Podcast Transcription

Dr. Iverson: Do you know the dangerous thing about this, Frankie, is you’re going to have recording material that you can play on a loop on my lap.

Tim: There it is.

Frank: What’s going to happen is we’re not going to be able to record…

Oscar: No.

Melina: Welcome to “Flippin’ Off.” A purpose-driven podcast about flipping houses and making a difference.

Oscar: Well, hello, everyone. This is Oscar Solares once again joining you guys on the “Flippin’ Off Podcast” and today we’ve got some of the usual suspects. We got Christian Rios. You can say hi.

Christian: Hey, guys, it’s Christian Rios.

Oscar: I got Frank Luna, Frank the Tank.

Frank: Good morning, good afternoon, good night. Whenever you’re listening to us, hello.

Oscar: Hello is good. Yeah. And Tim Wilkinson.

Tim: Hello.

Oscar: I’ve got Kevin back there on the cameras. Yell Kevin.

Kevin: Hey. Hey. Hey.

Oscar: Hey, hey, yeah. And, you know, I mentioned his name last podcast, Dr. Nathan Iverson. So we were able to pull some strings and we actually had to drag him here, right?

Tim: That’s what it’s like.

Oscar: Had to drag him here.

Christian: Was he literally kicking and screaming?

Oscar: Yeah, there’s like scrape marks on the concrete when we were dragging him out of CBU but it’s all good. No. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Iverson.

Dr. Iverson: Pleasure.

Oscar: And I’m not going to give details behind your schooling and everything else that you do, but I’d just love for you to just, kind of, give us a real quick intro so people out there hear who you are and then we’ll go from there.

Dr. Iverson: Yeah. So, like Oscar said, Dr. Nathan Iverson, I direct a graduate program in industrial-organizational psychology at California Baptist University. And I’ve had the pleasure of working with New Wealth over the last few months here as they’re looking to scale global. Asking the question of, what does it look like to be world-class and step into that role of being world-class leaders? So my consulting company, Momentum Coaching and Consulting, we’ve been working, we started off with a three-day retreat and now it’s meeting with these guys on a weekly basis. Helping to do some of the launches in Hawaii and even looking for their future, what does it look like to be world-class?

Oscar: Yeah. Yeah, so that was pretty good. That’s a good elevator pitch, man.

Dr. Iverson: Thanks.

Oscar: That’s awesome. Very cool. So the reason we invited Dr. Iverson over to be on this podcast, we talked the last podcast about what it takes to stay in and what that looks like, right? So you can call it grit, you can call it being driven, you can call it all these different things, but ultimately, it really goes back to taking action.

Dr. Iverson: Yeah.

Oscar: And then having a plan, right? And one of the things that we discovered in working with Dr. Iverson is that there’s a lot of science behind what we do and we had no clue that there was a lot of science behind what we do.

Dr. Iverson: Yeah.

Oscar: Which is interesting, that it was inherent to us to do it, but then Dr. Iverson was like, “Hey, there’s proof here and there’s proof here of what you guys are doing,” right? So if you could just maybe… Let’s talk a little bit about the challenges we as a group have faced in taking action and then…

Dr. Iverson: I’d love to, yeah. Let’s do it.

Oscar: …bring in some science behind that. Okay, cool. So who wants to start throwing all their dirty laundry out there?

Tim: Oh.

Oscar: They all look at each other, kind of, weird.

Frank: I didn’t know we were going there.

Oscar: Oh. And twist.

Tim: I went first last time so I’m going to volunteer Christian…

Christian: Oh, watch out.

Oscar: Wait, he volun-told you last time, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Tim: Right back at you.

Christian: So I’m going to pull a Tim. Repeat the question.

Oscar: So just to kick things off, I just want to get some feedback on you guys. Maybe some of the struggles that you faced in actually taking action. And then, Dr. Iverson will chime in with different outtakes of what he hears from us. And really, it’s about helping other people understand that the community works for a reason. What we do and how we do it obviously works for a reason because we already talked about there’s science behind it. And then ultimately, it’s how do they start making the right choices to do the right things, right?

