How to Really Measure Success in Your Real Estate Business

Mike Hambright: Welcome to the flipnerd.com podcast. This is your host Mike Hambright, and on the show, I will introduce you to the VIPs in the real estate investment industry as well as other interesting entrepreneurs whose stories and experiences can help you take your business to the next level. We have three new shows each week which are available in the iTunes store or by visiting flipnerd.com.
Without further due, let’s get started.
Mike Hambright: Hey, it’s Mike Hambright with flipnerd.com. Welcome back for another exciting VIP interview. I interview some of the most successful real estate investees and experts and cool entrepreneurs in the industry to help you learn and grow.
Today, I am joined by an awesome guy, Jason Wojo, and we are going to discuss how to get to the real definition of success. Whether you are a real estate investor or not, and even some very successful real estate investors may not be focused enough on being happy, health, things like that. Those are lot of things that are really important to your overall success.
We are going to talk about what the right measuring stick is today with Jason.
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Hey, Jason. Glad to have you on the show.
Jason Wojo: How is it going, Mike?
Mike Hambright: Good, good. I am glad you are here. What’s interesting for me is, we have done over a hundred shows now and I think much more about content and kind of tackling that we have in necessarily talked about and we definitely have some other folks on the show that talk about life style a bit,, but we haven’t talked about it enough. It’s an important topic and I know that you have got some great advice and great stories to share on that front.
For those who don’t know you, don’t know you well enough yet, why don’t you give us your background and some of the things you are passionate about.
Jason Wojo: Yeah. That’d be great. Well, I started a little bit differently than a lot of investors. Most investors seem to be fed up with low paying jobs and realize the potential and the value that real estate can bring to their lives, so they start going that way.
I started by being an over achieved, used to be over educated and an overachiever. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I decided to stay in school while I was planning my path. I am looking back and I have two bachelor degrees, a master’s degree and a Ph.D., none of which I do anything with right now.
That was like an incubator for me to think about what I wanted to do. I was so unsure and nothing seemed to fit. I was working for the Navy up in D.C. and I did my first flip, and I made in that first flip what took me a full year salary to make. I made like 32 or 33 grand at first flip. My salary was near 70-ish, and I am like, “What am I working for?” That was the first like Aha! Moment for me that I was on the wrong path.
Once I finished that job, that’s when I really wanted to invest in full time, but what I am not telling you is, during those college years, I was very [inaudible 00:04:23] successful body builder. I have won state level and national level contests. As trained people and, what I had thought was, by getting people in great shape, I could change their lives.
People that were overweight or maybe just wanted to do a contest or whatever it was, I figured that people getting in great shape would change everything. I realized that wasn’t true. I heard stories of, “Oh, I don’t have time to go the gym” “I don’t have the time to do cardio” “I can’t afford grass-fed organic food” so then I am like, “Huh, I am doing pretty good in investing. Maybe I’ll start coaching them on how to be real estate investors” so I started that.
That didn’t work either. Now we are having people who are in great shape and are making really good money in investing. A lot of them doing part time, they weren’t ready to overcome the fear of letting go their job. So, making money and great shape, their life was still at a balance and this what I got me really thinking like, “What am I missing? What’s that magic ingredient that people are missing and they are still unhappy? Their lives are upsides down, the divorces are rampant.” Relationships were suffering, everything was falling apart and that’s when I realized, something is really wrong.
That’s when coaching and through working with [inaudible 00:05:40], we will talk about that later. It really put it all together for me. That’s why I do now full time.
Mike Hambright: It’s kind of a three legged stool, right?
Jason Wojo: It really is. People focus on one thing, like making money, or their health or relationship. Relationship is great too, but if you are missing any of these things, the whole thing just collapses.
Mike Hambright: Yeah, and I think for a lot of real estate investors, me included in all honesty, I have been so hell bent on being successful real estate investor for all these years and we have succeeded by every measure, we have run a great business. But things are to suffer, like you can spend enough time with my family or you focus on your health enough, all these things are important, even for me, I realized that I have only been focused on maybe one or two legs of that stool and it’s just not complete.
How is your experience, how do think people, how do you bring all three of those things together? What causes a natural tendency to just focus on one and not the others?
Jason Wojo: What we need to do is, look at why we are involved in one thing more than others. For instance, men, especially entrepreneurs, real estate investors, we get consumed with the work because it meets some of our needs and a lot of times, if you are familiar with something called 60 minute psychology, Tony Round is really famous for this, we find significance in our job, we find certainty that we are good at it and we can make a lot of money, we find, another need is uncertainty, you don’t flip, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You may open up that wall and find out you need to replace XYZ.
