Ep #347 – Dan Doran – The New Real Estate Mindset
Here is some of what you will learn:
Productivity vs Being Busy
Critical Action Plans
Core 4 Critical Areas
Win the Week
Frame and context
Success is Boring
Decision tree
ROI on Overachieving is Zero
The solution for Shiny Object Syndrome
Constructive vs Restrictive Motivation
Goal Implementation Graph
Goals vs Notions
Consistent Committed Action
Goal set Through, not To.
Book Recommendation: The Magic by Rhonda Byrne
To learn more about our guest please click here
Full Transcript Below:
Dan Duran – The New Real Estate Mindset (Ep345)
Intro: Hi! I’m Rod Khleif. Each and every week I record an interview with a thought leader that I know you’re gonna get a ton of value from. Now here on YouTube are the video versions of my podcast, Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing. Now to make sure you get the latest information please subscribe and hit the notification bell. Let’s get started.
Rod: Welcome to another edition of “How to Build Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing”. I’m Rod Khleif and I’m thrilled you’re here. And I know you’re going to enjoy the dynamic gentleman that we’re interviewing today. His name’s Dan Duran and he’s a master real estate coach. He coaches people in real estate primarily single-family but the reason I wanted him on the show is that he has these little nuances and what he calls master skills that I believe are gonna add value to you. Dan, welcome to the show my friend
Dan: Hey Rod. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me
Rod: Absolutely so let’s have some fun today and you know add value to my listeners and so I know a top and normally I would ask you you know your bio, your history, what have you done, where you’re from, all that stuff but I don’t want to you know take away from the incredible content that I know you can add so I want to get right into the meat of it if that’s okay with you
Dan: That’s fantastic let’s do it
Rod: All right let’s do it. So the first topic let’s talk about is productivity which I know you’re a master of you know so many people fall short in this area you know it’s so easy to get caught up in busy work or you know feel like you’re not making any traction, you’re not executing properly and I know it’s a real struggle for a lot of people. So what do you have to say about productivity?
Dan: Well yeah people are confused about productivity. They think being busy is is being productive it has nothing to do with how busy you are or you know what you’re getting, what you’re achieving. The key is, are you achieving the most important goals that relate directly to success in your business? If not you’re not productive in fact the really truly productive people aren’t busy at all
Rod: Right right. So why you know I teach my students something called the Pareto principle is that where you’re going with this it is to pick I mean tell me how you get people to focus on the most important pieces so that they’re caught up and like a hamster on a wheel
Dan: Yeah well so I show everyone how to create a real simple plan. It’s called the CAP Critical Action Plan. Critical being the key word and if you look at any job any business there’s usually anywhere from four to eight critical result areas. That is areas that if you do them effectively you will succeed wildly. If you fail you will be you know out of the business. So for example the core four that I teach are marketing, sales, funding, and disposition you know what are you doing with, the thing you keep it at you flipping it or whatever. And it’s real simple you can be the best technician in the world you can know every strategy there is but if your marketing sucks you’re done okay. We don’t to go any further so if you take those critical result areas and just ask you so what are three key things I need to get done this quarter, this year in that? And then you break those into little pieces and then every week, I peaked out to do weekly planning you sit down at the end of the week and you look ahead and your schedule let me say we’re some open spaces you identify those and then you might even have to create something by moving some stuff around and all I ask you to do is do three every day okay three time blocks of about 45 minutes and that doesn’t sound like much but if you just do three a day, you will win in the week and the reason we say winning in the week instead of winning in the day is anything can happen to a day right I mean you can have a day just blow up and there’s no control but I insist you never let a week slide by because if you ever had a situation where you wake up in January and you look back you’re oh my gosh I didn’t get near the stuff done that I wanted to. Well guess what you didn’t lose it in December you lost it in January about the third week okay so that’s it winning in the week, the power of three, just put three things on your on your plan every day and get them done.
