Epic Real Estate Investing - How to Break Bad Habits - Brian Matsen | 900

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

This Friday, Matt is joined with Brian Matsen, a highly successful entrepreneur, an investor, a speaker, and a proven expert in personal development. Stay tuned as Brian reveals the key to wealth creation and how you can break the bad habits that keep you back from financial success.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Terrio Media. Success in real estate has nothing to do with shiny objects. It has everything to do with mastering the basics. The three pillars of real estate investing. Attract, convert, exit. Matt Terrio has been helping real estate investors do just that for more than a decade now. If you want to make money in real estate, keep listening. If you want it faster, visit R-E-I-Aase.com.

Here's Matt. Hello, and welcome to the epic real estate investing show. Happy New Year, by the way. This is, we're well into the new year, a couple weeks in, but it's my first live show. We've been doing a bunch of encore episodes. And thank you for listening to that, but we're brand new from this point going forward. I've been sick. I don't know if you can tell, but I'm on the down swing, but I've been sick for a really long time.

And I just couldn't bring myself to get on to the microphone in the way that I was sounding. But I'm feeling better. So I feel great, but you might still hear a little bit, but hey, the show must go on. So here we are. And so we're kicking off this year with a very special guest. And he is widely known and respected as a highly successful entrepreneur, a sales trainer, an investor, a speaker, and a proven expert in personal development. And if you know anything about me, that goes hand in hand with what we do here. around real estate investing.

Personal development is key, particularly if you're just getting started, if you're just making this leap from entrepreneur, excuse me, from employee to entrepreneur, it's vital, it's critical. And so our guest's successful career has spanned over 20 years. He has worked for some of the largest financial institutions in the world,

including 14 years as a regional vice president with ING and VOIA financial, a Fortune 500 company, He has received numerous national sales growth and achievement awards while amassing over one billion dollars in sales. Yes, billion with a B. He's a major contributor to, or a major contributor to his success has been his lifelong commitment to personal development. And in his never-ending quest for personal growth, he discovered the teachings of Bob Proctor.

You might know Bob Proctor from the documentary The Secret. And Bob is considered the foremost expert on the mind. human potential and success. And so I thought, what a great way to kick off the year. And with this topic, this conversation right now or right here. So please help me welcome to the show, Mr. Brian Mattson. Brian, welcome to the Epic Real Estate Investing Show. Matt, you really appreciate you having me on.

Glad to be here. Yeah, no, I'm glad to have you as well. All right, so, Brian, I've got a background in sales myself. And part of that world revolves so much. much around personal development. Actually, where I was introduced to personal development. My very first set of tapes was Mr. Tom Hopkins. Have you heard of him?

Absolutely. Yeah. He's kind of like the classic typical. He's like the central castings version of the motivational sales trainer. Yeah. And so it was a great place to start. And it just led me down a path of just one personal development person after the other. And it's really responsible for, I don't know, I don't know what the percentage would be.

But I recognize when I come across people that don't have that background and there's a big difference. There's a big difference in the development, the growth of an individual. Tell me, how did you get started? How did you go down this path and eventually become one of these speakers yourself? Yeah. So personal development has played a huge role just like you in my life and in my professional success and in my personal life as well. I started really studying personal development about 25 years ago. And I guess I'll go back to when I first got out of college.

The first five years that I got out of college really did not go the way that I had planned my career to go. And I had some times where I was really struggling. And I knew I needed to make a big change. I needed to do something different because, you know, it was. is more of the same year after year. And that's when I really got serious about personal development and started reading everything I could get my hands on, really changing my thoughts around money about how to earn money.

And literally within a year, my life did a complete 180. And that's when I went to work at ING, as you mentioned in the intro. and literally went from, you know, making $40,000 a year to where I was making that in a month within a few years. So it played a huge role in my life and in the success of my career. And then eventually I decided after a long career in that investment business, asset management business, that I wanted to just strictly focus on helping other people, make the kind of transformation that I did.

So that's what I do. I work with entrepreneurs, sales professionals, executives, and really help them get their businesses and their lives to the next level. Got it.

So let me ask you, this 100 degree, 180 degree turn that you made in the year, went from 40K a year to 40K a month, which is, that classifies as 180 degrees, I think. And what would you, credit to that. What were the biggest things that you got from your personal development discoveries?

Well, the first thing that really made a difference for me is that I got serious about what it is, what it was that I really wanted, you know, what I really wanted to do for work and what I wanted to do, you know, the kind of life that I wanted to live. So that really started changing my thinking immediately. I knew that I had a passion for the stock market. and investing from my time in business school in college. And so I decided, you know what, if I'm going to succeed, I need to be doing something that I really love. And so that was the starting point.

