Avoiding Fire Drills, Trusting Contractors & Being Singularly Focused

It’s the very first edition of my 3-2-1 updates where I bring your 3 flip tips, 2 useful resources, and 1 lesson learned to help you along your journey. Here are this week's lessons.

3 Flip Tips

1. Trust, but verify.

When flipping houses, you’ll inevitably need to rely on someone for something. Let’s use a contractor as an example. You want to give him/her the benefit of the doubt to see if the agreed upon work is completed when it’s supposed to be done. However, you need to create checkpoints to make sure work is done correctly before going further. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing time AND money on a project.

2. Take the time to document your processes.

We’re always in a rush to get something done to go on to the next task. If you take the time to write down every step, you can eventually build systems and outsource it!

3. Don’t steal from Peter to pay Paul.

It can be tempting to grow quickly by using a ton of leverage. If you find yourself constantly shifting money from one source to another only to move it back again, you might be digging yourself into a hole.

Leverage is a great way to scale, but don’t overextend yourself financially. Never invest more than you’re willing to lose.

2 Useful Resources

1. How to Get Rich (every episode combined)

This podcast episode served as Naval Ravikant’s inspiration for his book. It offers bite-sized tips on the fundamentals for wealth building with great examples.

2. Establishing Your “Beachhead” to Work Less and Invest MUCH More

If you’re contemplating flipping, house-hacking, multi-families, and every other strategy under the sun, stop and listen to this before doing anything else!

BiggerPockets fans may know Craig Curelop for his house-hacking tips. I love this podcast because it explains why we should focus on 1 thing at a time, rather than trying to do too many things at once.

1 Lesson Learned

Firefighter and real estate investor are almost synonymous terms–at least that’s the stereotype.

A pipe bursts in the middle of the night, a title company requests additional documents on closing day, or perhaps an owner goes off the grid after agreeing to sell their house. Your phone rings off the hook and you can’t seem to focus or get any work done.

When I was getting started, I found myself living in one long fire drill from sunrise to sunset. I couldn’t seem to make a dent in anything substantial because I was jumping from one thing to the next. Day after day, I was stressed out and anxious.

At 3 a.m one night, I had an epiphany. Left unchecked, any and every matter could transform into a fire drill–if I let it become one.

I realized that I was the problem. I didn’t have to pick up the phone or respond to an email on the spot, it was my choosing. That meant that it was entirely within my control to make a change.

Since then, I haven’t had any fire drills. As it turns out, pretty much everything can wait.

The biggest change I made to take control of my day was planning my day and time blocking the night before. This has helped me identify the single most important thing that I need to accomplish to feel fulfilled.

In the morning, I focus on my top priority for the day–-nothing else. I put my phone on “do not disturb,” grab coffee, and zone in. This guarantees that I’m working towards the most important thing in my business every single day.

The rest of the day is planned out to complete my daily minimums in other parts of the business, check emails, take calls, and problem solve. If someone needs something “urgent” I make time for it and move some things around, but I never compromise on time for my top priority.

Guard your time or your time will be lost.

Until next week,

Kyle