Christian: Sure. So for me, and this is really recent. I’m going to talk really recent because this is when you’ve been really helping us grow and develop. And for me stepping into a new role in the leadership of the club and being, you know, a part of the enrollment process for new club members, for me, it’s almost been a little bit of an identity shift that I’ve been going back and forth with, which ties back to, really, the conversation of last week. It’s like, I know I’m an investor, I know, you know, I have a successful business, but I’m now almost changing my identity to helping others lead and leading through people, too, which I still go back to. And I think the more you grow, you’re always going to probably go back to that, too, where it’s like, “Am I good enough? Am I, you know, willing to fit into those shoes?” So for me, I would say that’s something that, recently, I’ve struggled with. And at the end of the day, I know that I’m capable of it, but it’s a new skillset that I’m having to develop. So I don’t know if that, kind of, makes sense. I’m throwing it out there.

Oscar: Yeah, it does. Absolutely, because… And what Christian is talking about, right, is the recent role that he’s taken on as the Director of Enrollment for the club, which really means that his role touches, affects, impacts a lot of lives.

Christian: Yeah.

Oscar: And then I get why he’s like, “Wow, this is like a big paradigm shift.” Right? Because of the responsibility that’s been placed on him. So…

Dr. Iverson: Yeah. And what I hear Christian sharing then is this idea, in psychology, we call it self-efficacy. And self-efficacy is our belief in our ability to succeed. A lot of us have, when we go into new situations, new job titles, we have this imposter syndrome. For me, it was going to grad school. Like, I will basically finish by the time I…all the way through, like three, four years, I was saying, “When are they going to figure out I’m not smart enough and they’ll kick me out?” Because I’m like, “I grew up on a farm in rural America working with my shirt off all summer.” Like, I’m just a campesino in my mind, you know?

So, like, for me, it was, like, I finally finished. I’m like, “Oh, wow, they’re not going to kick me out. Maybe I…” Like, so for me, I couldn’t identify myself as being worthy of the position I was holding, but fortunately, there’s a science behind that. How can we convince ourselves of our ability to succeed in any given situation or title? And Albert Bandura, one of my favorite researchers describes three ways to do that. And he says there are experiences, mentors and role models, and verbal persuasions. So we cover this a lot with the club and I had the honor of teaching this last weekend at the RPP. But the experiences, so, you know, in coaching then, in working with people, something, you know, Christian and I have talked about is, as he succeeds in these roles, he convinces himself. All he has to do is look at his actions, see the outcomes of the growth of the club in his position and then that can help convince yourself, “Oh, maybe I am the kind of person that can do incredible things.”

Then the second is mentors and role models. Looking to this team here, looking around and like, “Okay, maybe if someone like these guys can do incredible things, maybe I’m also capable of that.” And then the third is verbal persuasion. And we talk a lot about that. It’s the free one. It takes like no effort. That’s when, people of perceived authority. So in your org chart, that’s Oscar and Melina choosing to speak potential as they do to you of, “No, you’re made for this. You’re designed for incredible things. There’s a reason we chose you for the title. You’re leading the team often, and meeting people and bringing new people in. Yes, you are so equipped for this.” And those three together really can help to shape your identity to say, “Maybe I am the kind of person that can do this.” And then that that boosts their performance, that boosts their identity.

Tim: Right. I love that.

Oscar: And, “You can’t mess it up.” By the way.

Dr. Iverson: Yes, yes.

Dr. Iverson: But we love saying that. Like what if you can’t mess it up?

Oscar: Yeah. You can’t, right? Because the cool thing is that, right now we’re at a stage where we’re writing this whole thing, right? So we’re defining what all this looks like. And so when you said imposter syndrome, I immediately looked at, and we had this moment, Tim. Not that kind of moment, but we had a moment where you looked at me like…

Tim: Uh-oh, they know.

Oscar: “Oh, I remember that.” And then I was like, “Oh, yeah, I remember when you really dealt with that.” And I think to a certain extent, you still continue to deal with that, right, the imposter syndrome?

Tim: Yeah, definitely. I feel like every time that I try to take on something different and new, even inside of this organization and even inside of real estate, every time we get into a new transaction or something like that, I still feel that sense of, “Can I handle this,” right? I always have that fear of, “Am I really who they think I am?”