And then also realizing that I had to change the way I was thinking about money. A lot of people, I shouldn't say a lot of people, I would say most people have some type of negative feelings around money that they need to change. and I call it your paradigms. You know, we have negative paradigms around money. And so I started to look at money very differently. I noticed that all the people that I admired most around me, a lot of them were very successful financially.

They had the time and the resources to make a huge impact on people's lives. And I realize that, you know, you hear so much about negative about money and focusing on money, But then here I was looking at these people and seeing, you know, hey, these are, these are some of the neatest people that I know. And yet they're still successful. So that really helped me change the way I thought about money as well. Give me an example of one of your paradigms, your negative paradigms around money. And now your positive ones. And what was it that helped you get there?

Yeah. So good question. So I grew up, my parents divorced shortly after I was born. and my mom was a school teacher. And so money was always an issue in our house, and I saw that all the time. So I think one of the paradigms that I had is that I kind of had one of, you know, a scarcity mentality. That money's hard to come by. That you have to be really, really smart to make a lot of money.

Or maybe not. And I think I had some feelings of not even feeling worthy of it. So those are all things. I find that a lot of people have grown up with. And so, again, as I mentioned, I started to think differently about that and say, you know what? I can be, you know, really good with money and make money and still be the kind of person that I want to be. In fact, I'm going to be a better person because of it because I really feel like money is just a magnifier. If you're a good person, you're just going to be a better person.

You're a jerk. You're going to be a bigger jerk with more money, right? So it wasn't, I had to get that out of my mind that I was actually going to be doing better things for my family and me personally and for a lot of other people if I was doing well financially. And so that's, I was able to make that shift. Got it. You said that you used to think you had to be smart to make money. What do you have to be to make money? Well, what I learned is that, you know, a lot of people think that you have to be smart to make money.

is that, you know, a lot of people think that you have to be, their idea of being really smart is being a straight-a-student, right? And what I realized, too, is that a lot of the people that were most successful that I knew in my life were, didn't even have college degrees. So what I found is making money is more about mindset. We all have, you know, the potential. We're all smart. We're all intelligent. No one, you know, is the one person on earth that it's better than everybody else. It's, we all have it inside of us. It's really a mindset. And it's all about, the other thing that I learned is that it's all about serving people. The more people that you serve and the better quality of service that you give, the more money you make. And so

that's very different than what you're taught in school and by most people that are telling you the way to make more money is just to work harder and harder. And that certainly plays a role, but that isn't how you earn money. It's more about your mindset around money, your relationship with it, and really focusing on serving other people and becoming a master at your craft.

Right. Yeah, you know, grades, you kind of said this, like grades do not equate to financial success in life. This is for sure. No, I was never a great. I was a really good student in elementary school, but around junior high, my grade started to go down. And I wasn't the greatest student in high school. I was more into the social aspects and sports. I was a big sports guy.

I did get a little bit better in college. I got a little bit more serious about it, but I still wasn't a straight-A student. And that is not the determining factor of someone's life success, for sure. Sure. Right. And it's, you know, financial success is what most people dream up to, and to varying degrees, of course. Some people are happy with the millions. Some people want a billion. Some people want to own the world. Absolutely. Between, right? But, yeah, grades doesn't equate to that. And, you know, Kiyosaki's got this great quote. I'm not even a bit of a book, right? That book title, how the A students work for C students and the B students work for the government. I love. Rich dad, poor dad, right? Yeah, of his many. Probably all of his books.

Yeah, that's one of the classic ones because I think it's funny because I actually see it in my life because I want a college dropout and I've got college graduates that work for me. And it's pretty funny. Yep. So I don't, it's, you got to be careful those general sweeping comments, but it certainly exists and it's prevalent in my life. Right. Great. So, now you're doing this yourself. yourself. Let me ask you, who is, of all the people that you've studied, because when you start

going down to this personal development rabbit hole, it can be a really deep hole because there's a lot of people out there that have their twist on things. Who's been your favorite and why? Yeah, no question. I've had a lot of great mentors. Some of them were people that I actually spent time with. Some of them are people that I, you know, just read their books and gained a lot from. But there's no question the man that's had the most impact on me from a personal development perspective is Bob Proctor, who's become a good friend and a mentor to me. And he really changed my life in that a lot of the things that he teaches, I was already implementing. but the one thing that really made a dramatic impact in my life was learning about paradigms.

