KGCI: Real Estate on Air - From Reflection to Action: How Reflecting on the Year Helps Us Hit Reset for the Year Ahead

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Welcome, everyone. This is the abundant investor podcast, and we are Beth and Christine, your host. We are here to show you how you can live your rich life right now with the power of an abundance mindset and tools the wealthy have used for years that are accessible to the rest of us, things like real estate investing and using the powerful benefits of life insurance. We're so glad you're here. Now let's dive in. Welcome back to the abundant investor podcast. I'm your host, Beth Rooney. I'm your host, Beth Rooney. I'm here with Christine Fisk, and it is late December, and we are going to continue our conversation about really gearing up for your best year ever in 2024.

Last week, we talked about setting a vision, getting in the right mind space. We talked about really leaning into believing what is possible. And today we're going to drill down into a little bit more of the action items, the tangible things that you can be doing. in December so that you hit the ground running in 2024. So excited. This is last week's episode is one of our, if not our most popular yet. And we're so excited to continue that theme of year-end assessment slash thinking about next year and creating this vision and really getting clear on what matters most to you so that

you can set yourself up for the most wonderful year ahead. And one of the things that we talked about really briefly last time was, looking back at this past year. And so because a lot of people were interested in that, we wanna dive into that a little bit more and talk about how important it is to know what your numbers were, how successful you were, and then even more importantly,

like what you really enjoyed and what you wanna do more of as a result and figure out how to spend your energy in the upcoming year based on what learnings you've had from the past year. And I think we do, we review the learnings a little bit differently, maybe than you've heard before.

I love it. Yeah, I think that's, it's so important. So, you know, starting off in assessing 2023, it's really important to sort of take stock, right? We're, you know, what are some of the questions you can be asking yourself, Christine? So one of the first things I like to dive into when we're looking back and we're looking back to look forward is to look at the past year. and say, what am I most proud of? What am I most proud of that I did this past year? And inevitably, things are going to come up across your entire life spectrum.

It's probably going to touch on personal. It's going to touch on family. And work's going to be in there as well. You know, they say happiness at work is really tied to your productivity and feeling like you're making a contribution and serving. So take that nugget as a kind of a, a clue into what were the things that felt really good in the past year. Other things might come up as well.

And so for today's purposes, we're going to focus on your work. And we'd say to think about really, like, what made you feel really good? What really lit your fire in this past year? And write those things down. Get clear on those successes. and they can be big or small. I think we tend to overlook the small things a lot of times, the things that made us feel really good.

And one thing for sure is that in our society, particularly women, we will downplay our victories because we think that it's not appropriate or it's rude or that we might be sliding someone else if we're celebrating our wins. So we tend to put a damper on those things. and it doesn't serve us and it doesn't serve the people that we serve. We are best in our energy, celebrating our victories and getting really clear on like just embodying the energy of those successes because that will just beget more success and it shows other people what's possible.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. And, you know, there's been a lot of information in social media and it's been, you know, I think it's an evolving theme, which I think it's really great, is about being compassionate and kind to yourself and, you know, kind of treating yourself like your mom would treat you, right? And like, when you think about what made you proud, whether your mom is with you or not, what would you be like, I got to call my mother and tell her this. This is so exciting, though things that you could really like only kind of like shine out loud

to your mom, right? And so I think that's a good way to, like a good head space to be in is thinking about, What am I so proud of? What could I tell? What would I love to pick up the phone and call my mom or my grant? You know, that person is like just get such unconditional love for you. So I think that's a, I think that's a great place to start, Christine. We talked about sort of the other side of that.

And what would you have let go of, right? What would you have said, all right, this is, this is something that I tried and I didn't love or I did too much of. And I'm going to get rid of that. Are there habits that you wish you could break? Are there habits that you wanted to start but you never actually did? So I think that's another thing. It's like, okay, what am I going to just let go of?

Yeah, what no longer, exactly, exactly, what no longer serves me. I think we, we, everything is patterns and habits. If we get really clear and like the more we learn about ourselves, the more we learn about ourselves. We tend to keep doing the same things. and we resist evolving. And I think this whole purpose of what we're talking about today is about an evolution. And in order to evolve, we have to know what the benchmark is.