Oscar: Yeah. And it shows up differently for all of us.

Dr. Iverson: Totally.

Oscar: Right? For you, it’s that. For me, it’s almost paralyzing. When it’s something new that I’m not used to doing or just not familiar with, I procrastinate the crap out of it, right? “Because I’ll get to it, I got to research,” I make all these things up, right, of getting there. So it’s very similar in a way. It just shows up differently.

Tim: Yeah. I can share that, for me, there was a… It used to paralyze me and then I realized that it was… I started realizing that it didn’t have to paralyze me, you know? I, kind of, share this sometimes, but public speaking was always one of those things. You know, the fear of, “First of all, do I deserve to be up there?” And then, “Am I going do it wrong? Am I gonna mess it up?” All of that stuff literally would freeze me, like, to the point where I couldn’t even speak. And then I saw somebody that I look up to getting ready to go on stage and I watched him come in and he was visually shaking, he had a layer of sweat on him. And I’m like, “Dude, what’s going on?” He said, “Well, I’m jumping out of my skin right now.” And I was like, “What are you talking about, man? I’ve watched you do this presentation 50 times.” And he said, “Oh, it’s like that for me every single time but when I get up there, 30 seconds into it, I’ll be fine.”

Dr. Iverson: Wow.

Tim: And then I watched him just take what I saw on him as the everything that I feel inside myself that allowed me to just freeze, I watched him just do it anyway. And that was a big moment for me because I realized that I didn’t have to be stuck. Now that’s not to say that all of a sudden I could just jump on stage, it just freed me to take that next step.

Oscar: Yeah. And I got to see that evolution, right, so it was interesting. Because when he talks about being paralyzed, so when I say, “I get paralyzed,” it’s mentally, right, I might avoid it. His was like, literally, right? Physiological paralysis where they hand him the mic and he’s done, he’s frozen and now we can’t keep him off the mic, but that’s a whole different conversation.

Tim: They can’t shut this guy up.

Oscar: Right. But just to tie it all back in, right, everything we’re talking about right now is really about, what does it take to break through those barriers to take action, right? To actually continue to move forward. I know, Frank, you’ve had your struggles and challenges with that as well where you, kind of, get frozen in your tracks, if you will.

Frank: I’ve gotten stuck and I have to just, kind of, look at it and say a lot of, you know, personal…you know, having four children, a lot of the situation where I got stuck, that coupled with having situations with business can seem like really big and getting even, almost overwhelming and magnified. But it’s really been going to my mentors, and I’ve never been good at that.

Oscar: You mean reaching out for help?

Frank: I’ve never been good at reaching out for help. I’ve only gotten better at it because I had to. And I think situations and challenges that I wanted to just figure out myself and, you know, “I’m okay, I got it,” definitely… What is that word Dave used to say? “I’m that ‘I-got-this’ guy,” or whatever. “I got this.” And to the most part, I’ve always been like that. And that is going to leave you at a point where you’re plateauing constantly because you’re not willing to reach out for help. So I would say, all the situations where I got stuck just led me to the point where I realized I have to start reaching out, have to be…because I’m at a plateau because I’m not willing to reach out for help or was unable to, that’s where I get frozen. I know I need to reach out for help and I didn’t know how.

So, breaking through that, I mean that was, like, in the last couple of years, I broke through that. So since doing that, I’ve realized so many different blind spots that I’ve had that I didn’t…you couldn’t even have told me that there was, whatever that blind spot was, many of them, because of my inability to reach out and try and get help, counseling and, you know, whatever that conversation is going to be. Not being open to it, not willing to, you know, say, not willing to admit that I needed help. Whether it would be ego, pride, or whatever. But I’m glad that I went through all of those things that brought me to the point, like a breaking point of, “I need help and I have to stop pretending that I got this.”

Oscar: So that for me is coachable and trainable, right? You have to be willing to take that on and be willing to be open and transparent. And so, for the folks out there listening, you’re looking to get into this business of real estate investing. There’s a ton of obstacles, right? Let’s keep it real. There’s a ton of obstacles, but 99% of them are you.

Dr. Iverson: Yeah.