And there's no one better out there than Bob to describe what paradigms are and how they really affect us. I feel like now, as successful as I was in my career, I could have done so much more and done it so much quicker even than I did if I would have had that, knowledge about paradigms, and I would have been able to help a lot of people around me, even more. Because what I found is most people that are really good at what they do really don't know why they're so good at what they do. And they can't transfer that to somebody else. I mean, I remember sitting around in, you know, executive rooms with management and executives

talking about certain individuals in our organization and trying to come up with reasons why that person wasn't achieving what we all thought they could. And everyone would go around the room and say, well, you know, at the end of the day, Brian, it's all about personality. It's about having the right type of personality or it's all about, you know, the person that works the hardest or. And those things all play a role. But what I found is, no, what that really is the root cause of everyone's success or failure is their paradigm. And that once you understand that and you understand what those limiting beliefs, behaviors are that are programmed into you and you start changing those and you start building a new model,

that's when you make quantum leaps and that's when your paradigm shifts. And that's what it's all about. And that's exactly what I help my clients do. Got it. Can you explain to me what a paradigm is? Yeah. So my favorite, you know, there's various definitions of it, but really my favorite definition of it is it's a mental program. It has almost exclusive control over our habitual behavior. And guess what? Almost all of our behavior is habitual. So we're literally programmed to do what we do every day. Now, some of that came. because of our, you know, we inherited it.

It's genetic. Just like we look like our parents, our grandparents, our ancestors. Physically, we've also inherited habits that have been in our families for generations. But the bigger, the bigger piece of the puzzle or the pie is our environmental conditioning. It's how we were raised. And so we all have these. beliefs and thoughts that have been programmed into our minds from an early age. And so we just, we just do things habitually that we don't even have to think about.

And so that's why we are what we are and why we do what we do and why we get the results that we get. And so I found that when you change that, it changes everything. And it can happen pretty quickly like it did for me. Well, great. So that brings me to my next question. So if this is our mental programming, how do we reprogram ourselves and do it quickly? Yeah, exactly. So that's a good question.

So I think before I answer that, I need to explain that the mind is real. There's really two main parts of our mind, okay? Our conscious and our subconscious. Our conscious mind is where all of our knowledge is stored. Everything that we learned in school, everything that we read and study, all that knowledge is stored in our conscious mind. Our subconscious mind, on the other hand, is our emotional mind. And really, it is what dictates our actions and our behaviors and ultimately our results.

In fact, it's responsible if you look at the research from neurosciences, 95% of what we do comes from the subconscious, not the conscious. And so that's what causes a lot of confusion and frustration for a lot of people is because they think, well, I'm smart. I know this. I know I should be doing better. I know what to do, but yet I don't do it. And the reason is because their paradigm, which is stored in your subconscious is really the driver of that. So the way to change it, the way to change your paradigm, the way to change that subconscious programming is to do exactly what, you know, the way it was. formed in the first place. And that's through repetitive information or new ideas. And the only other way to do it is through a strong emotional impact. Now, unfortunately, when we have a strong

emotional impact, it's usually a negative one. So it's a death in the family. It's a loss of a job, a loss of a business, a loss of a loved one. You're part of a horrific event like 9-11 or something like that, it's such a strong emotional impact that it'll jolt you so hard that it'll change your paradigm. That's not the way you want it to happen, obviously, but the other way to do it is through the repetition, the constant spaced repetition of a new idea. So it's taking the complete opposite way of thinking. So you identify those things that are negative, right? And then you start repeating to yourself over and over again the complete opposite of that. So again, we went going back to that example with money.

If you had a scarcity mentality before or a worthiness issue with money, then you would want to write out a statement that was the complete opposite of that and repeat it over and over and get emotionally involved in it. Right. Got it. So this podcast started. I think 11 years ago. Yeah.

It started as a personal development podcast. Oh, interesting. I've got no training. I have got no degrees in the subject. I had just consumed a lot of personal development information up to that point. Yeah. And I took that information, implemented that information, applied it to my life, and did totally recover from a devastating traumatic event.

and that traumatic event being the emergence of the digital download because I was in the music business. Okay. Everything completely upside down. Right. And so I started this podcast basically to sell a book that I wrote about the whole experience. And it was kind of half autobiographical book, half personal development. And that's what my whole podcast was about, was just about all these lessons I had learned and how I was applying this from this guy and this guy and this guy. And I hit a point to where I was like, you know,

what, I was feeling a little bit like a fraud because I'm just repeating what I was reading in other people's books, right? Yep. And I was kind of like, I hit a point where I don't know what else to talk about. I guess I got to read another book. And this is where it really hit me. I guess I got to read another book so I have another episode to talk about. Yeah.