It meets a lot of these needs. What people do is, they tend to be attracted by the things best about, the things they feel most successful, most important. If a guy goes home to his wife and he is emasculated and she doesn’t make him feel important, a lot of times that causes him to further withdraw or if he is not establishing a bond with those kids because he is not there, now the kids maybe have some built up, not resentment, but a little bit of alienation, now he doesn’t feel that immediate gratification that he does when he is flipping a house, and now he withdraws more and it causes a larger chasm.
What it really comes down to is, drafting a vision of what you want your life to look like. Because most of us spend more time planning our rehabs than we do our lives. We have the material list, [inaudible 00:08:13] to work all these detailed plans and we schedule subs and everything. How many of us put any of that fraction of that effort into our lives? What we really wanted? I think the first step is being honest with yourself. Where am I? What’s suffering and what’s being neglected? And then really honestly, being honest with yourself and coming up with a vision of, if I had six months to live, what would I want to have people say about me?
They had it all truth. Now everyone says, someone dies, everyone says, “Oh, he was such a great person.” We all know that your Joe was an A-hole or whatever it was. But if people couldn’t lie about you, what you want people to say about you? What you want to experience? What to do you want your most precious and loved ones to think about you? That’s a huge part of it.
Mike Hambright: Yeah, it’s funny that what you are saying resonates a lot with me, not that I maintained the focus much the interview on me,, but I mentor and coach and lot of people. And one of the things I have them do is really prepare their goals for business and unless they share it with me and if they are upset about anything, I don’t know what your goals are, I don’t know how to help you. I can’t see that roadmap, what is that you are trying to accomplish.
In the back of my mind, I probably said it a lot of few times, it’s just like a trainer at the gym which I never hired and I don’t, in some ways I don’t want to be held accountable for my health so I don’t plan that. But recently, I did. I made some goals of what I wanted to achieve and I wanted to lose some weight and do certain things. I started to weigh myself daily and track what I am eating and you start to see amazing results just because I was tracking it and I had a plan.
Up until recently, subconsciously at least, I didn’t wanted to be health accountable.
Jason Wojo: Right. Because it’s going to reveal some things that maybe you are getting uncomfortable with.
Mike Hambright: Talk a little about that. Do you think that subconsciously, there are some folks, they know they need to have some plan, but they just don’t want to get it in writing because they don’t want to be held accountable. One reason or another, they don’t think they have time or whatever that might be?
Jason Wojo: I think you really made important point is that, people have this sense of, most people when you question them on it, they have no idea what they want to do, what they want to their life to look like. They give very generic answers. I have students that, I ask them, “What do you like aside from work” and they don’t know. They are like, “I love work!” and I am like, “If you love work, but it’s for certain reasons, what else do you enjoy doing” they can’t think of it.
They have to go back to when they were a teenager or single digit age until they can really configured what they really like. People have forgotten, that’s the first thing.
Second one is, I think there really is, like you said, a big fear of being accountable to those things and this is one of the reasons why you see, I believe, certain kind of people start to gravitate towards similar type of people because if you have someone who is an over achiever and who is really doing great things and things are happening and they’re a mover and shaker, the person who is not doing that is not really going to be want to be around them too much because it can start to make them question their own lives and really examine what are they doing.
That’s why I think, and it’s also positive reinforcing cycle too, so people that are doing great things tend to be attracted to those other people. Meanwhile, the people that aren’t doing things prefer to bury their heads in the sand sometimes and they are not ready to deal with it. It could be fear, it could be a lot of different things. I think fear is the biggest one,, but yeah, it’s really tough to do that sometimes and be honest with themselves.
Mike Hambright: Talk about the three areas that you focus on and how you advise people to create, I guess, some measuring stick if you will to, how to feel, not just feel successful, not feel like you are making progress, but actually make progress.
Jason Wojo: The tagline I came up with, that I think is the best encompassing one that I could creatively think of was, transform your body, business and beliefs. The body to me, is the foundation. If you are unhealthy, it doesn’t matter how much time you have, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, it doesn’t matter how great your relationships are, they are all going to suffer because we all know someone who had undue stress on their life because of the unhealthy choices that they made, whether it’s a heart attack, they can’t go to the beach with their grandkids.