Man: Right.

Oscar: Right? And how you work through that has a lot to do with who you relate with, who you associate with, and then the willingness to be open and coachable and do those things. Any science behind that that…?

Dr. Iverson: Yeah. For me, I look at, how do you discover truth, right? And there’s multiple ways and one is through science, one is through just looking at the world and connecting with people. And when they coincide and both confirm each other, there’s no surprise, right, because we get to discover the world through multiple avenues. So, yes, to have that paralysis, that’s normal. When any goal seems insurmountable, like, why try? Particularly, if it might hurt our ego, right? Then it’d be self-defeating.

What’s really exciting, though, is when we shift failures to, like, making us less to failures as awesome, or failures as a good thing, something for growth. Carol Dweck is the author on this. She has a book called “Mindset,” got to plug that. And on the book “Mindset,” she talks about flipping this of, “What if you can’t mess up? What if failures are actually your fuel, your gasoline for moving forward?” And most of us were not raised that way, right? Like, I think I’ve been able to switch over to this mindset in most areas of my life, but for me, when I play basketball, I’m still in that performance mindset of like, I miss a layup, I am ticked. I’m like… And it, like, hurts my identity and I’m like, “Who am I? I can’t even make a layup.”

Oscar: And, “I’m horrible.”

Dr. Iverson: I know. But that’s self-defeating, that’s not helpful. Rather, you know, if I can switch it over and be like, “Okay, I missed a layup, what an opportunity to grow an increase my percentage next game,” you know?

Oscar: Famous words, right? “It’s an opportunity for growth.”

Dr. Iverson: Yes.

Oscar: Yeah.

Dr. Iverson: But that’s not the way most of us came. Like, so it takes a lot of intentional growth, like Frank was saying, of going to mentors and counselors, whoever, to help us shift that mindset of failure is growth. And it’s society’s most successful people that got that secret. You know, you go throughout history, it’s Michael Jordan who got cut from his high school and college team. It’s, you know, Disney that was told, Walt Disney was told he had no creative genius. All these people that win the game in the world are the ones that fail and they reframe failure to success.

Oscar: So is there an average time that it takes to achieve that? What does that look like?

Dr. Iverson: So I can, say with my students when they come in, and I tell them 100. When they come in and they’re, like, they’re, kind of, down on themselves often, I teach grad students. And they come in, they’re down on themselves and be like, “I don’t know, I’m not a good public speaker. I’m not getting this stuff.” I like, you know, take a breath with them so we can just reset and be a little less frantic. That’s like the first step, like calm down. But that doesn’t work if you tell them that, so just modeling, “Take a breath.” And then I invite them, because it’s not fun when people force us into things so I said, “Would you be open to taking a challenge?” And then, you know, let them think about that, “Okay, yeah, I’m open to it.” “I’d like to challenge you to something pretty crazy.” “Okay.” “Would you be open to failing 100 times because that’s what it’ll take?” And then for them, it’s often, it’s just like, monumental moment. They don’t know what to do with this, “God, fail 100 times?” And then they start doing it. And these students that start doing it, within a month, like they’re getting job offers because they’re meeting everyone. They’re asking whoever they want out for coffee because they can’t mess up anymore. They’re going on LinkedIn and DM’ing people their dream job positions and asking them for a phone call, coffee. The rules changed, there’s no rules anymore. And it’s these people, they’re getting, like, multiple promotions a year once they get this idea.

Christian: Hi, this is Christian Rios. As many of you know, I’ve been a member of New Wealth Advisors Club for over seven years and got started when I was 17 years old with absolutely no real estate experience. One of the biggest lessons I have learned from being in the industry is the need for authentic relationships. If you’re looking for an actual team locally in Southern California with all the resources needed to close deals, register for one of our free workshops by visiting www.joinnwac.com. Thanks for listening to the “Flippin’ Off Podcast.”

Oscar: That’s interesting because I remember… So tying it into what we do, right? I remember Dave used to tell people, “What if I paid you for every ‘No’ you got?”

Dr. Iverson: Yes, yes.

