through all of this. And this is why, you know, a goal setting date is good. A goal setting, you know, 20 minute conversation, 30 minute conversation is good. But this is why we encourage people to do not just goal setting days or, I mean, like, you know, a date, but days, like a weekend, a couple days, maybe time where you can get away from the normal life and go do something. Right now, obviously, during COVID, that's difficult. But if you can get away with your spouse for a few days somewhere, go find out a whole. hotel or whatever. Or like I said earlier, I'm going to be joining Jeff this year and Jay doing the goal setting retreat, you know, digitally at least like online. And I'm going to

book out that time and I'm going to make sure I'm there for because like I need that in my life. A couple days out of 365 for the next 365 or even the next 500 days or 10,000 days matter so much. So first of all, I guess we'll get you, you know, Matt and Melissa out of here. And I want to bring it back to Jeff to talk a few minutes about. out what that goal setting retreat is in case other people here want to attend. But Matt and Melissa, thank you guys for joining us today. You guys are awesome. Thank you for having us. Yeah, absolutely. We had fun. All right, Jeff, let's talk goal setting for a little bit. First of all, any follow-up thoughts? Just, you know, as now we're done with that little section right there.

You know, what are your thoughts on how that went? Here's what I think matters that people understand. they were asked questions, and they gave themselves permission to search for the answers. With no emotion to it about right, wrong, are we on the same page, are we not? And you heard times when they're on the same page, and you heard times when they might not have been. The gift in this is realizing that the things that might create conflict can actually be the catalyst for connection. understanding their roles was actually really a challenge. I'm able to see how that could create conflict in their marriage and now realizing, hmm, they're just like an entrepreneur team.

She's vision. She's growth. He's structure. He's stability. It's like a CEO and a COO. It is such a perfect pairing. Yet if you don't look at it through that lens, it can be like, oh, we're not on the same page. We're oil and water.

yet framed differently, it's like, oh, wait, we can actually be a very powerful team. So wherever you are, if you feel like you're not on the same page with people who matter, go through a process to get on the same page. Dude, you just brought up such a great point. I've never really thought about it this way before. And I love, like, it's perspective of how you look at it with your spouse or even your business partner or whatever. I mean, I'm kind of forming this thought as I go here based on what you just said.

But we oftentimes we see a problem in a relationship, whether it's a business partner or a relationship, and we see it's oil and water. It's a problem. But if you just reframe the way you look at that situation, you know, Gino Wickman calls it the author of traction. He has a book called Rocket Fuel. You could say we have a difficult relationship or, not that they did, but like you can say that with your, you know, if people had it, we have a lot of problems. Or you could say we have rocket fuel. And it's, it could be the same thing. It's how you perceive that thing. that then therefore defines what that thing is, and then you work based off that definition, you've given it. Right? So if you say, we have a, you know, my wife and I are always disagreeing

and we're always button heads. We never get anywhere. Or, you know, my partner and I just can't seem to agree. We just don't get along. You're going to feel that way every time you talk with them. But if you just approach it from that perspective of this is so good, this is that rocket feel. It's the perfect mixture of stuff that's coming together.

So let's use this, the two different sides that feel like they're competing. and create some rocket fuel. So it's just kind of a cool concept right there. I'm glad you brought that up. You nailed it, man. You nailed it. And there's something that you said that's really important. If all you can do is start by having a conversation, awesome.

We'll share a link that will show you more about the retreat and we'll also have a free guy that is just some of the download, like some of the best questions that you could just do to start having that. If that's all you can do, awesome. yet in an ideal world, you would understand that this is a material investment in your future. And if you are able to, if you have kids, line to set her up, if that's something you can do, so that you can sit down for, I mean, this is a day and a half that we facilitate, it's one of the best investments you can make in terms of your time because suddenly you are clear,

not just about what you're saying yes to this year, but you can draw a dotted line for how it gets you to where you want, to go so that you build a business designed around a life worth living. That's so good. Now, what if you're not married? Is this the couples retreat that for only married people or people in a relationship? So November 14th and 15th is the couples retreat. November 21st and 22nd is the retreat for individuals and teams. Same principles, just a different angle.

So we got everybody hit on this one. That's cool, man. Well, I'm going to be doing the couples one. And yeah, I'm excited for it. So where do people go? What do they do? I know we have a URL here somewhere to BiggerPockets.com slash set my goals.

So this one place will give you the guide. So this is a kick-ass guide to your couple's goal setting retreat. Literally, if all you wanted to do was sit down and just ask each other questions, this is like 1% of what we do in the entire retreat. that alone transforms relationships. And then below, if you want to learn more about the retreat experiences, you can click the button if you want to do it as a couple or as a team or as an individual. And you can learn more about how you can join us. And that's at biggerpockets.com slash set my goals.

Cool. Well, we are really excited to actually partner with you guys on this. I mean, last year we had Jay in the podcast around this time, like we literally talked about it. We're like, man, we should do this somehow, like find more ways to incorporate this together because it's such an impactful time. And so when you told me you were doing this here a few weeks ago, we're like, we got to do some magic here. We got to make this thing bigger.