And that's why we're saying like what happened this past year. So I think we have to be super honest with ourselves. And that's where maybe it's a little bit painful. And we resist the pain as well, the pain and the evolution, like they go hand in hand. And to evolve faster, you have to walk towards the pain. You have to be honest with yourself about what didn't feel good and really get curious about why in order to know what's holding you back. Right. So I'll just give an example.

I've coached real estate agents in the past. A lot of real estate agents don't want to put themselves out there on social media. A lot of entrepreneurs in general don't want to do that. And can you build a business without doing that? Sure. Is it easier if you're putting yourself out there in front of people that are the people that are you're meant to? to serve and sharing yourself and letting yourself be known as an expert and in helping them. Absolutely.

It's so helpful. So what's holding you back? And we dig into this in coaching, right? What's holding you back from putting yourself out there? Well, the two biggest fears, and I think we talked about this last time, are that I won't belong and that I won't be loved. Okay. So where's that coming from?

We don't have to like do a whole psychoanalysis, but we have to understand it's natural and it's normal. and push ourselves a bit to overcome that and be brave and put ourselves out there more and maybe work with a coach or maybe challenge ourselves that I'm going to post three times every week no matter what and I put it in my like find the techniques to do that and to overcome that. Yeah, I think that's important because I think that it's important to like we're saying, look back to look forward. And if you've had that on your goal sheet for the last three years and every year,

year, you do it maybe in January, then you stop. It's got to, you got to ask yourself why, right? And, you know, are there habits that you want to embrace that you, you, you put on your list you want to do? And then for some reason, you don't. Because the keyword here is evolving. What if you're doing the same thing year over year in any industry, in any business, you're, and you're not changing, adapting and growing, you are going to.

be blown away by the new people. I used to tell my agents this story all the time. My mother-in-law is the mom of 11 boys. And as they would go out the door, she would rush their hair. They all went to Catholic school. And she'd say, now, don't let the girls get ahead of you. Because the nuns always thought the girls were smarter than the boys, right? Creating a little competition, right?

A little like, oh, yeah, don't let the girls went. Not putting girls down, just creating a little competition for her boys, right? Don't let the girls get ahead of you in school, in academics, is what she was talking about. I used to tell this story to my more senior agents or my more experienced agents when new agents would come on board. Because the new agents would come in with gusto and without all the baggage of the way they used to do business. And they just did business the way they learned to do it. And so they learned to use social media. They learned to work with buyers the right way, getting buyers' contract, explaining their value.

you. And I would always say to the experienced agents, don't let the new guys get ahead of you, the new girls, because they would. They would because they had a different mindset. That's all they did. That's all they had was a different mindset. And, you know, that little competitive, like, spirit isn't to draw people down. It's to collaborate and to raise each other up, to say, use that energy. And so when you're doing this and you're thinking, gosh, yeah, I'm looking at, around me and I can't believe this agent who doesn't have half the experience of me did twice as much business will ask yourself why. Maybe they're employing imploring these new techniques around social media or not even new, but more consistent. And yeah, so that's a really good

example, Christine. And it's not just in real estate. It's across the board, looking around what you're doing. If you're standing still, you're going to, you're going to be blown. your competition or other folks around you are going to fly by you. Exactly. And I think the way to think about it, I used to run into a lot of challenges with a competitive mindset coming from athletics, right? And it's, it's, you can even look at it as just opening your mind, opening your heart to be open to new ways of doing things. And that's exactly why that person's coming in in doing double the business is because they're not in and they don't already have the history, like you said, they don't come in with any baggage, right? Like, that's why there's a great

book on leadership that I think it's the 15 laws of leadership by John Maxwell. And one of the laws in there is adapt things from other industries. So someone coming into real estate new doesn't really know fully how it works. And Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, first billion dollar woman on the cover of Forbes, she talks about this too. One of the reasons she was so successful is because she brought in some ignorance. She didn't have the preconceived notions of how things work. So she's just really curious and kept asking questions and figures of that, figured it out. Right. There's a, there's someone who's interested in real estate right in real estate investing right now who's coming to me with questions and just asking questions left and right. Like very like in a kind of an ignorant way. And I can just tell this person is going to be very successful because they're not afraid to look.

