Top 10 things I've Learned Spending Over 6 Figures on Masterminds

Welcome back to the show.

Today I want to talk about the top 10 things that I've learned spending probably close to six figures or more in masterminds and groups. I have done some free ones, but without a doubt, I've probably, without a doubt I've. I've come away with more and probably better information in the masterminds and groups that I actually paid for. You know, there's a, there's a sense of accountability when you pay for something and you just kind of take things more serious. So let's get into it.

First one, and these, I don't know if they're in. They're probably in somewhat of an order, not necessarily most important to least important, but probably more chronological, right? Not completely in order, but they are somewhat in order of when I learned them, when I went through them, and then, you know, how, how what came out of it. So I will definitely attest that my income and net worth without a doubt reflects how much time I've put in the masterminds.

And then anything that's come out of that, it's directly related to or indirectly maybe related to the masterminds. So let's get into it. Number one is how important relationships are. You know, I, I don't know and I've talked about this before.

I'm not sure that I really leaned into how important relationships were for my business, for becoming financially free and then going on from there with being in masterminds, networking, you know, forming great relationships with, with some friends now that's completely a game changer. I've been doing this on my own, right? I don't have partners. I do have great employees now, but yeah, I don't have partners.

So I needed to learn from others that were doing it probably further down the road than me that were doing a better job. So learning from others, forming those relationships, that's my number one thing that I've learned. Joining masterminds. Number two, it's mentality. How to think like high achievers. You know, I think we probably all have this in us, but being around high achievers and people that are successful, what they're doing, it just. Things just kind of rub off, right? I'm.

I've learned that I'm a person that I like to kind of analyze people and see what they're doing and kind of study them and then I'll take what I like from it, what I don't like, and, and, you know, steal things from other people. That's how I learn. That's how I How I progress and mentality is. Is one of those things. And high achievers definitely have a positive mentality. There's no quit, right.

They know that there's always another day, another chance, another whatever that they're going to have. Even if they've had some failures in a row, they're still positive that they're going to have positive outcomes at some point. Number three is importance of vision or goals, roadmap, whatever you want to call it, but know where you're going. I know that my first, I guess, vision or goal or.

Or, you know, rung on the ladder was to become financially free, which I had other goals below that on how to get there, but that was my number one pit stop, I guess. Right. And then after that, it took a little while to kind of learn what my next big goal was. But you've got to know where you're going, right? If you don't know where you're going, you're just kind of all over the place.

You may be looking at different asset classes, you may be looking at different things, but if you don't know where you're going, like, nothing's going to work out. And this is probably. Yeah, Importance of vision is just. It's super important. You got to know where you're going and keep it simple. You don't need to overthink it. Know where you're going, and then there's no. There's no destination. Right. It's not like you're going to get to a spot and be like, all right, done it. I'm done.

And that was one thing that took me a little while to learn, but. And that's probably too, being in multiple masterminds and picking up different things from different people. But I think early on I thought, you know, becoming financially free was kind of an end. And then I was going to coast through the rest of my life, which is crazy. My personality doesn't allow that, and I probably knew that at the time. But number one, I just wanted to become financially free. So importance of vision.

You got to know where you're going and then don't stop. You got to keep going. So you got to find a new goal to go after after that.

I've also learned to prioritize fitness and health, and I think it's. It's become easier. And I was talking to a buddy the other day about this. It's become easier that since I've become financially free, I can now focus on other things in my life, right. Which includes fitness and health. I'VE got more time to focus on those things, to learn more about those things. And it's definitely been obviously a game changer, right? Fitness. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything.

So being in these masterminds have definitely kind of made me realize that, you know, seeing some of these high, other high performing, excuse me, individuals. Gabe, who we had on the show a few shows ago, crazy high level fitness guy. Just crazy high level fitness and, and his discipline and what he does with not just working out but eating and all that stuff is, is crazy. So yeah, I'm stealing things from guys like him and, and hopefully implementing the good things.

Number five is high level achievers have high level energy. And it seems, not everybody obviously, but it seems like even those that may be introverted, including myself, somehow they can kind of put on a mask and get in front of an audience and be a different person. They've got, they become the person they need to be in front of that audience.

And that's, that's, you know, that's something that's probably learned over time but also something that to me is probably, you know, in a way God given, God put that in them. But yeah, just the crazy energy. I mean the one, the one name that sticks out my mind is Tommy Mello. Garage door guy. If you don't know him, look him up. Great dude. He spoke at an event that I was at, smaller event, there's what, 40 people I think. And you could feel his energy basically when he walked in the room.