They are in the hospital constantly. Health has to be the absolute first thing and I am not saying you have to look like a pro body builder. You don’t have to have four percent body fat to be in shape or healthy. Some people really like that, it’s great,, but it’s not, it doesn’t have to be that way. That’s the first thing.
The second one is, your business. In my business, any method you choose that is going to make you income, that is going to provide you and the needs you want. That’s a whole other thing is, without getting too far off topic, I know you see this too where people are just spend crazy, they are living above their means and they have created a mountain of debt that is going to catch up with them. I have been blessed to be a financial coach in my church, so I see the real details of people balancing in their lives and a lot of times, it’s sad. But you got to keep for whole another discussion,, but for us, business could be real estate, it could be whole sales, it could be rehabs, whatever. New construction or internet marketing, however you can make money, and that needs to be pivotal.
In my opinion, most people can’t live the life they want working at full time jobs. That’s just reality and I think it’s just too much time. The average person gets home at like 6:00, by the time they eat dinner, it’s 8:00. They have an hour to their kids and they have the weekends, which are spent doing errands, unless you love your job and you really figure out a creative way to implement in your life, it’s really tough. So, you got to make a good income in a part time effort.
The last part of the whole, Transform body, business and beliefs is beliefs. That’s not only what you are capable of, but what’s important if you are spiritual, that’s another huge component as well, and how to overcome those limiting fears that we all have and revolving conditions since very young age, and how do we fit it all together? Do you have an attitude of gratitude, the Zig Ziglar quote, or are we constantly looking at the negatives, what we don’t have, that ties it all together.
Mike Hambright: Not that people need to make their living from real estate, I know that’s a big part of your life and it’s definitely a big part of my life. Do you think it’s exacerbated for real estate investors because it tends to be such a feast or famine business?
Jason Wojo: It really is, isn’t it?
Mike Hambright: Yeah. Everybody is constantly trying to feast because they are worried about the famine, which may never come for some people,, but you just worry about it.
Jason Wojo: That is absolutely true. You can have a huge payday and then all of a sudden, you don’t get a paycheck for three months. That’s a huge thing of it and the whole business is cyclical. Steve Cook, one of my mentors, gave me a great tip I don’t know why, didn’t think of it myself, he has himself on payroll, so he is like, every month I pay myself whatever three grands, instead of taking that 40-50 grand profit, I am paying myself three grand a month, I learn to budget in, add sustainability, my wife is happy because love [inaudible 00:15:59]. You really need to provide that for them, and that’s a great idea for what you told it right.
Mike Hambright: Where do you advice people to kind of get start of this? They feel like they are out of balance, if we think about people that listen to this show, it’s all over the board, for people who want to get started in real estate investing and want to be able to create that environment where they are not relying upon somebody else for their wellbeing like a regular job, and then there are people who are real estate investors, like myself, that have a business that does really well, but you are missing some of those other components or you are not focused enough.
How do you advice people to start laying this framework out and thinking about all those things that are important in their life?
Jason Wojo: Once you create the general vision, what I like to do then is to have people get more specific with sub categories, whether it’s health, relationships, business, your spiritual life, give a detailed assessment of where you are right now and rank them all from a scale of 1 to10. Am I happy, on a 1 to10, with my health, my physic, my body? How about my business? Where do I feel my relationships are? Once you rank them according to how you are in that particular moment, you can start to look at what needs attention.
Not everybody needs attention same, that’s the trick because you could have somebody who has great relationships and great shapes and their business won’t work, or they are killing it business wise, but their relationships are suffering, they are not in shape. It’s like, almost like a juggling act. Once you identify first of all, which of those categories needs most attention, it has to be a very careful shift in resources. Resources meaning attention, focus, and being deliberate without necessarily rocking about too much of any of those categories.
The trick here is, we all have a limited amount of time and attention. One of the things that I have been guilty in the past is, I have too many businesses in my plate and I realize that, you are laughing because you probably feel the same way.
Mike Hambright: I am the same way, it’s hard to say no to opportunity. That’s one of the things I learned from reading life [inaudible 00:18:15], how to try to say no. On one hand you feel so blessed that you have opportunities and you build relationships with people and it’s hard to say no sometimes because you know you could them or you could benefit from a deal, but you have an opportunity cost of your time, you can’t do everything, so it’s a challenge.
Jason Wojo: Absolutely. That’s exactly why we need a vision, so we can go back to that vision. I’ll give you an example, I have my realtor’s license, I use it predominately for investing,, but I help out a friend here and there. I had this guy approach me about a, he has an international investor who wants to buy, they are looking for a realtor and they are looking to buy 10 or 20 properties a month. That will be great money, but that is not what my vision is, even though it could be really profitable, I have to say no. It’s not my vision.
