Have to vs Get to

What’s up, everybody. Hey, today I want to talk to you about doing more of the things that you want to do that you get to do, I’ll say, versus the things that you have to do. As you move more towards financial freedom, independence in your business, you’ll get to do. If you do it right you’ll get to do more of the things that you want to do or that you get to do versus the things that you have to do.
Welcome to “Real Estate Investing Secrets.” We’re all looking for freedom and the opportunity to live better more fulfilling lives. But most of us were trained our entire lives to work for someone else and chase their dreams. How can we use real estate investing as a vehicle to achieve financial freedom? My life is dedicated to answering your real estate investing questions and helping you build an investing business that allows you to change your life and the world around you and to enable you to turn your dreams a financial freedom into a reality. My name is Mike Hambright from flipnerd.com. And your questions get answered here on the “Real Estate Investing Secrets” show.
So, guys today I was reminded by the fact that my life has changed dramatically. It’s like the boiling frog parable. Things happen slowly over a long period time. I’ve been a real estate investor for over 11 years now, and there’s just a lot more in my life that I get to do now versus things that I have to do.
And I’ll give you myself as an example because my show when I’m recording and it’s easiest to give me the example but I want you to relate this back to your life. If you’re not where you want to be, you need to move in the direction of doing more things or having the freedom to do more things that you get to do versus the things that you have to do.
And so let me give you a couple of examples. When I was in the corporate world, there’s a whole bunch of stuff I pretty much had to do whatever I was told. If there were certain projects I had to work on or anything, I was given a directive on what to do. Sometimes I had a little bit of flexibility in there that I had to do it or I would have a little more control. But in my personal life, that’s where the challenges were.
Again, I was working for somebody else so it’s their business. And especially, in a large company, there’s a lot more things that you have to do than things that you want to do or get to do. And I’ll give you some examples of things that you might have a challenge with that when you become self-employed and, by the way, when you have a business that is thriving or doing well or can run without you for a short period of time or that you have more control over your schedule, then you’ll get to do more.
If you’re in business for yourself whether you’re a real estate investor or anything else and you still have to do everything, if you haven’t scaled your business up to where you’re doing everything, you’re self-employed, you’re not a business owner and therefore, you still have to do a bunch of stuff that you don’t necessarily want to do or they’re not helpful in your life or getting you closer to the things that you want to do.
So, the truth is is there’s way more real estate investors like that that they say they own their own business, they have a card that might say CEO or president or the boss or whatever but they’re still chained to a job. And if you’re there, just understand you’re there. If you don’t want to be there, you have to put a plan in place to get you out of there.
That’s a lot of what we talk about in Investor Fuel especially, in our gold group, our gold and platinum group is that a lot of people that are in the gold group are still doing a lot more themselves than folks that are in our platinum group because they’re just earlier in their career or they’re doing more things in the business than they should and they’re trying to move to that next box which is to be a business owner and have employees and systems and processes that have your money working for you more.
Back to my personal life, let me give you some things that I get to do in my personal life that I never could have done or not as much of if I was still working in corporate America. So, today is as perfect example and I just pulled into the office and I’m rolling in at 9:30 just whenever I’m ready partly because I’m going to be on someone else’s podcast here at 10:00. So, I had to come in according to that but I get to be on somebody else’s podcast. They’ve asked me and for whatever reason, I’m going to be on the show. I’ve been on a lot of shows, obviously, done a lot of shows and I love it. It’s something that I get to do.
But a couple of things if I go back a bit further, I took my son to school today. School is now back in session, and I could have just rolled out of bed and taken him. I could have gotten up taking a shower. I had no real place to be other than a few hours later at my office to do a show. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t have things to do but I’ve shaped what I do and when I do it around my life and I have more control that way.
So, I got to take my son to school. I got to pick up coffee on the way home. We have this ritual now where I pretty much have coffee with my wife every morning. It’s not so much the coffee, it’s just the opportunity to talk and catch up and . . . Our lives are a little hectic sometimes with business and life and travel and all the things that we do but I get to do those things. If I was in corporate America, potentially, I would have been able to drop my son off at school. It was more likely in the past that I would have had to take him to some pre-school care to keep an eye on him because I had to be to work, I had to be at work before his school started. That’s pretty common.