Rod: I love it yeah I had weekly planning session is so critical I take my students through it as well and we basically you know you look at your list of tasks for the week the weekly must list and you know there’s something called the Pareto principle which I alluded to which is that typically 20% of the things on that list will get you 80% further you’re calling them the critical things and it’s you know it’s a tomato-tomato it’s the same thing you know you identify what those things are and then like you say you block time for them that’s exactly what we do as well as I love it love it okay. So you talk about a – is that the two minute exercise that you just gave us? The productivity exercise?
Dan: Well actually what it is a little bit, it’s a little bit more involved. So a lot of people think that just coming into work first thing jumping into your business that’s really strong. Well I’ve had a lot of clients like that and that’s not strong because you’re not really focused. So what I teach people to do is to take a minute and focus and actually look at the tasks you have to do and just think about anything that you have to do. So just off the top of your head what are some things you don’t like doing but that you have to do each day? And you think about those and if you gave me an example of what I would say no that’s not true. You don’t have to do that you don’t have to pay your bills, you don’t have to save money, you don’t have to pay your taxes, you don’t have to take care of your kids okay because if you don’t take care your kids someone to take them away from you and they’ll take care of okay, you don’t have to pay your taxes coz there’s people in prison all the time. You see whenever you say I have to your subconscious mind says no you don’t I’ll get you out of it and then it gets really creative to get you in the sharpening pencils and all that kind of stuff that we sometimes do. This is on the other hand gets you to actually choose it so I have yet. Focus on the task at hand. I have you fascinate on it as opposed to concentrate. Look at the beauty of it then visualize it happening and then I also want you to feel how good that is how good you’re gonna feel by getting this thing done and then I need you to go flip over to the pain side and visualize it not happening and how lousy that’s gonna make you feel then I have you with those two realities is make a choice which one do you choose? Well Rod you know you’re high performer you’re going to choose the successful one right. And then what I have you do is the have you smile let’s just do this together for 10 seconds you ready? Now I dare you to think of anything negative you can’t it’s not possible and then you move in with that. So just imagine taking two minutes every morning to get into the right frame of mind the right context then the content will flow make sense?
Rod: I love it every successful person I’ve ever interviewed on my show has a morning ritual and that’s not one I’ve heard before where you consciously smile for 10 seconds. I love it. And so I love it so you know you have a master skill that you call repurpose. Tell us about that
Dan: Well you know one of the problems with the success is success is really boring okay and you have to be able to overcome you know living through the border and one of the things we find is you’re gonna continually need the same stuff over and over again. For example how do you judge if it deals good or not? Well real simply I encourage my clients to sit down and create a decision tree you know is it in the right place? Is it the right price? you know all the things that are important to me and if it makes it all the way across because the yes’es go across and the no’s go down and out then that’s a deal you can buy and just by doing this, it can help you so much because first of all you won’t make big mistakes and then one of the problems with this business is you’ve got some big expensive mistakes you can make. So it’ll stop you from doing that. It’ll give me the confidence to know that you’re doing the right thing each time and it’ll help you when you hire others. I mean so just give them this little diagram and say here here’s your decision tree go get it easier
Rod: It’s almost like a Ben Franklin close you know though yes on the left side the good stuff on the right side okay
Dan: Exactly
Rod: All right so you also have a master skill that literally compels you to take more time off and focus on your highest priorities which are the things you enjoy what’s that?
Dan: This is a very interesting one especially for this group because they’re all high achievers right, well that’s good and that’s that comes with its own problems. This is known as the good enough principle and one of my clients came to me he was really challenged, he was doing two flips and this is you know in single family again but it’s all the same principles used when she flips a month and you really want to get to three and he just couldn’t do it. He tried for months and months and months. So I looked at what he was doing and sure enough I found out that he was overachieving he was putting to high quality of new stuff in this home for where it was it was about a medium price homes and he was gone for like median times two. So I pointed this out to him and you know we’ve been raised in this you know like a thing worth doing is worth doing well right. Always do your best, wrong! You don’t always do your best. If I ask you if the assignment is bring me ten widgets. Don’t bring me eleven and don’t bring me nine okay because the return on investment for overachieving anything is zero. Think about it. Let’s use football as an example kick-off guy catches it man zone runs on it yards what’s he get 6 points right. Now what if you said you know I’m an overachiever I’m gonna run all the way out of the ends and so I’m gonna run right out of the state you I want to run downtown and catch a bus you still get six points. So whenever you find yourself overachieving, ask yourself what’s my return on investment? You’re gonna find out it’s zero. In fact if you think about it we’re all really in this race toward you know becoming financially free. Every time you over achieve you’ve added more time, more distance, and more stress for the only benefit because it keeps you in your comfort zone. I’m an overachiever, drop that. Perfectionism, drop that. Just do the job and I’m not saying do less. Like I say if the job says ten widgets do ten just don’t do eleven, make sense?