The trick to all this is, that the real catch 22 is when you are not producing the income you need yet to get over that hump. It’s so easy to say yes. But the question we need to ask ourselves is, if we had many things in our plate, are we not making money on these six different things because none of them are working well and that our fork is too deluded or are we not making money in [inaudible 00:19:46] because not one of them is the right thing.
For instance, how do you know you are picking the right one? That’s a fear all of us have. Like, gosh, I have six things and none of them is killing it so I don’t have a clear cut picture of where I want to go, but it’s the same token, now we are able to give 15 percent of our attention here, 20 percent over here, 30 percent over here and maybe that’s the whole reason why we are not producing in any of them.
It’s a really tough spot when you are getting out of that, first spot over the hump, that’s one of the hardest part people get stuck in.
Mike Hambright: You say you write out your vision and those three areas of your life and focus on, put in place an action plan is to how you are going to achieve, how are you going to get to the point where you want to be, right?
Jason Wojo: Right, right. Let’s take this simple example. Say, if your goal is your physic, your body, your health, OK. What do I want to accomplish? Is it a weight goal? Which I am not necessarily big fan of because it doesn’t have any indication of body composition or whatever. Say, you want to lose 15 pounds of fat, how are you going to do that? Ok, well, look at my schedule. I am going to go to the gym Monday, Wednesday, Friday and workout for an hour. I am going to follow this diet. If your relationship with your husband or wife is really bad, how can I make this better? What do they feel is missing? Well, maybe the connection isn’t there.
They say you don’t spend enough time with them. Ok, well, we will do a date night, Saturday night and Wednesday night, and then you stick to that.
It’s concrete actual steps, like you said, to get you to that goal that you have set is important to you on your vision.
Mike Hambright: I am not trying to throw you soft balls because I don’t know exactly what you are going to say. But I assume that it has to be a maintenance or checkup process, where you revisit that and say, Did I make improvements? Is this even the right thing? Just review what your goals are. Just like you would if you were financially planning. You would say this is my goal and almost have like a thermometer, or I am here and my goal is here, so I need more donations or whatever it might be.
Jason Wojo: That’s a great point. Just like you want to check up on your status of rehab. The vision is your long term completely idealistic, don’t hold anything back, I don’t care if you are making five dollars an hour now, if you say, you want to do XYZ, don’t even pay any attention to your circumstances. That being said, those goals are not all time. This catches a lot of people,, but a lot of times they’re pretty lofty, so you need weight points along that. Check along that path to make sure you are doing things in the right path to keep yourself accountable.
Another huge part of this, we said early about being around certain types of people, kind of gravity around each other. This is where it’s so important to have that accountability and have that people who support you, encourage you and are in their own path and pursue it vigilantly so you are inspired and motivated too.
Mike Hambright: There are a lot of folks that just have some deconstructive behavior where they are, I need to think of a PC way to say this,, but they may feel successful,, but it’s because of they have surround themselves with the, they are the tallest measure in the room, but that might pull you back from achieving what it is that you want to achieve by not surrounding yourself with people that you maybe can be aspire to be more like.
Jason Wojo: That’s a great point too. When you look at who is around you, is it a false sense of success? Are your friends measuring you and your worth and value and how much money you make? Because if that’s true, you are going to pursue those means to impress your friends because we all have this need for connection. So, now you are, in a way, just going to repeat yourself, become a cycle where they are going to reinforce those negative behaviors. So it’s important to be around people that have right path. I think we mentioned life in there, I am not just [inaudible 00:24:05] coach, I am also a student of, I feel like I should said hair club for men thing right there.
Mike Hambright: I was thinking the same thing, that’s funny. If you were, I might use some of your services.
Jason Wojo: You’re all set, man, you don’t need it.
Mike Hambright: You don’t see the big comb-over there.
Jason Wojo: Are we a life in the group too? We have retreat coming up in September and you have to constantly feed it. It’s a process that seed gets planted,, but then you need to water it, you need to tender the soil, you need to provide the sunshine and it’s only when all the ingredients are there, it makes it the most achievable.
Mike Hambright: What are your thoughts on, you know a lot on entrepreneurs like us, there are some people I know that, you have got to respect it, that they use whatever they are doing to facilitate their life and that’s how it should be. For me, real estate has never, even though I love it, there is nothing better than getting good deal, feeling like you are putting out a good product, ringing the register, all those things are awesome. But for me, it’s so has been a means to the end which is always just about security or feeling that you have ability to do what you love, which is travel, things for my family, that’s what it is.