And at the end of the day, my wife gets to pick him up at 3:00, 3:15. She gets to do that. She used to be a consultant and had to travel all the time. She’d never could have done that in her corporate job. Be very, very rare. Now, we get to live the life that we want. I got to have coffee with my wife this morning. I have lunch with my wife almost every single day. Our office is a mile from our house so I get to work close to home. I get to wear . . . Today, I’m wearing an Investor Fuel t-shirt. I’m wearing shorts and sneakers today, flip flops sometimes. I get to dress comfortably. It’s 100 and something degrees here in Texas so I get to do those things. I get to travel, I get to do all those things. And I’m not saying any of these things for you to brag to you because it wasn’t always this way. No matter where are you are in your business and your life, you have to design your business around what it is that you want to get to do more of.
Some of these things are still a chore. I have to take my son to school. You can say I have to take him to school. I say I get to, what a blessing. I get to see him off every day. What a blessing that I get to have lunch with my wife every day. When I was in corporate America, I had to drive across town because we didn’t live there and work long hours and didn’t even necessarily get to have dinner with my wife. Sometimes I was working late and now I don’t have to do that. And again, I’m not saying that to brag, but what I’m asking you is to make a list. Two columns of what you have to do and what you get to do. And put a little star next to the things that you have to do that you hate to do the most and start moving in that direction of eliminating those have to-dos and move towards those get to-dos.
Now, the truth is is there are still things that I have to do in life like if my refrigerator stops working, I have to solve that problem. These are first world problems for the most part. The big difference is when you have to do things for survival, when you have to do what they said because I don’t want to lose my job because I can’t survive without my job. That is where things are ugly. And truthfully, that’s where the majority of people live. They have to do certain things to survive.
Life gets a lot better as an entrepreneur and a real estate investor, I know for many of you listening to this, the dream if you’re not there yet, the dream is to have total control over your life. What I’ll tell you is that I know some people that appear to have total control over their life, you never have a 100% control, things happen, but you need to move towards the things that you get to do versus what you have to do.
And life gets a lot better when it’s not about money anymore. I still like to make money. Everything I do is centered around whether it’s profitable or not in my business for sure, but I get to do things. I get to donate to charities. I get to spend time helping other people learn the lessons that I’ve learned and help them get more in the direction we’re talking about here today. I get to do those things. I don’t have to do those things. I get to choose for the most part what I do. It’s not it’s never 100%.
So, that’s my lesson for you today is to focus on doing more of the things that you want to do or that you get to do and less of the have to do. And maybe do an inventory on that every quarter or every month even to say. Am I moving things over to the other side?
Now, one last thing that I want to share with you before I cut this off is some of it is perspective in your mind. Just like I said with my son, I could say, “Well, I have to go drop him off at school,” and dwell on that as a negative but sometimes just saying that I get to do it. I get to do these things. If you’re dead, you wouldn’t get to do it. If something, God forbid, happened to your children, you wouldn’t get to do those things. And so I think the more you refocus on the blessings you have and the things that you are allowed to do because you’re alive, because you’re breathing, because everybody’s healthy or everybody is healthy right now, give some perspective on those things.
So, anyway, quick lesson. As an entrepreneur, I love my life. It’s not perfect. There are things that I still have to do that I don’t necessarily want to do but the columns are moving in the direction of getting to do much more, having the blessing and opportunity to get to do more of what I want and have to do less of what I don’t want. We all have that opportunity as a real estate investor. I know the top real estate investors in the country and no matter where you are in your life, they had no real advantages over you. You can accomplish those same things. We all have 24 hours in a day, we all have more opportunities and resources around us than we know. It’s just if we can identify them.
So, anyway, quick little lesson for today. Hope you got some value out of that. I appreciate you listening to the show, “Real Estate Investing Secrets.” We’re creeping up here. Around the end of the year, we’re going to be right at 500 episodes over the last . . . That will be almost our six-year anniversary if you can believe that. If you have, we changed the name a couple of times. We used to just be called the “FlipNerd Real Estate Investing Show,” and we changed the name this year to “Real Estate Investing Secrets” by FlipNerd. So, if you haven’t subscribed yet, if you’re not subscribed to our YouTube channel, we actually get more views on YouTube than all of iTunes and all the podcasts combined largely because it’s video-based but you might just be listening to the audio version as well now.
But if you haven’t subscribed, iTunes, and Stitcher Radio, Google Play, YouTube. Of course, you can watch and listen to everything on flipnerd.com. And we’re going to start posting these more and more to the FlipNerd Facebook group. So, Facebook page, group and page. We post them everywhere basically. So, keep following along. Appreciate you a bunch. If you got some value out of this, I’d love it if you’d share it or comment on it. Let me know where you’re at. Add some perspective to this, let’s keep the communication going. So, appreciate you a bunch. Have a great day. Keep on fighting for freedom.
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