Rod: Okay okay okay you know and I’m struggling with that one a little bit only because I really believe in adding it now not as it relates to over building and so yeah I think it’s the terminology that I’m struggling with because I you know I definitely like the term overachieving and I like the term adding absolutely as much value as you possibly can because whatever you you know you get it back tenfold but you absolutely can over build this business guys. I see it happen with newbie investors all the time. They’ll you know they’ll put in granite when they should just do Formica because the granite just is way too nice for a particular demographic. So you know that I think it was just the terminology I was struggling with. So let me ask you this you know I’ve got the shiny object syndrome and you know I owned I built 24 businesses and so I said that’s my definition is oh oh there’s something shiny. So it’ll distract me from whatever I’m working on. I know you’ve got a cure for that. Can you speak to that?
Dan: Yeah my way is just so you know you know I’m not I’m not perfect today this stuff I’ve had all of these same problems which is why you know I can have empathy with our group here. Yeah shiny object it’s just kind of it’s almost a prerequisite to get in this business but what the way we get around it is real simple. When it comes to your plan, don’t put anything on your plan that you don’t guarantee, plan to complete it. So just anything that you did for two or three or four months and it didn’t work out, if you look back, oh my gosh look at all that time wasted I mean I need time management seminars and we can get anybody to get an extra 20 hours of the week or how about months, months of wasted time. That’s what happens when you don’t complete it. So I you know have you build in a pause you want to put something new on your plan? First of all I really don’t like that at all. You should make your plans for a year and stick with it throughout the year. That’s ideal and then what you do instead of changing your plan, open up a folder somewhere maybe on your phone or on your computer, brilliant ideas I’m gonna do in the future and jot them down there and then get back to your plan and forget about that shiny object because most of them just don’t work out
Rod: Okay I see what you’re saying is completion, bottom line is completion. Finish what you start before you get distracted and yeah I suffer from that one a lot and I’m sure a lot of people listening to as well. So you know it feels like in some of the things you’ve said that you motivate through pain. And I know as human beings we will do more to avoid pain than gain pleasure. Is that your methodology there? is that why you do that?
Dan: Yeah neuroscience, marine science that is actually supports this that pain is a much more powerful motivator than pleasure. So what I did I had this couple that that came to me they’d been working for five years in this business, hadn’t been able to be successful and we were able to turn that around quickly but the reason is I taught them this I said look here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go and make a complete list say 10-20 things that are gonna happen if you continue to fail at this business and it goes like we could lose the house, we could lose our business, that I have to go get a job, you know the spouse is gonna think less of me, I’m gonna let my kids down, all of that stuff and then look at that every day and this is what I call the choice of cat food or caviar okay. So caviar meaning anything really expensive and cat food meaning the opposite and I would literally encourage the people to be able to smell the cat food because it doesn’t smell very good. That’s where you’re headed if you don’t shape up okay and you need that negative like me, if my wife wants to motivate me she’ll show me our bank account if it’s not way more than what I wanted it to be if it’s like a dollar short, ah I go into overdrive because and it’s known in psychology as constructive versus restrictive motivation. So we still use the constructive you do it for the benefit of it but the restrictive is do it or else, and that’s what gets a lot of us up and going
Rod: Love it okay so yeah and I completely agree with what you just said in that you know like I take people through a goal-setting workshop where I have them write down their positive reasons why they must achieve the goals. Then I have them put the pain in if they don’t achieve them and because the pain is the bigger motivator like you said
Dan: Good for you good for you and then they look at those two at the same time that’s great
Rod: Right right right. So I know that you’ve got a process for goal achievement. I’d love to hear about because I mean I’m all about goals and why and determining you know and finding that that inner drive to take action and push through fear and get outside of comfort. So you’ve got a process for goal achievement, your claim works every time let’s see about it
