Epic Real Estate Investing - EPIC Real Estate FAIL! | Financial Freedom Friday

Episode Date: May 30, 2014

It's the "secret to success" that no one is telling you about, but today Matt will.  It's Financial Freedom Friday! ------------------------- Download Matt's free real estate investing course "How to Do Deals | No Money Required" at FreeRealEstateInvestingCourse.com or text FreeCourse to 55678 "Click" what interests you most:  Education Properties Income Coaching Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Epic Real Estate Education with Matt Terrio. Learn how to invest in real estate, or he'll do it for you. Welcome to The Secret of Success. And before I reveal it to you, I'm curious as to how many failures you've experienced during this program. And if you haven't failed yet, you know what that means? It means you haven't tried. I mean, there is no success without failure. Or should I say failed attempts?

You see, there actually is no such thing as failure unless you quit. And a failed attempt is merely feedback. Failure is an opportunity to practice your technique and perfect your performance. Failure is nothing more than a condition or fact of producing a less than desirable result or falling short. And if you expect to get it right the very first time every time, you're going to be very disappointed and often. And I know, nobody wants to fail, but until you understand and accept that failure is simply, a part of the process, the fear of failure will immobilize you. It will literally stop you dead in your tracks. It will stand in between you and everything that you've ever wanted. So accept it.

Embrace it as part of the process. Failure is the secret to success. You know, one idea that forever transformed my entire relationship to failure came from former IBM president, Thomas Watson, who said, if you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate. You know, Watson's quote, it revealed one of my hidden barriers around business and in life overall, really. I mean, I noticed in many areas of my life where I hadn't even been trying because I believed I couldn't do it. I believed I would fail. But because I wasn't trying, I was also failing. I wasn't getting what I wanted. It was in the way. And since receiving this new clarity around failure, I'll try anything that's in congruence now with my values and the pursuit of my

goals. I mean, if I fail, so what? I analyze what could have made a difference and I try again. I mean, imagine your relationship to failure as, so what? Try again. What would you choose to do if you knew you would not fail? A formula for success is to fail, fail fast, and fail often. And this formula is going to make more sense for you when you understand the four levels of learning. You see, regardless of what you've learned, are currently learning or will learn in the future, you cannot avoid the four levels of learning. Level one is referred to as unconscious incompetence. I mean, this is the level where you don't know what you don't know.

And to illustrate, I'm going to use my experience of when I first learned how to drive a stick shift. I mean, there was a time in my life when I didn't even know what a stick shift was. I didn't know what I didn't know. I was in the first level of learning, unconscious incompetence. Then move to the second level, conscious incompetence. You know, at some point by observing my parents' drive, I eventually realized what a stick shift was, what it was used for.

But although I then knew what it was, I still didn't know how to drive using a stick shift. This is the second level of learning, conscious incompetence. I now know what I don't know. Most people spend the majority of their lives in just about everything that they do somewhere in between the second and the third level. Not until they attempt to try will anyone ever get to the next level, the third level.

Conscious competence. I remember a few months after my 16th birthday. My mother bought me a new red sports car. Yes, I was that guy. But it was a very bitter sweet day. I mean, I couldn't wait to get in and pick up some friends and go cruise. I was very excited. The bitter part of the equation was it was a stick shift.

I was consciously incompetent at driving one. Level two of the four levels of learning. And the only way I was going to learn was to get into the car and do it. So did I pull out of the driveway the first time in a nice smooth roll? Hardly. I mean, if you ever learn to drive a car

with a manual transmission and a clutch, you know what your first time looks like. But when you did that, did you give up the first time after the car stalled? Could that have constituted as failure? Did you try again? Did you give up after the second time the car stalled or the third or the fourth? Likely you didn't.

There are other areas of your life where you gave up after it didn't work, after it stalled. I mean, I was so bad at driving that stick shift that I was literally unsafe on the road. But I didn't let that stop me, though. I would get up at 3 a.m. when there were no cars on the road to go practice. And I did that repeatedly for days. Yes, I was a slow learner. One thing that you're going to want to get is that the only way to get from that second level of learning to the third level is by trying, is by practicing. And after a week or so, I was getting the hang of it.

But I still had to think about every movement of driving a stick shift. I had reached the third level of conscious competence. I had to think about it. I was consciously competent. Now, the fourth level. I mean, if practice is what will get you from the second level to the third level, to the third level. third. What gets you from the third level to the fourth? Perhaps you've heard it referenced as the mother of learning or the master of skill. The answer is repetition. Massive repetition. The fourth level

of learning, unconscious competence is when it becomes second nature. You no longer have to think about it. I mean, you just do it. I mean, after a month of driving that stick shift, there was really no thought at all given to the timing between my left foot on the clutch and my right foot on the gas. I mean it just happened. It was like breathing. What do you do right now that's second nature? What are you really good at? Is it playing the guitar or snowboarding or knitting, negotiating, cooking, tying your shoes? It doesn't matter what you're good at. You went through the four levels of learning. And whatever you want to take on next, the four levels are waiting for you. And real estate investing is no different. There is only one way

to get to that fourth level. And that's through lots of failure, through lots of practice, and through lots of repetition. There are no shortcuts to any place worth going or anything worth doing. You know, about two years ago, I noticed a book on my business partner's bookshelf.

