Brant Phillips Show 8: Two Things That Prevent Results
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Welcome everybody to The Brant Phillips Show. The show dedicated to results. Today, we’re going to talk about greed and laziness. Greed and laziness. The reason we’re talking about this today is, I was talking to a new coaching student the other day. I shared with them something that I heard many, many years ago when I was first diving into the world of being an entrepreneur. I heard a speaker say that there’s only two things that stand in the way of your success. Those two things are your greed and your laziness. Your greed and your laziness are the only two things that stand in the way of your success.
I want to dive into those and talk about greed and laziness and how they can be things … That actually there’s a certain aspect that are useful about those characteristics that we all have inside of us but most times and the way that they manifest themselves is that they prevent our success. When we talk about greed and laziness, yes, they are perceived as flaws in our human character. They’re often seen independently and separate from one another but they’re really intertwined into our human psyche. We see them in all ranges of the social spectrum, from the homeless out on a street to the incredibly ultra, uber, mega rich and politicians and things like that. We see this characteristic in all areas of society and like I said, the entire social spectrum.
If you dig into a deep psychological and sociological type of study, you’ll probably read that our greed, the want and desire to have more than we need comes from our ancestors not having enough food and wanting to have warmth in the winter and things like that. I’m certain there’s truth to that. You would probably read about how our laziness stems from some of our ancestors and the amount of time that they had to work and the need to rest and to recover and recuperate in preparation for the next harvest and going out and doing long sustained work for long periods of time.
As we all know, we live in the modern day area and some of these manifestations of why we have these characteristics just don’t really apply to today’s day and age. From the entrepreneurial perspective, we’re going to put on our entrepreneurial lens and we’re going to look at why, or how greed and laziness manifest themselves into affecting your results. Your results as an entrepreneur, as a business person, perhaps as a real estate investor.
Let’s look at this. Laziness, we’re going to tackle that one first. That can show up in just a number of different ways as we know, plain and simple. For those of you who’ve been following for any amount of time, worked with me as a student or in my programs that we say it all the time. Like, “If you’re not going to do the work, you’re not going to get the results.” Plain and simple.
In order to create success, you have to be willing to do the work. Obviously, if there is no work being done, there is no output, there’s going to be no results. A lot of times, it’s not as simple as that. It’s not as simple as just doing work, doing A, B, and C, 1, 2, and 3, rinse, wash, repeat, over and over and over, but that is a part of it. Just a lack of consistency because you’ll see some people that will [flutter 00:04:58] the gates. They will want to do a million and one things in a day or in a week or perhaps in a month but then boom, they’re burned out. It wasn’t that they were lazy as if they hit a wall and they failed. They failed to plan properly. They were lazy in their planning. They were lazy in their mindset. They were lazy in their game plan and they really failed to plan so then they really planned to fail as we’ve all heard before.
Laziness manifests itself in a lot of different ways, not just in someone going out and doing the work but really cultivating a plan that is sustainable and that can be built and achieved over time. This is a really big one. Sometimes it’s the laziness just to go in and have the conversations that you need to have to do the little things, not just the big things. People think that they want to look at the end. I know that that’s where we begin when we’re building a business, we’re building a plan, you begin with the end in mind and then you reverse engineer. People don’t really see how important those little steps are not just in the beginning but on a daily basis, like on a daily basis.
I think a lot of my one-on-one students for sure they come in and see behind the scenes on what we do in terms of marketing for our businesses on a daily basis. Their jaws drop a lot of times because there’s a lot of work involved in marketing plans for an investing business to market to find motivated sellers with postcards and letters and pay-per-click and SEO email marketing, all those types of things and what we do for our construction clients etcetera, etcetera. That there’s a tremendous amount of work involved but it’s … The difference I think that from my perspective and their perspective is a lot of times that if you don’t have that burning energy and fire inside of you, that you are going to get “Lazy”, like you’re like, “Oh my God. I’ve got to do this work or I’ve got to do these things.” If that’s the perspective and the lens that you’re looking at, the work that has to be done and created and achieved, then forget about it. You’re going to be done before you get started.