Oscar: “What if I paid you $100 for every ‘No’? What would that look like?” Right? So same thing, it’s, you’re going to fail and it’s okay, but the more you do it, the better you get at it, and the better you get at it, then the success starts to pour in. So interesting, huh, guys?

Christian: Yeah… Go ahead.

Frank: You guys lived that out really well. There was a moment in Hawaii that we were there and Oscar was sharing with the people in Hawaii how many flips, you know, how much he was able to make last year and it was a significant amount. And from that, I forget who it was that, was it… One of you guys that did the math.

Christian: Tim.

Frank: Was that Tim? That you did the math. And he actually did the math. And they did the math to figure out how many door knocks Oscar did, and then how much he made. It was like 300 bucks per door knock or something.

Oscar: I think so. Something like that.

Frank: If you did the math of how much Oscar made last year divided by door knock, then Oscar hustled. And they’re, like, thousands of door knocks or something. And Tim led in a really great way then of saying, reframing that failure of an unsuccessful door-knock to say, no, that’s a ticket to the close.

Oscar: It’s to that next step, and the next step, and the next step.

Frank: I love it. You guys are already doing that.

Oscar: We’re scientists.

Christian: I’m curious for even, like, the club members that are listening to this, or maybe not even current club members, but club members that have quit in the past. A lot of them probably never even knocked 100 doors or spoke to 100 sellers, and that should be maybe something we should do from the front of the room, challenge people. Once you have 100 door knocks on your belt, your conversation automatically is going to look a lot different, and it doesn’t even mean that you’re going to have a deal from knocking 100 doors, but you’re going to have that experience to just get you so much closer. So, I like putting a number to it because it gives people a goal. And don’t expect anything with those 100 doors, chances are you probably will get a good lead out of it, but just do the results and focus on that.

Frank: For you guys it’s like, “Don’t come to us and complain it’s not working until you’ve got 100 failures. Then we can have a coaching conversation.”

Christian: Right.

Tim: And then you have to come to us, though. Because then, you’ll end up with somebody like… Frank and I are, kind of, similar in this way, which is, we struggle with reaching out for help. So we’ll tend to live in this mindset of, “practice makes perfect,” but that’s not necessarily true. It’s perfect practice that makes perfect. So you can go out and knock 2,000 doors, but if you do it wrong, you know, with bad… You know, take 10,000 free throws and if you’re doing it with bad technique, you’re never going to get any better. You need that coach and you need to be willing to reach out to somebody who can tweak on your technique a little bit so that way, the next hundred gets you even just 2% better results than the last time and you’re on your way.

Dr. Iverson: I love that you brought that up, that feedback part, because feedback, it turns out, we talk about smart goals a lot. And we’ll probably unpack that. But it turns out, feedback is the secret sauce behind smart goals. Without feedback, you could be banging your head against the wall. It doesn’t matter how gritty you are. If it’s the wrong wall, the building isn’t coming down.

Tim: Right.

Oscar: Yeah. It’s like using the wrong tools, right?

Dr. Iverson: Yeah.

Oscar: So, it shifts. Do you have something, Frank?

Frank: Yeah. When he was sharing about that perfect practice, I was thinking about the way we psych ourselves out, I guess. I don’t know how to explain that. Like, you have these little conversations in your head that justify our… You know, you get operating from a place where you’re coaching yourself in your head and it’s really just justification for your failure. So you go out and you don’t count a knock because of whatever happened. You know, “Oh, that wasn’t, you know, the actual thing.” Like, to the point of, there was a student who actually went out and there was, you know, the door knocks. So I say, “How many conversations did you have?” “Well, I didn’t talk to anybody.” “Wait, so you knocked on 100 doors and you didn’t talk to… What did you do, was it like a ding dong ditch? What are you talking about?” So I mean, the feedback. You know, what time of day did you go? What neighborhood did you go to? “Okay, that’s not the right neighborhood.” Like, “Those are 2006 homes and up.” And that, “I know that neighborhood, nobody is ever home and they never answer the door so you need to shift your farm area.” Or, “You’re going at 8:00 at night.” Or, “You’re going in at 9:00 in the morning.” Like, just analyzing it and giving them that feedback so that their next 100 doors are…

Dr. Iverson: Good.