You always feel like, back to the feast or famine mentality that, not everybody feels this way, but I am a type of guy that, it’s never enough. I want to achieve something more and it’s not even that I need it. I tend to live a well below my means,, but I want to, It’s not just about the money, it’s about building something that you can be really proud of or I don’t know what it is. There are some fulfilments that I am looking for there,, but I think there are a lot of entrepreneurs like that. They always want to take it another level. Even if they don’t need it financially for themselves because they just feel like they are not complete yet until they have created whatever that is, and maybe you never get there because then your goals go to the next level.
Jason Wojo: I am so glad you said that. I have a friend down here that I coach, he has a medal fabrication company. He started out in North Carolina, he now has expanded up to Massachusetts, Florida and Atlanta and he is killing himself now, and his life is fallen apart and he is like, “Man, I don’t know why, but I just love to grow as big I can just to see if I can do it.” And it’s a drive because, honestly, it’s purely significance driven. It is based on insecurities that all of us have at some point to prove it either to other peoples or ourselves that we can do it. That we doubt our self and there is a good chance that, at some point we have wondered if we are enough. If we can do it, and at some point, it’s like, terrific analogy here, there is one at the top of my head,, but the point is, it’s a very, very dangerous slope.
Because accomplishment is a great thing. Like you said in the beginning that we have to remember, this a vehicle. Our life isn’t a real estate investing, it’s not to build a fortress and I commonly think of people that have built amazing things. Look at Steve Jobs,, but he didn’t necessarily have the greatest life if you think about it. There is a lot of things he missed out on.
This is completely my opinion,, but at the end of it all, when we are on the deathbed, we are not going to say, “Man, I am so proud of myself, I built this huge real estate empire.” I think when we look at the people around us, we will be like, “I wish I spent more time with them and got to know them better and had more memories to share with them.” That’s my opinion. Other people might not feel that way, but I think, it’s a deeper level of fulfillment than you can get from growing that empire.
That being said, some people just have to accomplish that first and they are sit back, and with their confidence that they have done it and they are cool at it,, but it’s a very, very dangerous slope again because a lot of times, it’s never enough. You will keep pursuing it till the end of the day.
Mike Hambright: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Jason, we are about time. Time is flying by, this is a great conversation. Give me some feedback on what people can learn more about some of the great stuff you are doing and maybe learn more about some of the frameworks to help with their life and perspective and get the right measuring stick for them.
Jason Wojo: I’d say that the two best places you can go will be my website, jasonwojo.com, W-O-J-O dot com. I discuss my business beliefs and have a blog up and discuss lot of different things, as well as product services and all those kind of stuff that people are going to find beneficial.
Also head over to www.Lifeonaire.com. At Lifeonaire, you know instead of millionaire life, you have lot of life instead of lot of money which both are bad, but it’s where our priorities are. Head over there as well and you can really learn a lot about, at the very least, it’ll help you and maybe prompt you to examine if you are on the right path or not.
Mike Hambright: Yeah, that’s great. I told Shawn that I picked up Lifeonaire a couple of months ago and I literally read it in one sitting. It was something I couldn’t put down. It’s funny because in the very beginning, it said the character was 39 year old, I said, I am 39 year. I read a couple of things like, Wait! This is me. There is things in there, just like any book, that you may resonate more than others, but some of it was, for me was, just the whole thing of, hey, I’m successful by most measures, but, there was a time when I was sitting at a stoplight with my wife and I just met with somebody that I mentored and I wanted to talk about what they want to achieve, and they are like, I want to be as successful as you.
That’s always weird when you hear that and I was at a stoplight, thinking about it. I was like, “I don’t feel successful. Something is missing.” I think it’s important for everybody to analyze every once in a while.
Jason Wojo: Absolutely. I love John Maxwell’s definition of success. He says, “Success is knowing your purpose, growing to full your potential and then sowing seeds to benefit other people.” It really brings a full circle because we are not just here for us, we are here to enrich everyone around, as well.
Mike Hambright: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, hey, Jason, thanks so much for your time. We are going to add links to your websites right down below so some folks can find you and maybe learn a little bit more about the great stuff you are doing. Appreciate you, man.
Jason Wojo: Thanks, Mike, take care.
Mike Hambright: All right, have a great day.
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