It was titled, You can't teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar. Now, I didn't read the book. I didn't feel the need to. I mean, the title pretty much said at all. What it said is, nobody is going to do it for you. You can't learn how to do something just from a manual. You got to get out there and go do it. Nobody can just give you the information and then presto. You can ride a bike.

You've got the information. Presto, you can drive a stick shift. Or presto, you now can invest in real estate. No, you will have to eventually get on that bike and do it yourself. You're going to crash into walls. You're going to skin some knees. You're going to eat some dirt. You will have to fall repeatedly before you can successfully ride that bike. Now, moving from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm is much more easily done quickly than it is slowly. That's the good news. And here's what I mean. Imagine that you know before you get on that bike for the very first time that you will have to fall 24 times before you reach the fourth level of learning. The number 24, it's arbitrary. It's going to be different for everybody. But for this example,

your number is going to be 24. You got to fall 24 times. So let's look at three different scenarios of learning. In the first scenario, you plan on practicing riding your bike twice per month, and at the end of the year, you will have fallen 24 times. The second scenario is that you plan on practicing riding your bike four times per month, and at the end of six months, you will have fallen 24 times, and then you will proceed to ride your bike for the rest of the year. Now, the third scenario, is that you plan to practice and fall 24 times today. I mean, obviously, if you fell your 24 times in one day,

you will have learned quicker than the other two scenarios. Now, in each scenario, you fell 24 times, right? But under each scenario, would you be equally good at riding that bike at the end of the year? At the end of the year, under which scenario would you be the best bike rider you could be? Under the first scenario,

you have fallen twice per month. And although at the end of the year, you did fall 24 times and you can ride that bike, you are undoubtedly going to be still pretty wobbly on that bike. And the reason being is when you let too much time pass between practice sessions, you essentially start over each time. You forget and you gotta start over. The 24 repetitions spread out so far apart

does not produce the same result as the 24 repetitions performed in one day. The scenario in which you fell 24 times in one day produces a far more competent bike rider at the end of the year because you've been competent for 364 days. In the first scenario, you just reached competency, maybe on the 365th day. In a nutshell, it's easier to learn anything fast than it is to learn it slow. And real estate investing is no different. success comes easier fast than it does slow. Isn't that great news?

Don't be afraid to fail. Don't get discouraged by failure. Don't get discouraged if you don't have the results that you want yet. Don't let that get in your way. Recognize failure from this day forward as a series of rungs up the ladder, as a success that the details of which have yet to be revealed, as a learning experience, as an opportunity for growth, as a precondition for success.

Recognize that, Most successful people achieve their greatest success only one step beyond what appeared to be their greatest failure. Your biggest strides will follow your long steps backwards. I mean, the person who doesn't experience failure will not experience success. Most people, if asked to name nature's most destructive force, they would reply with things like earthquakes or tornadoes or tidal waves or hurricanes. But the correct answer is none of those. The correct answer is gravity. You see, gravity is responsible for more destruction than anything else Mother Nature has ever whipped up.

The reason is that gravity is persistent. It never gives up. It's not how many times you get knocked down that matters. It's how many times you get up. And if you fail to get up, gravity will have gotten the best of you too. The greatest words ever uttered on the subject of failure come from Michael Jordan. And I'm inspired every time. I read or hear them. I mean, even if you heard them before, they bear repeating. I mean,

it cannot be said or documented enough in my opinion. He says, I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions, I have been entrusted to take the game-winning shot and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that's why I succeed. Now, here's an integrity check. I want you to be true to yourself. When something appears to just not be working and before deciding to quit and categorize it as a failure, honestly ask yourself, is it not working or am I not working? I mean, this is what your daily success report is for to maintain integrity in your business and with yourself. I mean, occasionally, your guard may drop and you may find yourself BS and your friends and your family, your employer, your customers, etc., whatever it may be. We're human. We can all do it thinking that there's no harm and maybe sometimes there isn't any harm.

However, the harm is certain when you start BS in yourself. Stubborn persistence, like gravity, may be the missing ingredient that bridges the gap between failure and success for you. I mean, as it's been documented countless times, and here's one more time, scientist Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, the phonograph, and 1,091 other innovations, persisted through many failures and is an American icon because he simply never. gave up. Repetition is the master of skill. Go through these lessons over and over and implement these lessons in the real world over and over. Fail, fail fast and fail often. Fall off that bike. Run into those walls, skin your knees, eat some dirt. Just make sure that you get back on the bike and know that the more that you do fail, the better you're getting. The more that you fail, the closer you're getting to everything that you got involved in

in real estate investing for in the first place. So summed up, if at first you don't succeed, do over. Yet, if at first you do succeed, don't act too surprised either. So I'm going to see you again in the past lessons as you repeat those lessons. And I'm going to see you in the future lessons as well. God bless. This is Epic Real Estate Education with Matt Terrio. Learn how to invest in real estate or he'll do it for you. part of the C-suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-sweetradio.com.