Frank: …have been, gone through a filter. And I just know, I think in my head, how I justify failure in…or whatever, justify why it’s not going to work, those different things. So without that feedback, your coaching in your head is always going to justify yourself some way. So yeah, I was just thinking about that. That one student that we talked to and he said, “I did, it doesn’t work.” “Okay, you knocked on all of the… How many conversations?” It was like one or none or something.

Christian: Yeah, very little conversations.

Frank: Yeah, very interesting.

Oscar: Yeah. You know, when I heard you say, Tim, taking perfect practice, I was like, “Man, is that even possible, right, perfect practice?” So then I went back to things that I’ve heard in the past, like taking imperfect action, right?

Tim: Right.

Oscar: Taking imperfect action, meaning, “I’m going to go out and take action. I may not know everything, I may not know all the answers, but I’m gonna go out and do it.” And the perfect practice is that I’m actually going out and doing it. I’m actually committing and sticking to my plan, which, right, we have to have a plan. If you don’t have a plan in this business, you’re… What did they say? Plan to fail, you fail to plan?

Dr. Iverson: Yeah.

Oscar: So, that’s so true in our business and in what we do. And I know, Christian, you’re like a numbers guy, right? You’re like, “I have my day planned out. I have everything set up. I’m at the gym.” Well, you’re at the gym every now and then. No, he’s actually…

Frank: His Instagram shows he’s at the gym pretty often.

Oscar: He takes a selfie at the gym. I don’t know what else happens at the gym.

Frank: He’s in the sauna. He just sits in the sauna.

Oscar: Right, so, but there’s a plan, right? To everything that you do. And a lot of us are like that where we, we’re like, “Hey, this is the goal. This is the plan to achieve that goal.” That may not be the entire vision, but you have goals that you set and so forth. So it’s important to understand that taking action is key. And that’s really what we’re talking about right now. It’s take action, do the things that you said you’re going to do. Your word is your bond because the only one you’re letting down is yourself, right?

Man: Yes.

Oscar: Ultimately, you’re failing yourself. So, definitely about taking action. Anything, you guys want to touch on that?

Frank: About taking action?

Oscar: Yeah. How do you push yourself to take that action even when you don’t want to?

Frank: I guess when you unpack things, you know, you look at the big picture. You have long-term goals, short-term goals and, you know, your smaller goals of, you know, getting up on time, right? Getting up at this time, you hit the gym, you do this. You’re creating an atmosphere where you are, you know, even if it was making your bed when you get up and you’re doing these tasks, these small things. Like, leading towards getting a $50,000 payday, there was all these actions that you took that were uncompromising from making that homeowner appointment, from that follow-up. All of those little things that are tiny little parts of leading to that deal and having that all organized, even to the things that seemingly had nothing to do with the deal. It’s how you treat everything, right? How you do the small things is how you approach the big things. So I think in going through the mentorship with Melina, again… Well, actually, I’m sorry, I went through it with Dave twice and then going, in a different part of my life now, going through it again with Melina, all of those little steps, how you do one little thing is how you do everything. And that, for whatever reason, I really got that this time, this last time through the mentorship.

So like, we can’t slack off on these little things. Like, if it’s the time you spend with your kids or your family, or your…anything because how you do all of those little things just completely impact every single thing that you do. It’s how you approach everything. So for me, that was huge for me, that was a huge shift.

Oscar: That’s big. That’s big, yeah. There was a word that stood out for me and I’ll go to you, Christian, it was, you said “uncompromising.” Right? So for me, that landed as “non-negotiable.” And we talk, you’ll hear that interchangeably with us, “It’s non-negotiable time.” And what does that look like? So, go ahead, Christian.

Christian: Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to hit on. And from what I’m hearing from Frank, too, it’s a conversation we have a lot around the office, too. It’s controlling the controllables. So there’s so much that you can’t control but then there’s the little things that you can control. You can control what time you wake up each morning, you can control that you go to the gym, you can control that you set out this amount of time, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday to go door-knocking, and you block it out and then you make it like, you know, a non-negotiable where you’ve got to do that because of your goals. And I think, you know, for me, these last couple of weeks with moving, like it’s shifted my schedule and I literally feel different when I don’t wake up in the morning and I don’t go to the gym. You know, like, I feel it in my body and I know just the way I perform. I perform on, like, even a little bit less than average, you know? So were you going to throw a joke in there or what?