So I'm curious, through your path, there's a lot of universal truth. So you're going to find a lot of overlap in gray area from one. personal development expert to the next. That's unavoidable. But each one kind of has their own little secret sauce. Yeah. What would you consider your secret sauce? Yeah.

So that's a good question because I think a lot of people that study personal development, they think it all sounds great, but they really have a hard time implementing it in their lives. I mean, you know those people. They know all of it. They can repeat it, as you said, over to everybody. They can repeat all the information, but their results. don't change and their life doesn't change. And so that really is what makes me different is that

I help people actually get to where they want to go because I know how to deal with the root cause. I think most personal development is based on the secondary causes of behavior. And you don't change behavior by changing behavior if that makes sense. If you do it that way, it'll be temporary. So even the people that are well known in the personal development industry, I find that for most people, their information will work for people temporarily, but it won't have the lasting effect.

And that's really what I think separates what I do versus other people in this business. It's really getting and showing people, I can get to the root cause, and I can change it for it, help you change it, and your life will never be the same. And you'll know how to do this forever. Right. In any area of your life, by the way,

it's not just business, it's your health, it's your relationships, it's your spirituality. You can apply it. Once you learn the formula, you can apply it to every aspect of your life. Right. Fantastic. With so many people in this personal development space,

and social media has just given birth to so many more, multiplying like rabbits out there seemingly. Yeah. What is a piece of personal development advice that you hear frequently that causes you to cringe? That causes me to cringe. Well, I'll tell you what. One thing that makes me cringe is the way people teach how to set in the cheap goals. Because I think most personal development people, the people that are in this business,

teach their clients how to, you know, set smart goals, you know, the acronym for that. Yeah, totally. And I am not a, I am a believer in part of smart goals, but not, not entirely. And what I mean by that is, I think most people set goals, the wrong type of goals. And they're taught how to do that. What I mean by that is, I think there's really three categories of goals. There's, there's a type goals, which are goals that we already. know how to do. There's absolutely no growth attached to them. Then there's B-type goals,

which I think is what most even goal-setters set, which are goals that you think you can do. So you might stretch yourself a little bit. It's the kind of goal that you would say, Matt, like, you know, if I do this and this and this, then I can grow my business by 10% this. That would be like a B-type goal. Well, the problem, with these A and B type goals is that they don't energize you. They don't excite you. You don't get out of your bed every morning, you know, anxious to go and make this happen. And I think that's why so many people that set goals at the beginning of the year, the research shows that 80% of them are done with them after six weeks. The only type of goal that I believe anybody should be going

after is what I refer to as a C-type goal. Okay. And a C-type goal is what, you know, you really, really want deep down inside. But you have no idea how you're going to do it. Because see, at the end of the day, goals are not about getting. People think that goals are about getting. Goals are about growth. It's about reaching deep inside of you and pulling something out of you that you didn't know you had. It's becoming, I'll give you a good example. shortly after my, you know, as I started making my money transformation, I set a goal to become a millionaire. And I remember the day that I became a millionaire. There was no bells and whistles.

It really didn't. There was no celebrations. It really felt much like the day before, right? And so as I pondered that, I realized that it wasn't about becoming a millionaire. It was about the person that I had become in the process. And I thought, oh, my gosh, look who I've become in the last several years. Right. How my life has completely changed, the growth that I've gone through, how I think completely

differently, how I've become more of a leader. And just that was such a great feeling. And that's when I realized that that is so true. It's not about the goal and achieving it is icing on the cake, but goals are about growth. And if you're not going after something that you really, really, really want, then you're not living life to its fullest. And you're not going after what you should be going after. So that's one thing that makes me cringe when I see people going after goals.

They're not going after what they should be going. They're just going after what they already know how to do or what they think they can do. And so they're limiting themselves. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's funny. You brought up smart goals because that's actually. something not directly is that make me cringe but it's what people inevitably will say with it

that though there was a college study that those who have written goals have a 97.3% chance of achieving it better than those people that don't write it down and they'll reference a Harvard study or a Yale study or something like that and even the great Tony Robbins mentions it in his book and that study never existed it never happened. I know. Well, the part that bugs me the most about it, I guess, is that the realistic part. Because what I've done and probably what you've done, you know, the people that I know that have really had success. And if you look at all the great Titans, you know, what they did was not realistic.

They just followed their heart. They followed a dream. Right. They did something that they didn't know how it was all going to play out. They just knew that they wanted it. And so that's all you have to know because all the resources, all the money, all the people that you need to make your dream happen. It happens once you make a committed decision to that goal, that C type goal that you want. Of course you don't know how to do it.

