Putting Your Strengths to Work in Your Real Estate Investing Endeavors

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Every one of us has unique talents, gifts and strengths.  But unfortunately, the real estate investing education industry doesn’t often emphasize the importance of discovering and harnessing those talents in the pursuit of financial freedom through real estate.  Instead, mainstream REI education focuses on teaching us supposed universal formulas and recipes for success…with little or no consideration for what our unique individual talents are.  In this episode, Jeff discusses the importance and value of harnessing our own unique gifts in our real estate investing efforts. 

Episode Transcript

Imagine a world for a second. Now, in my opinion, this is a dark world so we won’t stay here too long. But imagine a world in which you had beautiful, brilliant talents. And they weren’t getting used at all to help you achieve the goals that you decided to set for yourself. Gosh, what a shame that would be well unfortunately, that world is so common. With most I would dare to say real estate investors and in this episode, we’re going to talk about the idea of putting your strengths to work in your real estate investing endeavors. Let’s cute the theme song and we’re gonna jump right in. 

Welcome to Racking Up Rentals, a show about how regular people, those of us without huge war chest of capital or insider connections, can build lasting wealth acquiring a portfolio of buy and hold real estate. But we don’t just go mainstream looking at what’s on the market and asking banks for loans, nor are we posting We Buy Houses signs are just looking for “motivated sellers” to make lowball offers to. You see, we are people-oriented deal makers, we sit down directly with sellers to work out win-win deals without agents or any other obstacles, and buy properties nobody else even knows are for sale. I’m Jeff from the Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneur. If you’re the kind of real estate investor who wants long term wealth, not get rich quick gimmicks or pictures of yourself holding fat checks on social media, this show is for you. Join me and quietly become the wealthiest person on your block. Now let’s go rack up a rental portfolio.

Thank you very much for joining me for another episode of Racking Up Rentals. Show notes for this episode can be found at www.thoughtfulre.com/e193. Please do us a big favor by hitting that subscribe button in your podcast app, it does make a big difference in helping other fellow thoughtful real estate entrepreneurs who are searching for a community in a message like this to find it. Alright, so onward with today’s episode.

It really baffles me that the topic of strengths based real estate investing is like not even a thing. It never almost seems to ever come up in the mainstream of real estate investing or if it does, it’s sort of really lightly touched and not really focused on. I don’t see why we’re not focusing on the idea of designing an entire real estate investing business around our strengths. Now, you know, in other parts of life, this is a much more common topic. I mean, there’s lots of business books and corporate approaches and ideologies around find out what your strengths are get really clear on those figure out how to harness them in your career endeavor. But for some reason, it’s just not that much of a thing in real estate investing. 

I have a theory on why that’s the case. I think for most of us, when we learn about real estate investing, we get really excited. It’s an intoxicating idea for sure the financial freedom and time freedom that ultimately can come from it is a pretty exciting vision and we start to dig in. And then we realize like, wow, there’s there’s a lot to know here starts to see maybe a little bit big and scary, maybe seems a little bit intimidating, maybe it seems like the stakes are really high and that there’s a lot of risk. And that we just have to make sure we don’t screw it up. And that sort of leads us to this mentality that says just learning to do this. And executing it without a major mistake is a huge win in and of itself. It’s a huge undertaking. And if I can just do this without totally screwing up, then that will be a good thing. And what that leads us to is a feeling like real estate investing success is based on a formula. And that’s a formula that’s hard to get right. But if you get it right, that’s what really matters. 

It’s like a recipe right following a recipe to cook a complex dish of some sort. I’m thinking of something like a souffle. I haven’t made a lot of souffles. But my understanding is that a souffle is delicate, and you have to get the ingredients in the proportions right and you have to get the heat in the oven just right in the amount of time and letting it cool or else the whole souffle could fall and that’s kind of how we end up seeing real estate and so we get really paranoid about executing the recipe in the formula correctly. Here’s the recipe. conform yourself to the recipe because it’s the recipe that will make you successful. It’s not you that will make you successful this the normal kind of mentality that I think it’s easy for us to see how we end up in that type of mindset. We end up thinking No, no, don’t don’t try to fit real estate investing to you fit yourself to it, because it is a very challenging and delicate formula of success. And I look at that, and I see how that comes to be. But I also think to myself, What a shame. I mean, really, what a shame because following a recipe doesn’t allow any of the elements of what makes you you come through, you’re just following a set of instructions, you could be anybody, and follow the same set of instructions and get the same results. But the truth is, we’re all human beings, and we’re very different. And each of us has different strengths, and talents, and gifts, and the things that make us who we are that we could be contributing into our real estate investing endeavors. 