Yeah. they don't know what they don't know and they're not afraid to ask right right and when we can put our ego down on the table and just say it's okay to like not to not know and to ask and just be open um being open is is just so so great and I think a lot of people just going back to like the year in the review and looking at your numbers um that's so important because it will like the numbers don't lie and the numbers are clues and we I think a lot of us don't dig into them because we don't want to know the truth we again we don't want to feel the pain of maybe what didn't work and that's why we say start with start with what you're most proud of listen we don't we want to focus on the positive

yeah and and we want to look at things objectively for clues so that we can say like what worked really well what felt really good where did things where do things where do things things fall apart this past year, right? Like, let's, let's be really honest about what necessarily didn't work. You know, we, we hired some people really quickly in some of our investment renovations without doing much due diligence. Guess what? Like, next time I will do more due diligence on that and take the time because it created some pain that I don't want to go through that type of pain again. I'm willing to go through certain pains. some things. I'll choose my heart, right? Yeah. This is the type of pain I don't want to go through

again. So what is it involved? And really looking back and saying, okay, we have really hard time finding a contractor in this market and we've talked to a lot of people. I hold on to the hope that there are the type of people that I want to work with. And so I continue to talk to everybody and anybody about who they know and who they've worked with because I know that they're, there are great contractors everywhere. Sometimes it takes more work to find them. Yeah. That's just one example.

I love it. You know what, Christine? It's a perfect example of having a growth mindset. And we talked about the book by Carol Dweck. And having that growth, that story is just told is having a growth mindset. It's, and it's how people grow and evolve and improve year over year. I used to, I loved the term Kaizen. It was a part of the culture at Fidelius.

any investments. Ned Johnson would talk about it and it's basically continual improvement. And so anybody that's ever worked with me ever could tell me, could say, oh, Beth talks about Kaisen, because it's just moving forward, looking at what you didn't, what maybe didn't work and improving on it. And then taking what, more importantly, what is working into improving on that. And I love our Tuesday calls with Amy Gregory because she always starts off with the wins. And She says like, let's just talk about what's working and do it more. Okay. Let's not sit around the water cooler and like complain about what's not working.

It doesn't matter. Stop doing it and focus on the stuff that's working. And that's why social media is so great because you get to test a lot of things. You get immediate response, which is, which is awesome. But yeah, I think, you know, I think this, you know, really deep dive around an assessment around 2023, around sort of, you know, how did you feel? what worked. And then, as you said, jumping into the numbers. And so it doesn't matter what your business is. You want to look at your income, your expenses, your sources of income, what you're spending your money on, and then get to a return and investment. Okay. So if you're spending some

money, where are you spending it and what is it getting you? And I just want to stop here and giving a quick example, again, on real estate agents, but this is really for anybody. There's a lot of expenses that can be hidden in what we do day to day in our jobs. So people think, people think that, you know, okay, I'm at a real estate company and my split is 80-20 and I have to pay a 6% marketing fee. They don't think of the 20% that they're paying the company necessarily as an expense because they're not writing a check for it. But it is an expense. And, you know, the question is, first of all, are you, you acknowledging it as an expense? Are you recognizing how much that is? And the second question

is, what are you getting for that expense? And we just ran some numbers and, you know, a typical agent at an 80-20 split at a typical kind of big brand company that's charging a 6% marketing fee is leaving over $40,000 on the table if they're not asking themselves that question. And so my question would be, what could you do with that $40,000, right? What if you just took that $40,000 instead of taking it as profit? What if you reignited your, in that into your business? That $10 million would turn into $20. Would you turn into $30 like that?

So really being honest about your income and really looking at your expenses and making sure you're including those expenses that maybe you're not writing a check for, but you're being charged for, especially as a real estate agent. Exactly. I love that so much. There are a lot of hidden costs and a lot of hidden opportunity costs. So I think it's really important. And that's where really looking at the numbers closely and then thinking about what else is out there that I might want to try, that I haven't tried. And then thinking through things on a more like deeper levels, right? So, oh, okay. So I, I, I, think I want to go to this conference and it's $5,000 for me to go.