So I'm pumped. I'm pumped. All right, man. Well, let's do our kind of follow up final question. I'm going to steal it from David. David, I'll let you do your final question. I usually ask, though, where can people find you? I'm going to let you do it, man.

You literally just asked it. I'm a nice guy. I'm a nice guy. David, I'm going to go on that you ask the question. I was going to ask where can people. Yeah, I want to know where people can buy more about you. But I would ask, how would have David asked that question? So, Jeff, when he asks you, where can people find out more about you?

Make sure you share where people can find out more about you. Go ahead, David. I'm giving you the opportunity here. All right. Are you ready, Jeff? I got a question that you have no idea what I'm going to say. We're going to catch you on the fly. For people that are fascinated with your interviewing skills and your amazing experience of goal setting,

where can they learn more about you? Sure. First thing, if you're already listening to a podcast, whatever player you are using, click the search button and type in the one thing, the O-N. N-E, T-H-I-N-G. Every week we feature somebody who's living the one thing, which means, frankly, they're struggling, and just how they're using it to achieve extraordinary results,

just so that it can give you a little direction and focus every single week. If you'd like to learn more about the goal-setting, retreat, experience, or that free guide with those questions, go to biggerpockets.com slash set my goals. And I'm all over social media, Jeff Woods with the G-G-E-O-F-F-Woods. All right, man. Thank you so much. It's been phenomenal.

We've got you out of here, Jeff. Thank you. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, guys. Great job, Jeff. Hey, Jeff, before you go. Yes, yes, Brandon. I've been asking of a question to a lot of our guests, and I did not ask it of you. So I want to ask it now, even though we're pretty much done with the interview, but I want to ask you,

what are you focused on right now? What do you focus on right now primarily? And how can I provide value there? How can our audience of, you know, quarter million people provide value to you? Oh, Brandon. Thank you, sir. And I actually mean that because the number of times that I might share that story on a show, it's a fraction of the people that will ask it at the end. And that actually says a lot about you

because it means you're actually a learner. Oh, thank you. Things into action, which says something about you're not just a handsome name with a beard. Despite what they all think. Just what they all think. I genuinely, one of the best things we do is this retreat. And when my team and I just had this conversation about what is the mission of the business is to help people better invest their time. So they achieve extraordinary results. And what's our vision? How will we know if we're successful? And I genuinely believe we are going to wake up one day in the future where people as a cultural norm, as individuals and inside of companies, invest their time and expect a return personally and professionally. And they don't go at life alone. They enlist the support of the people with them.

The highest form of support you can give us is to start your journey. To not let this be just some podcast that you spent your time on over the last 90 minutes, but that you put your foot down and say, damn it, we are going to invest our time. And the way we do it is we back it with action. I'm not just going to go to the next episode. I'm actually going to pause. I'm actually going to open a browser and go to biggerpockets.com slash set my goals. And if nothing else, I will download that free guide. And if I actually want to learn more about it, fine, do it. But literally, please invest your time and please go to that URL. Cool, man.

All right. Well, thank you very much, Jeff. This has been an awesome time. We appreciate you and we'll have you on again. All right, good show. That's a wrap. All right, big thanks to Jeff Woods, of course, and to you, David. And of course, to Matt and Melissa for joining us today and being willing to put themselves out there.

That was a phenomenal show and really, really fun. Listening to Jeff do his thing was pretty impressive. I mean, he knows what questions to ask. He knows how to ask them. You could tell, you can kind of see the clock. What's the phrase you use when someone's thinking? The gears turning maybe. You can see their thoughts of becoming manifested as Jeff was asking questions about goals.

And I love, love, love getting to see that in action because now I have an idea of what that should look like both when I'm trying to set goals and when I'm trying to help other people. do the same. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Well, cool, man. Well, again, like we said on the show, you guys, I hope you guys can attend this couple's, either the couples one or the individual slash business one. They got two weekend retreats in a row here in the middle of November. If you want to attend it, just go to bigger pockets.com slash set my goals. And again, sign up there. We're partnering with the one thing on this thing. So it's going to be a lot of bigger pockets, people there, a lot of real estate investors. And it's digital. You can do it at home. And so

take the time, get some sitters if you got kids. And let's collectively work together for a day and a half on changing the next year, year and a half, five years, ten years of our life. So I'm pumped. Hope you are as well. And with that, David, I guess we can pretty much get out of here. Anything you want to add or close with? Oh, I know one thing. By the way, that event is going to be recorded. So even if you can't stay for the whole thing or you can only watch half of it or you can't watch any of it, you get the recording afterwards as well. So keep in mind if you want to attend, it would be awesome to go even if you can't be there live. So that's all I got on that event. The only thing I'll add is there might not be a higher ROI in the world than the time you spend working on your goals.

I really can't think of anything that will give you a better return than planning that. So food for thought. So true, man. Thank you, Brandon. Thank you. This is David Green for Brandon Twilight Turner. Signing off. You're listening to Bigger Pockets Radio.

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