Dan: It’s absolutely amazing it has never failed me and when I say failed I mean any goal you’ll achieve at least to the 90% level in the given time period. And it’s never failed any of my clients either. In fact I tell the story if it’s okay with you there was a couple that came to me they weren’t married but it was a man and a woman and she was dead broke and he was over $50,000 in debt. They had just enough money to attend one you know one of our events and that was it they were afraid to even to be around for lunch the fear that have to pay for coffee. I mean these people were on their last leg and so I sat down I taught them this principle it’s called the goal implementation graph and I said I want you to goal set for a hundred thousand dollars cash in the next 90 days well they ended up making one hundred eighty one thousand dollars which is absolutely amazing and the way they did it was they just basically every single day asked the following three questions, what’s my goal? how am I doing? what’s the appropriate action? And that’s the key to staying aware and focused. I don’t know if you know this or not but you know every year you know the whole country goes into goal set mode and they have you know all these things that they come up with you know that only one out of four still remembers their goal by the end of January and only one out of 12 in general is going to achieve their goals. Why? because if you don’t have it around to see, then you’re not gonna be able to achieve it. If you can’t see it, you can’t achieve it. So just ask those three questions every day and you’ll find that you get very very creative as you near the end. And again it’ll work every single thing
Rod: So goal and how am I doing and what action do I need to take to redirect? That ties right into something that that I teach as well in that I like and that is you know the goal it’s never a straight line to the goal. People think it’s a go from point A to point B you know like a boat or a plane is off course 99% of the time but the end at the right place. So if you’ve got your goals in your mind’s eye and something’s not working, you change your approach again but you got to keep your goal in the front of your mind and that’s really the process here. And Tony Robbins talks about this. He call it the ultimate success formula. If one approach doesn’t work, change your approach, if that doesn’t work, change your approach. What do you do if that doesn’t work? You change your approach and you just keep changing your frickin approach until you do get that to the end zone or do you do get to the goal. As long as you keep that goal in your mind’s eye. Love it so that’s right along those same lines now
Dan: Before we move on another interesting thing that I like to do when I’m in a live event so visualize I was standing up and say, how would you like to know if your goal is truly a goal? you know most people have don’t have goals. They actually have notions which is a vague thought or win. What’s real, the difference is when you get negative feedback and you take corrective action, that’s a goal. But if you get negative feedback and you whine and complain and sit down, guess what? It’s just a vague whim okay. So that’s how you know and negative feedback is of course what you’re talking about the airplane off traffic 99% of the time right that’s they just keep making corrections
Rod: Yeah love it that’s what we do okay. So let me ask you this if you could teach schoolchildren one thing for an hour a week, what would you teach?
Dan: Well that’s awesome. Probably to not complain. I don’t know are you big in law of attraction at all?
Rod: Oh absolutely yeah I tell stories about pictures and I’ve got pictures in the back of my planner here all of which I’ve gotten because I focused on them and brought them into my life and when the movie “The Secret” came out on my holy shit this is what I’ve been doing for 30 years and I’ve given away probably a thousand copies of that movie
Dan: Yeah I love that thing I was a three months after I saw it I was on the boat with you know the guys who were stars of that show but the thing about complaining that most people don’t realize. So first of all it’s a national pastime. You want to be popular you know at a cocktail party just complain. They love it
Rod: People think everything’s great they’re like oh oh you know oh man I love and like things are incredible they’re like who else this guy but if you say oh man things are so bad they’re like oh brother come here let’s commiserate together
Dan: Exactly but people feel the need to complain but here’s the problem with it from a law of attraction standpoint. And law of attraction is like gravity. It works whether you believe in it or not you’ll step off a cliff you know you’ve got gravity going is whatever you are feeling right now is the creation of your life if you’re making. So if you feel like crap because you’re complaining about politics or the weather or your spouse or the kids or the market whatever guess what? You’re asking for more of that same thing okay. So always focus you know I keep just reams of positive things in my life. I mean all the way down to the air that I breathe. Thank you thank you thank you and it’s just the opposite of complaining
Rod: Love it so no complaining and you know we’re focus goes energy flows. So like I’ll see you posts in my Facebook group how do I get out of debt? I’ll say that is the wrong question because whatever you focus on is going to magnify. So if you focus on getting out of debt you should be focused on making money you know they asked Mother Teresa if she was anti-war and she said no, I’m Pro-Peace
Dan: Exactly that’s a really good point today there’s a war against everything and you know pushing back doesn’t get you a solution. It gets him off with a problem
Rod: No I love it love it. So let me ask you this why do you think most people fail in the real estate or any business for that matter? What do you thinks the most common reason people fail?