So what is that, you know, do I do I have the money? Well, why not think about what is the return on that, right? Like you've heard people go to this conference and it changes their life. Well, gosh, like that's pretty amazing. It's hard to put a price tag on changing your life in terms of I feel so much better all the time. That is obviously going to affect our business, right? And thinking, well, not going to that, it might just keep me in the same.

same patterns or not joining this community and paying a monthly fee might keep me in, you know, feeling like I'm in isolation and I'm struggling and I just don't enjoy my work. So I think those questions are really good to ask yourself too. And by the way, we are going to drop in the show notes an assessment, a guide to assessing your past year that we've put together that has these questions laid out for you and you can print it out or you can go into a PDF online and you can fill it out and take the time to do this honest assessment for yourself. Because I love it, before you are maybe even fully clear on what you want for next year, you've got to have a sense of what's worked, what am I curious about, what felt really good, what do I want to move towards

and what's it going to take to get there? And, you know, I think we often will look at our income and say, okay, I made $250,000 this year, but we don't look at the ROI, like you said, because we're not thinking, what are the expenses as well? What did it take for me to get there? And that really allows you to say, what's working, what's not? Like you and I with this business, with an abundant investor, we're trying a lot of different things. We're going into the new year with a lot of ideas, plans around mailers speaking opportunities, right? Like a lot of different things.

And we've already learned so much. So we're taking what we've learned and we're moving that into the year ahead. We're going to make decisions based on feelings and numbers because it's always intuition. And then the numbers don't lie. The numbers are more masculine. The intuition is the more feminine and they go hand in hand. They're supposed to be balanced. So we take those two things together, make plans.

And let's sail on into the new year with the plan. and mixing things up because if we don't, then we're going to have the same results, like all of us. Yeah, yeah, 100%. 100%. And it's, you know, thinking about your income streams. You know, I was talking to this earlier this week, a potential age, an agent that's thinking about coming to join us in our group, which is something that we're excited to

announce that we have a few people coming in January. But, you know, one of the things to think about is in whatever line of, business you're in is, okay, what's my income stream? And how can I diversify that a little bit? We know, we understand diversification when it comes to investing. But what about in your income? And, you know, adding real estate investing as a diversification strategy, adding ways that you can take your knowledge base, whether you're in real estate or wherever you're in and say, is there an opportunity to create an income stream based on the fact that I am an expert in, fill in the blank. You know, so I think that, you know, yes, this is the fun time. This is the perfect time of

year to do it because you really have to spend this time thinking about this and getting clear on your vision to allow yourself to think bigger than the way you've always done it. And I feel like, Christine, you and I are like, if we had like, you know, one of those big red circles with an X through it. The word underneath would be status quo. Yeah. You know, like, you know, moving through life without having any sort of connection or awareness. It was funny. I love Father Uny and at his sermon on Sunday.

He talked about this great book, Awareness. He talked about being aware. And I think that that's a beautiful way to live is like being aware. And one of the ways to be aware of yourself and your surroundings. and the impact that you're having is to take stock about, is to take this time to really reflect and say what's working and what's not and then building a plan for there. But that awareness is so important. Oh, my gosh.

I had a really beautiful awareness experience this past week as well that I haven't even told you about yet. And it's the awareness just, oh, it's like an onion. The more we become, you know, peeling back the onion. It's like the more aware we are, the more meaning things have. and the more opportunity there is, and if your goal is to make more money, if your goal is to feel more fulfilled, whatever it is, you've got to just be aware and keep pulling back the layers to like, oh, now I'm aware of this and now I'm aware of that. And this is all intertwined. And I see the patterns and things. I had no idea I was even doing that, right? I had a whole revelation around my daughter in college and my experience in college this week that was like, blew my mind. But it took me really taking some time to be aware, right? That's another thing we don't do. And I love meditating for that reason is creating some sacred space for ourselves so that

we can be really clear and not listen to all the outside status quo type noise that exists out there. I love it. I love it. So between last week's podcast, if you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to it. In this, in today's podcast, I feel like we're giving you a lot of really great tools to enter 2024 with energy and enthusiasm, awareness, a great plan. We will in the show notes leave a free guide

for some questions that you can be asking yourself as you do this reflection. And as always, we'll have a link in there to learn more about working with Christine and I, whether you're a real estate investor and you really want to tap into the, especially the most recent experience you're having Christine, which is awesome to learn about and be part, you know, have a seat alongside of you at if you're a real estate agent and you want to tap into my experience of managing and coaching and watching agents, you know, double and triple their business over the years, that link will be there and we'll

figure out what's important to you and we can build a plan from there. Love it. Love it. Great. Thank you. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Abundant Investor podcast and learn something new. We would love to hear from you. And if you did get something from this episode, please subscribe and rate this podcast so more people can find it and live their rich lives too. And remember, an abundant mindset means there's always plenty to go around.

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