Oscar: No. I just remember that we had something else going on, and you were like, “Hey, I got to bow out,” right?

Christian: Yeah.

Oscar: I’m moving and immediately, I’m like, “This guy,” right?

Christian: Yeah.

Oscar: But then I realized, “Oh, yeah, his shift. It just killed his schedule.” Because there’s so many different things that happen and then the washer thing that happened to you that day and all that stuff, right?

Christian: Yeah, dude.

Oscar: So all that came back to mind. That’s all it was.

Christian: So just plan everything out. You know, like, for me… Have something to look forward to, too. Like this Friday, I already, I think I told Nathan. I’m like, “We’re going to Disneyland.” I’m taking the family out to Disneyland and I want to work my… I won’t say my…I’ll say my…I want to work my butt off Monday through Thursday and then earn Friday, I earn it. I earn it. You know, I’m gonna, I mean, we also go to school until 11, so I’m going to work from probably 8 to 11 and then earn that day off…

Man: Awesome.

Christian: …so…

Oscar: Yeah, that reminds me real quick… Tim, I’ll go to you. That reminds me of the time that we all went to Cabo, right? And 8 a.m. we’re on the phones, following up, doing everything we had to do. By noon, we were done and then we were in the pool, right, with some beverages. And we were able to manage our days that way but we never stopped working. We were there for a week and a half, two weeks, whatever it was. It’s so long ago, but it’s just, that’s what it takes is, having that plan and then sticking to that plan. So, Tim, what were you going to say?

Tim: I was going to ask Dr. Iverson if based on what both Frank and Christian just said about starting the day off with the little things that you can control, control the controllables, is there a principle? It, kind of, seems to me like, almost like the consistency principle. Is that right there?

Dr. Iverson: Yeah. Yeah. So something Tim is referencing, we’ve been working through with the team here together on referencing all these authors. So Robert Cialdini is an author on “Influence” and Tim referenced consistency, definitely. To get buy-in, consistency is a huge part. I also think it’d be cool to bring up, so Tim had a really cool experience on both of you guys’ examples. It’s, kind of, how do we take the elephant and make it digestible? Right, to climb a mountain, for example, is overwhelming, but you’re like, “Oh, I can do a quarter-mile. I can do a half-mile.” Then reevaluate and, “Sure, I’ll do another half-mile.” And then by the end, you make it to the top of the mountain.

Tim has a really cool example of biting down that insurmountable elephant for a homeowner into digestible pieces. Right? If you’re open to sharing that, I think that is a cool story.

Tim: Oh, so we’re working with this heir. And Frank actually had been working with her and had negotiated a purchase price. Everybody was happy with the purchase price. And I was just sitting with her to get her, like, for us to sign documents. So that’s really what we are meeting for. And I thought she was coming in, I thought she would sign the documents and we’d be in and out in 15 minutes. But in sitting with her, actually she came in and she said, “Okay, I’m going to go review these.” She went and sat in her car for like an hour and a half, reviewing a four-page document, and then she came in and I sat with her for probably another three hours. Through the conversation, I realized that she was very fearful of signing the contract. She wasn’t unhappy with the purchase price at all. In fact, she was on board with everything. Every time we talked about the numbers, she was happy with the amount of money she was going to get, the whole deal. There was something stopping her from wanting to sign and through that process, you know, I took her step-by-step, page-by-page, one signature at a time, one initial at a time. And then after she signed the document, she sat there and she held it in front of her for probably 10 minutes just looking at the document and then look up at me, and then look at the document and look up at me. And we sat there in silence for about 10 minutes. And then, I don’t remember what she said, but she started talking and I said, “Well, there’s only one thing left for you to do and that’s to hand me the document, that’s it. Like, you just got to hand me the document, and then I’ll put my signature on there, and we’re good to go.

And she said, “Yeah, but that’s the hardest part.” So we talked a little bit more and through that conversation I said, “Do me a favor, just go ahead and hand me the pen.” So she handed me the pen…

Dr. Iverson: So good.