And my wish, and my hope for everybody listening is that you can find and develop a way that you’re doing your real estate investing that really captures the magic of who you are. Because for a few reasons, one, it’s certainly going to be more fulfilling for you, because you’ll be being authentic to yourself, you’re not just following a rote recipe that somebody else created, and conforming yourself to it. 

Secondly, I really honestly believe you’ll be a lot more successful in it. And certainly, you’ll be a lot more differentiated. Because if you are coming through in your real estate investing endeavors, that’s going to make your projects, your properties, everything about your business, unique, just like you are unique. So my belief is just simply this, I believe we should all be designing our investing strategy around our greatest strengths. And I want to differentiate between, distinguish between the idea of Oh, yeah, I’m following the recipe, but I’m sort of being myself when I do it. Versus I am designing a real estate investing strategy around who I am and my greatest strengths. 

My own coach, Greg has been taking him I think, a long time, because apparently, I’m a slow learner on this point, but I feel like this is one of the biggest points he’s been trying to drill into my thick skull for years now is we know, of all of the aspects of real estate investing, we know the things that I am really good at. And we are very clear also, on the things that I am not good at. Right? He has said before even out loud, publicly, Jeff barely understands which end of the hammer is the handle, versus the thing you hit the nail with. And that is absolutely true. But we also know the flip side is that of that as my talents are in connecting with people and sitting in living rooms. And what that means is that we simply need to get me sitting in a lot more living rooms, it is actually kind of that simple. And to design a whole process a whole real estate investing strategy around my strengths and talents would be to serve me the best possible way that we could and would be to serve the world not to be overly lofty about it, but to serve the world and sellers in the best possible way to because then I am doing the thing that I am the best at and I am not designing my strategy around the other stuff. I’m designing it around that. 

Why would anybody willingly leave their greatest gifts, talents and strengths sitting on the bench? Get those gifts, talents and strengths in the game. Can you imagine a young Shaquille O’Neal? thinking to himself gosh, I just I like sports. I just I don’t know what I should be doing. You know, I’ve always liked horses. Maybe I should be a jockey like no. Shaquille O’Neal had some very clear and obvious attributes and strengths and talents. Now in his case, it probably wasn’t a huge leap to say, Hmm, maybe I should be playing basketball. Since I’m over seven feet tall. And for some of us in real estate, there are certain things that emerge as obvious strengths and talents that we can put to work. Now. If you are a gifted carpenter. If you are a gifted designer, perhaps of some sort, if you have experience in your career with landscape design, all of those things are going to be really obvious talents that you can incorporate into your business. But for some of us those gifts and Talents are a little bit less obvious. So why would we leave our gifts and talents on the bench when we could be employing them as the superpowers that they are? And I truly believe that for each of us, these things are absolutely superpowers. And again, I want to distinguish between I’m using these talents in my business and be the better version, I’m designing my whole business around these talents. 

So for those situations that are many and rampant, unfortunately, of people leaving those gifts and talents sitting on the bench. Why is that happening? And what can we do about that? Well, I think two things, probably both a little bit easier said than done. But number one is we have to understand, of course, what those talents and gifts and strengths are. Now, for most of us, we’re not completely in the dark about those things. But we also might not appreciate our talents and gifts. And now this is just a classic human thing is that because our talents and gifts and whatnot, make certain things come easy to us, we actually undervalue them, we don’t see them as a gift or a talent, because it’s so easy to us, we don’t even have to think about it. 

If you are just a natural connector, and you can talk to anybody, right, we maybe that’s you, maybe it’s somebody you know, but we all at least know somebody who has had that ability to just connect and talk to anybody. If that’s your natural talent, it often doesn’t seem like a talent to you, because you just sort of assume that because it’s easy for you. It’s sort of easy for everybody else, and we undervalue those things. But the truth is, that is one example, among many, many, many have a type of superpower that could be harnessed in this sport of real estate entrepreneurship. So number one is we have to know what those talents are. 