Dan: Well because of that and if you didn’t write it down before the listeners please write this down. CCA (Consistent Committed Action) can you do that on a weekly basis? if so, it’s no big deal. I mean success is really simple especially if you can overcome the boredom in it because you’re gonna be doing the same things over and over again but that’s it. Can I consistently committedly move toward my goals each and every week? If yes, you’re gonna be successful. If not you got you got no chance. No matter how smart you are, how good-looking you are, how much money you have, it doesn’t matter
Rod: No I agree. So let’s talk about leadership for a minute, what’s one characteristic that you think every leader should possess
Dan: Well the ability to share their vision and make it something that people can actually feel and that’s what we start with a plan is you have to start with a vision. In fact everything that man has created on this planet starts first with a vision and moves into a plan and then there’s execution then there’s review and like that. So yeah vision
Rod: Are there you know are there any books that have had a major impact on your life in your business? Is there a book that you gift more than another
Dan: Yeah there’s lots of it. My favorite one now is The Magic. Yeah it’s all about implementation in fact
Rod: He was the secret right? Did you say Rhonda Byrne?
Dan: Yes yeah right exactly and she has another book before that The Power I think it was okay that’s on audio but the great thing about The Magic is it’s all implementation. Do this do this do that on a daily weekly basis. So like for example every day I focus on the at least 10 things that I love about my life and then I look forward to the day and I go what three things can be magnificent outcomes. So this morning when I was doing you know my prep I visualized this right here in I said thank you for the magnificent outcome, of being able to change lives, by sharing these great master skills with Rod’s folks. And then I feel that and it feels great and then I track that and here we are
Rod: What’s some bad advice you’ve gotten along the way?
Dan: Oh so much so much the thing I learned real early in life is be aware of who you trust. I’m very trusting. I’m a total optimist. Sometimes it’s my fault but what I found is that people don’t mean to mislead you. They just were taught by someone who didn’t know who was taught by someone who didn’t know who was taught by somebody. So I like to always go to the source if I can and be very very very careful. I was at a big convention last weekend for real estate here in the Pacific Northwest and this guy I started talk to him and I said well how’s business? Well you know the markets just no houses, really? Really? Well you know you’re gonna manifest that. Do you want that? Well no what would it look like without the problem? And they’re all great, and I gave a couple of tips how they could go and get business at will. So be careful of what you believe
Rod: Sure. What do you thinks the best advice you’ve ever received?
Dan: Oh that’s a good one what’s the best advice I’ve ever received. Well probably don’t look for easy money.Iit doesn’t exist yeah you know the only place that success comes before work is in the dictionary.
Rod: [Laughter] I’m gonna steal that one. That’s awesome
Dan: Go ahead
Rod: So who inspires you? Who do you consider a thought leader that inspires you I guess Rhonda Byrne probably some of the people that she brought it together for the movie The Secret yeah you know and anybody else come to mind?