Tim: And within 30 seconds of handing me the pen, she said, “Okay.” And she handed me the top sheet of the contract and she said, “One page at time.”

Dr. Iverson: Wow.

Tim: And then, like, she kind of chuckled and said, “Nah, I’m just kidding.” And she handed me the whole document and we were good, and it was done.

Dr. Iverson: Wow.

Tim: It was that little clog. Like, it was like that one little action gave her the strength to take the next step.

Dr. Iverson: That’s awesome.

Tim: And the next step, and the next step. And I think it’s key. Like, I think what is happening is, like Frank and Christian are talking about that principle and how they do that to themselves in the morning.

Dr. Iverson: Yeah.

Tim: They literally do that to themselves in the morning.

Dr. Iverson: Right.

Tim: They give themselves the little steps that get them, “I’m going to get out of bed, I’m going to make the bed. Check, one win for the day.” You know, “I’m going to take my shower on time, I’m going to go to the gym. Check, check. Now I’m a winner because I’m winning every morning.” The first five steps of my morning, I’m a winner and then I can go into the rest of the day with this identity that I’m a winner.

Dr. Iverson: That’s awesome.

Oscar: Yeah.

Dr. Iverson: So I would love to hear Tim with strategy. How did you think to bring the pen? Like, I would’ve never have thought about that. How, like how did you equip her to do what she really wanted to do? How did he break up that elephant into attainable…?

Tim: Truth be told, it was not intentional at all. It was just, you know, we sat down, I handed her the contract, and I handed her the pen to sign. And I really thought we would be 15 minutes. “Sign these…”

Dr. Iverson: Four hours later.

Tim: Just four pages. “Sign these four pages and we’re going to be good to go.” So, like, I didn’t go into the conversation thinking that, but at some point in the conversation, I just realized that she wasn’t questioning the agreement at all. She was questioning whether she was doing the right thing. And through the conversation, there was a little bit more, I mean, through the conversation, she shared that her mom had recently passed away and that mom owned the house. And she was a child and she just really wanted to do right by mom. So, at that point, I also kept assuring her that she was doing the right thing, “You’re doing the right thing. You know, you’re doing this right, you’re not screwing up. Everything is good.” And I just kept telling her that she’s doing the right thing. “We agreed on this price. This is where it’s at and you’re doing the right thing. This is what’s best for you. And your mom actually wanted this, too.”

Oscar: All good stuff, man. That’s pretty awesome. And so obviously, there’s a lot to this, right? So, today we were talking about action and all that, but we touched a little bit on having a plan and setting goals. And what I’d like to do is, if you’re open to it, Dr. Iverson, I’d like to have you come back for another one.

Dr. Iverson: Cool.

Oscar: Do another episode with you and really, let’s kind of, dive into the whole goal-setting thing, what that looks like.

Dr. Iverson: Yeah.

Oscar: Because you can talk about taking action all day long, but if you have no plan, you’re going absolutely nowhere, right?

Dr. Iverson: Love it.

Oscar: You’re in?

Dr. Iverson: I’m in. Let’s do it.

Oscar: You guys in?

Man: I’m in.

Man: Yeah.

Oscar: Awesome. All right, guys. Well, enjoy this, take it all in, take some notes. Be ready to tune in to the next one and we’ll go from there. So for now, that’s all of us “Flippin’ Off,” flippin’ out, flippin’ out of here.

Melina: I’m Melina Boswell, your host of the “Flippin’ Off Podcast.” I really hope you enjoyed it. If you did, we’d love for you to subscribe. Give us a five-star rating and tell your friends all about us. You can find more episodes of the “Flippin’ Off Podcast” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever else you like to listen to awesome podcasts like this. If you like what you’ve heard, we’d really appreciate it if you’d follow us on Facebook and Instagram, and tell us the stories that you’d like to hear.

Tim Jackson is our Senior Producer, Luke Jackson is our Editor. Brothers. Josh Mauldin is our Producer, sound design by Frequency Factory. Our Executive Producer is Mind & Mill. This was all created by Dave Boswell for New Wealth Advisors Club.