If you did, you'd be living it already. You don't need to know that. It all comes. You just have to make a decision on what it is you want. And I really feel that so many people go to their graves, never. accomplishing what they want to accomplish, never becoming who they want to become, because they've thought their whole lives that, you know, I really want that, but I don't know how to do it. And so therefore, I must not be capable of doing that, which is complete

garbage. That's just you talking to yourself. And it's a, it's a false belief that you, again, it's been built into your programming. Yep. Yep. Yeah, I hate the R too on that when they ask you to do something realistic. Yeah. Well, that's, well, no one wants to accomplish something realistically. Right. Everyone wants to do the unbelievable, the impossible, right? Yeah.

Totally. And then that realistic part, as you're putting it, that's going to come right from your programming. It's going to come right from your paradigm that, what that paradigm considers to be realistic and unrealistic. No question. Well, that doesn't help at all, does it? Not at all.

Cool. Let's bring it directly to our audience. And I've said this a lot. And I have my own answer, but I want to know yours. So real estate investing, and you are a real estate investor. I'll let everybody know that as well. Your investments are dispersed. You play in multiple arenas, but real estate definitely is one of them.

Absolutely. And the real estate is not that complicated, right? It really is simple. The example I always use is, you know, I could teach you how to fill out a purchase agreement. I don't know, 10 to 15 minutes. I mean, just a rock solid, perfect purchase agreement. I can show you how to fill in those blanks like nobody's business. But why you don't do it every day, that comes from somewhere else.

You know, when you start going through real estate and you start, once you reach a certain level of education, you kind of know what to do, right? You know what to do. But it's doing what you know consistently and with persistence is where the difference. is really made. So how can we get a breakthrough in that arena? Well, I think it is. I mean, so a big part of your paradigm, too, is your self-image. Your self-image really sets the boundaries for your individual accomplishment. You have to get your self-image aligned with what it is you want to accomplish. So that's a big part of your paradigm. I find people in real estate, you know,

a lot of people that are in real estate or real estate investors, you know, are W-2 employees or they're breaking away from that and becoming entrepreneurs. And a lot of them self-sabotage themselves. That's part of it. You know, that's part of, you know, they start having some success. You saw this, I'm sure, in your days in sales, too. That's one thing I saw over and over again is people would have good months and they were starting to do exactly what they know they needed to do.

And then all of a sudden, that self-image or paradigm pulls them right back to where they were before. Yep. And again, it's generally either their self-image or it's a couple of limiting beliefs that they have. People love to self-sabotage themselves. And that's why they don't end up doing it consistently. It hasn't become a habit every day. It's become something that they're doing for periods of time, but not.

consistently. Right. And so, again, it goes back. It always goes back to your paradigm. I mean, all you have to do is look at your results. If you're not getting the results that you want, then that means something in your paradigm is holding you back. And you need to really analyze that. And I, you know, that's, I have exercises that help people do that.

And that's, they're, they're able to usually identify it really easily. Yeah, you kind of need a, uh, A set of eyes from the outside looking in, knowledgeable eyes to guide you through that. Because if you could figure it out yourself, you would have done that already. Right. And hold you accountable, right? And that's the other thing is that people, you know, again, we all know that we should be doing better than we're doing in almost every area of our life. Right.

We know we should be eating better. We know we should be exercising. We know we should be better to our family members. We know we should be making more deals. We should be doing, we're not as productive during the days. When you start changing your paradigm, all of that changes. Your relationships become better. Your health gets better.

You consistently do more business. Those are all the great benefits of doing that. Right. Brian, it's been an absolute pleasure, and I love talking about this stuff. So let's try and do it again soon. I would love to you. Perfect. And if someone wanted to get in touch with you, what would be the best way to do that?

I see Brian Mattson.com. Is that the best place for them to go? Brian Mattson.com. That's B-R-I-A-N-M-A-T-S-E-N.com. You Google my name. You'll see me in a lot of places, but that's the best resource to go to. You can contact me either via email or by telephone. That information is all on my website.

Fantastic. Yes, it is. I'm looking at it right now, and it's all there. All right, Brian, happy New Year's year, bud. Nice to meet you, and we'll talk again soon. It's been a pleasure, Matt. Thank you. You bet.

All righty, so that's it for today. God bless to your success. I'm Matt Terrio. Live in the Dream. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. Yeah, yeah, we got the cash flow. You didn't know home for us, we got the cash flow.

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