Dan: I love Abraham you know from Abraham Hicks it’s the same same stuff just different approach that’s really great stuff. And I’m really blessed to know some really smart really wealthy people and I get a great amount, my goal is always to be to not be the smartest person in the room. And I think I’m pretty smart. So I’m always looking for people who are who or more and I get a lot out of my support group that way
Rod: I love it yeah that’s why I created my mastermind I you know I had 16 people here at my house my compound in Florida is about a billion in assets and now it’s growing to four billion and it was you know you want to be around people that think what you think as hard is easy and have done it all I mean if you’re around people that you know then, now you have two hands one to pull yourself up and one to pull other people up. I’m not saying not helping other people which I know is where you are at your core Dan but I absolutely agree with what you said. You want to be around people that have that are where you want to be and that’s why I created the I’ve got the largest Multi Family Facebook group on the planet. It’s almost twenty six thousand people and those are all people that want more out of life and that’s who you want to be around. You don’t want to be around the people that are fearful and afraid and they’re gonna you know you know like you said when you’re commiserating in a group and a party and you talk about how bad things are, oh you’ll get everybody come out of the woodwork. But you want to be around the people that you know stand guard at the door to their mind and focus on bringing in positive energy you know that’s why I don’t watch the news anymore
Dan: Oh my goodness no you gotta get rid of the news it’s the bad news is what it is. You just reminded me of something that I really like to share with the group because have you ever gone to a thing like what you’re talking about, where you have all these Superstars and you know you walk away going gosh I came here thinking I was really hot and now I can see I’m just I’m crap you’ve got to not do that okay. Works against you, what you really want is to be able to look at somebody let’s just say you’re making a million and they’re making eight million you look at them and go Wow way to go fantastic I love it just as if it was yours because if not, guess what you’re pushing it away you’re pushing it away. So that’s moral when you when you make comparisons you got to be real careful about that he’s saying that’s me that’s me. I want that I love that I attract that
Rod: Love it what’s your favorite quote? That’s the last question I want to ask you today
Dan: Yeah sure. I end all my talks
Rod: You’ve got a couple that’s fine. Share quotes that drive you and motivate you in core value
Dan: Well my favorite as a speaker and coach is “Education without implementation isentertainment”
Rod: I finished it yeah I love it I love it
Dan: Yeah and that’s quoting my partner it was a brilliant guy and I’ve learned a ton from him and it’s just been great
Rod: No kidding yeah and I’ve heard that quote as well. In fact I use it as many
Dan: Now you know where it was stolen from
Rod: I didn’t know that I know where it came from but I use it at my live events because it’s
Dan: Good yeah it is true
Rod: So many people go to the event and never do a damn thing with it and then it’s just entertainment. I’ve got you know I do boot camps three-day boot camps around the country and they sell out and I love them and everything else and my goal is to try to have you know to skew the numbers because 90% of the people that buy a course or do a boot camp or whatever they don’t do a damn thing with it. And it’s just a crime
Dan: You wanna know why that is by the way?
Rod: Sure, I believe it’s fear I believe it’s limiting beliefs I believe it’s you know they’re comfortable but I’d love to hear your thought on it
Dan: Yeah it’s all of those and sometimes it’s this. Whenever you achieve your goal, you flatten out with energy. In other words, you can see your goal is to you know make $100,000 if you make a hundred thousand you don’t say okay now let me go make two hundred thousand in the last 20 minutes here. So whenever you achieve your goal you flatten out of energy. So maybe you come back home and you don’t do anything you go why aren’t I doing anything? Well maybe your goal wasn’t to actually implement and to be successful. It was just to look like you were working on it. And see when you go to the event you’re working on it looks like you want it but when you get home yeah there’s a little bit of fear but it’s just like hey I need to change my goal. So in other words you don’t go set to get to the Super Bowl you know the bills did that back in the 90s okay and they got you a lot of Super Bowls and they lost them all you want to goal set to win. You goalset through not to
Rod: Oh through love it love it love it love it very very critical distinction. Well listen I appreciate you being on the show Dan Duran and your contact information will be in the show notes. You’ve added a ton of value today and I really appreciate your valuable time my friend
Dan: And Rod I appreciate yours too and I can see that we’re brethren when it comes to the mindset
Rod: It’s everything it’s everything. Alright my friend take care we’ll talk soon
Dan: Okay bye-bye
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