He's just, he's always on and my guess is he's probably more of an extrovert, but he's always on. His energy's crazy and it's contagious. But yeah, that's one thing I learned about high level people is they just have high energy. They're not sitting around, right? It's not a Tuesday at 9am they're not sitting around and, and waiting for a Price is Right. Come on. Right.

They're, they're, they're probably either working out, doing something with their family, doing something in their business, travel, they're always, they're constantly moving. So high high energy people. Number six out of the ten things I've learned in the Masterminds over the past, I guess it's been about five years. It's about, it's, it's about more than just me. It's how many people can I impact?

And I've, I've started realizing this more and more and it's not Necessarily just there's multiple layers here. But I've been, we've been donating money monthly to different organizations for probably, oh, definitely 10 years, maybe closer to 15, I don't know. And started small, but every year we keep, we're donating more every year. So it's not only that, but also I think initially I started off trying to be a lean team, lean organization, myself and some part time people.

Now I've learned that the more lives I can possibly positively impact that are on my team, it's no dip, it's. I don't say it's no different. It's similar to raising your kids correctly. Right. And not, not by any means saying employees are my kids. But the more we can rub off on each other, the positive stuff, the more that'll affect generations. Right?

There's just off top of my mind, my, my district manager, she, I, from what I know she is making significantly more, significantly more money than what she used to make. I think she's been with us two and a half years, so three years ago. I think she was almost out of a job when we met too. But she's been able to move close to her daughter that's in college and she's been able to live kind of a, you know, a remote lifestyle that she can be around her daughter every day.

She's making better money and we have monthly talks about her goals and her future and her vision and anything that she wants to do. And to me, that's really what it's all about, right? Impacting lives positively and not just lives right now, but further generations. Right. And as much as I'm, you know, I want to try to do that with my own kids, I want to do that as much as I possibly can with other people around me.

And saying this, it may sound like an egotistical thing, but I think we're all here for that reason, right? We're all here to try to make this place better, make this world better. And then hopefully that carries on through generations. And I don't know that I necessarily thought that far into it before I joined these masterminds. That was number six.

Number seven is how important operations is. And I think that's come to light more in the past, call it two or three years when, you know, Covid definitely had an effect. Well, real estate in general has just been, you know, shooting to the moon since probably 2012. Somewhere in there, if you've bought anything since 2010, you know, you've been winning. But now it's become how important operations are.

And it's kind of, it's, it's showing in a lot of spaces and especially with self storage where it is a business and you're starting to see some people struggle a little bit more. And hopefully those people, I've seen it, but hopefully those people are figuring out, oh, I need to be better in operations and start to fix those.

And I think just talking with some friends that I have 20, 24 and I know for myself too was a big year in improving operations, improving systems, putting systems in place that we didn't even have, um, a lot of those things that we didn't really think about when we got in the real estate investing. We, most people, when they get in real estate investing, want financial freedom, right? They want the freedom, they want the time freedom.

And then it's like, oh, I have all these properties, I've got a full time business now. What now you've become, you, you've got to become a different person. You're not just hunting for deals and taking deals down. Not just a real estate investor, your leader. At some point you're probably an HR department, hiring people. You got to create systems manuals.

All this stuff that you didn't think about until, you know, you kind of after you, you know, you progress down the road, gain financial freedom and then it's like, oh yeah, I've got a full blown business here and you need to treat it as such. And the people that don't and think they'll just cover that up with another new deal at some point it's probably going to burn them. So I've learned how important operations are.

That's a big one there, especially in the past couple years and my guess is probably at least another couple years while the market is at least in self storage, the rentals are kind of down right now. Operations is super important. Number eight is stay in my lane. And this is a tough one.

But I've realized that I need to, while I like to learn from others and I like to see what others are doing, I need to stay in my lane and do what I'm good at and also with that said, know what I'm good at, right? So we all need to figure it out. Figure out what you're good at. And that's not necessarily just asset type, which is number one is to me, keep it simple and stay in the same asset class that's gotten you to where you are, right?

There's something to be said about pivoting when you need the pivot. But I see people pivoting on pivots and then pivoting again. And it's been happening a lot last couple years. My opinion is keep it simple, do great, get great at one thing and continue to do that. For myself, my roles have definitely changed, but I'm still in acquisitions. I'm still buying the properties and making relationships with the sellers. I enjoy that. How much longer I'll do that, I don't know. But I do enjoy that.

I think that's kind of my what's gotten me where I'm at. But I've also have to be had to have become a leader, more organized and in other hats too. But I've learned to stay in my lane and past call it six years has been stay my lane and just buy self storage for now. Until that can kind of become on autopilot and I don't have to do anything. Then I can kind of switch lanes. Maybe number nine is to delegate, which is probably a stretch for a lot of us.