But then number two is we have to understand how to actually employ those talents in a way that’s going to harness them in in the context of our real estate investing endeavors. Just to go back to that example of a person who can just talk to anybody and gets along and can relate to anybody, which by the way, is not me, it might not be you. And that’s okay. This is simply an example. That person might realize that they’re really good at just being able to talk to anybody, but also might not have any clue on how that actually could help them in their real estate investing endeavors. And for a lot of us, like, how would they possibly know but it’s not something that ever gets talked about, really, so much in our, in our industry, you know, we’re back to focusing on the formula, and the recipe for success and following all the mainstream advice. And so they’re not thinking about how could this particular talent of mine become the superpower around which everything else in my business is designed. 

Now, there are obviously lots and lots and lots of different gifts and talents out there, everybody listening to this? While you might have some common denominators, since you gravitated towards this podcast, maybe more than others. But everybody’s got very, very different. It’s an unlimited list. And I can’t speak to all of those, because I’m not even sure what all of them are. And I’m certainly not an expert, in coaching people who are, say, extremely mechanically inclined to being great real estate investors or people with talents in science and whatnot into being great real estate investors. But what I do have a lot of experience with is talking with people who have the gifts of human connection, and communication, and using those as the superpowers around which their whole investing process is designed. And I can tell you, because I am one of those and that is the core theme of all the people that I get to work with, I’m so blessed to work with on a coaching level is that they have those types of gifts of being able to sit with somebody, listen to them, understand them, empathize with them to see life in the world and their property and the whole situation from the other person’s perspective and to creatively come up with ideas that help that person that seller get where they’re trying to go. And what I can tell you is that if you’re going to design your whole real estate investing, Endeavor around that talent, one of the greatest ways that you can do that is by focusing on the acquisition strategy, and the acquisition process. 

When I look at myself, the whole amazingly wide spectrum of all the stuff that goes into real estate investing, starting with acquisition and understanding development and construction and property management and all of these types of things. My talents lie in the human connection side and the communication side, not the rest of that. So while my business certainly involves construction, and involves property management and involves the rest of those things, that’s not what my whole thing is centered around, my whole thing is centered around my ability to sit in someone’s living room and have a meaningful conversation with them that leads to agreement. So my hope for you is that whatever it is, and I think that probably if you’re listening to this podcast, you might have some of those relational human connection communication skills, people skills, types of talents, but regardless of what it is, my hope for you, my sincere wish for you is that you are able to find a way to design your whole real estate investing business around harnessing that one talent because one thing we know for sure is what we don’t know what your talents are. And I list making this podcast right now, I don’t know what yours are in this exact moment. 

We do know one thing they absolutely exist. And secondly, we know that once we identify what they are, it is 100% possible to orient and design, engineer your entire business around isolating and emphasizing that particular set of gifts and talents. So that everything else revolves around that. And that my friend is my hope for you. Because I know that when you do that you’re gonna be more successful. I know that and I also know that you’re going to enjoy it more, you’re going to be more fulfilled, because you’re going to be being yourself, you’re not going to be conforming yourself to some other formula for success you’re going to be being yourself and employing those gifts and talents in a way that serves you and the rest of the world. 

That is it for today’s episode of Racking Up Rentals. Again, show notes for today’s episode are at www.thoughtfulre.com/e193. Please do us a big favor by hitting that subscribe button would be so appreciated. And if you would rate and review this show just real quickly, doesn’t have to be long or eloquent. Just a rating there and a couple words would be super, super helpful and very appreciated.

Did you know that we have a Facebook group for Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneurs too? We do and you should be a part of it. It’s called Rental Portfolio Wealth Builders and we would love to have you join us there. Just go to group.thoughtfulre.com and you will be taken right to that page we can hit the Join button. If you liked this episode, please take a screenshot of that and post it to Instagram and tag us; we are @thoughtfulrealestate. I will see you in the next episode. Until then, this is Jeff from the Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneur signing off. 

Thanks for listening to Racking Up Rentals where we build long term wealth by being win-win dealmakers. Remember: solve the person to unlock the deal and solve the financing to unlock the profits.