I know the 9 to 5 that I had for over a decade, I wore a ton of hats. There wasn't much delegating other than the field work. And I worked at a commercial electrical contractor. I did a lot of things. I did sales, estimating, project management, hr, hiring, firing. Like I did a ton of stuff and not much delegating.

Towards the end of my stay there, I did start to delegate a little bit more. But I really learned with being a masterminds that I have to delegate in order to one, maintain the portfolio and the business that I have, but also two, to grow. I'm thinking back, I don't know, 20, 21. I mean I was still. There were still times where I was still cutting down weeds at storage facilities, which isn't crazy. You know, I had a weed whacker in my truck.

Now that point in time, I was about a year removed from my job and I just enjoyed the freedom. I'm like, hey, I'm not at work, I'm working for myself. I'm doing what I want to do. I'm cool with cutting some weeds. I've learned that's not the best use of my time. And I think that's probably been, that's obviously been a huge game changer.

But one of the bigger things that I've learned, you know, joining these masterminds and kind of the piggyback off that is and probably to sum up a lot of these, you know, it's probably related to a lot of these is number 10 is work on the business, not in the business. And that happens a lot, right? Where especially starting out, you're probably working in your business, right? And I don't see a problem with that. But at some point you've got to get yourself out.

And when I say I don't see a problem with working in your business to start, you're learning how things run. That way you can, and you should document and that way you can teach the person that you're going to hire how to do those things. And there's a couple of things there. One, obviously you can teach them or at least have the systems and trainings to give them so that they can learn it. And two, you can find the right person that fits that, right? You should be able to if you're doing so.

An easy example, my first single family rental back in 2014. I did everything myself, did all the rehab myself, took down the deal, found the deal, took down the deal, did the rehab, rented out the, the house, and then was a property manager. I did, I did everything, which it was one single family house. I had to. But I learned so much doing those things. So when the time comes around where you scale and now you can't do that stuff, you can't do the rehab.

And by the way, deal two, there was no rehab. Deal three, I did very minimal rehab. Deal four, did none of the rehab. So I learned as I went along that I couldn't do everything. It was impossible. But I knew from doing that stuff I knew what to look for in a person or a contractor to be able to fill that role. And I could also give them pointers of, hey, this is what I'm looking for, right?

I think some of that hands on experience is important, but eventually you've got to get out of that and you've got to work on the business. Okay. Which a lot of times, to simplify that, that's looking at the future. Where's your business going? Where are you going? So what, what's it look like in a year to look like in three years, five years, 10 years, you've got a plan for that stuff and now you're more of a, you know, thought leader, visionary, team leader, manager, right?

You're, you're more of the, you're working on the business and you're delegating pretty much any of the day to day tasks that you know that, that just don't suit you. So Those are the 10 things that I've learned over the past. We'll call it, we'll call it almost six Years, definitely five years being in Masterminds spending probably six figures worth.

And I know that that's me saying that it's like it's a lot of money that spent over time definitely more than what I spent on my college education. And don't regret it one bit. I'll say that I've learned more. It's easier to say this now, but I've learned more. And my life has progressed all the way around. Not just in business, but personally, obviously financially, everything.

Masterminds have changed my life more than any other thing that I've paid for, including any education, college education or anything that I've gotten. So masterminds are a complete game changer as long as you lean into it, you learn from it, make relationships and basically do 10 things. And there's definitely more things. But these are my top 10 things that I, that I took out from the masterminds that I joined. And I do think there's a window for every mastermind.

For myself, it seems to be about one to three years. And then it seems like, okay, maybe I need to look for another one, maybe new group. It's in the back of my mind, not in the front of my mind. Because if you're constantly thinking that you're going to be constantly going through masterminds, finding new ones, I do think it's good to find one and stick minimum for a year and then kind of evaluate and say, okay, what information am I getting out of this? Is it valuable?

And truly, right now, the mastermind that myself and Ian Horowitz run, we're definitely learning without a doubt. I don't know if we're learning as much as masterminds that we were in day one, because at that point you're just drinking from a fire hose. But now it's more learning from each other. We do bring experts in, but it's also just camaraderie with the guys.

It's, you know, learning from each other and just hanging out, being able to vent about stuff that, you know, that you can't vent with to other people that just aren't in that situation. So it's nice to have those people around you. So that's all I've got. Again, appreciate everyone for listening, for watching. If you like the show, please share it. If you don't like the show, please let me know.

We do have a website now, thedomorepodcast.com you can reach out to me on there and we'll see you guys next time. Thank you. Thanks for following subscribing and listening to this episode of The Do More podcast, hosted by John Varling. To learn more or ask questions, go to L4Investing.com.