Whenever your perspective is that I get to do this work to create this result, it changes everything. Those of you who know me know that I love what I do. I can work from sunup to sundown every damn day and not get tired. That being said, I do not do that but I love what I do. The work that is involved in a business, laziness typically is not a factor except when it becomes a factor. Now, there is times when I’d find myself resistant to do work. Resistant to step in and like, “Hey, I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to do that.” When I find myself resisting things that need to be done, that is a huge flag. That is a huge flag for me because that means like, “Look Brant, you need to look at this and you need to get someone else to do this.”
This isn’t saying that you’re going to have all these pieces of your business that you should automatically love to do and you should be inspired to do them. No, that’s not the case. Whenever you have these instances or these certain things in your business that you don’t feel called to do, you don’t feel inspired to do, you don’t feel enthused to do, you need to find a way to effectively outsource those things and have them done by someone else, by a team member, by a contractor or whatever it may be to make sure that they’re done so your bottom line is getting taken care of and you can focus on the things that you feel inspired to do.
Just look at the things that are in your business that are showing up that you know that you need to do but you’re not doing because of laziness. Then dig a little deeper like, “Why am I being lazy towards this item? Why am I not marketing? Why am I not generating more deal flow? Why am I not having conversations with prospective clients, prospective lenders, prospective partners? What is it that you feel “Lazy” about in your business?” Then just dig deeper. Is it because you don’t desire to do that work? Is it because it should be outsourced to someone else? Is it that there are some other things in your life, like possibly your nutrition, other responsibilities, you’re too busy, you need to create some space so that you have that energy in time to devote to those areas? Because laziness, when it’s showing up in whatever form and whatever matter in your business is going to prevent your success. It’s going to prevent your success.
Hey, this is Brant. I hope you’re enjoying today’s show. If you’re in a place in your life or your business where you just feel stuck or you just don’t know what actions to take to help you get unstuck or on to the path to creating the results you truly desire, please take a few minutes and go to my website, brantphillips.com. There are some really valuable resources and information that may be able to help you out. If you’re interested in really speeding up results with the help of a coach, a mentor and adding true accountability and guidance to your life and business, please reach out to me from my website as well at brantphillips.com or going directly to www.brantphillips.com/coaching. Now, let’s get back to the show.
The other thing I want to talk about is greed. Let’s dive into this. The most common way that I’ve seen greed play out in my own business and in students, some students of mine and just people in the market in general that I’ve worked with or seen is, we see this all the time with real estate, with overpricing a piece of real estate. You look at the comps, you look at all your numbers and you’re like, “This house should be a $200,000 house based on everything I’ve seen but I’m going to go and put it on the market at 250 because I need the money.” Or, “You know, this is a wish and a prayer, and let’s see what happens.”
While I’ll admit that there are times in the real estate market and there are times in business where you can shoot a little bit higher, there’s times to swing for the fences, but those times are very rare. They’re not the rule. They’re the exception to the rule. The 80/20 rules, those are 20% of the time maybe 80% of the time you need to be going by the numbers. Do the numbers make sense? Your numbers will tell a story. What greed basically comes down to is expecting something for nothing or wanting the return to exceed the true value, wanting the return to exceed the true value.
If you look at it, greed and laziness, this is how you can see how greed and laziness are tied together. The times when I’ve had properties sit on the market the longest are why? Because I’ve overpriced them. I’ve overpriced them based on the current market that we’re in. That’s it. When it comes down to greed, whenever you are putting out a product or a service or a piece of real estate, whatever it is and into the market place, don’t expect so much sometimes. Expect what the market value is, understand that there’s times where we can take our shots and roll higher but the market is going to tell you what your piece of real estate is worth. The market place is going to tell you what your products and services are worth. It’s a destructive behavior really that can show up that tells you that, “Let me try to get more for this, let me try to get more for this.” You will end up so many times costing yourself more time and money.
The easy correlation is with a piece of real estate that sits when it could have been sold. You could have already been on your second or third or fourth property but you’re sitting here wanting, hoping, being lazy really that this property is going to sell for 10%, 20%, 30% more than the true value is when you could really be once again working doing work, putting out effort just to create more value in the market place by doing more marketing, creating more networks, creating more deal flow to do more deals and putting out more true value into the market place but your greed has stopped you on wanting something for nothing.
Once again just look at that. Where are you being greedy? Where are you being greedy in your life or your business? Where are you expecting more than what the true value is? Where are you expecting to receive more than what you’ve really put into something? Just look at each of these areas and just ask yourself the question, “Where am I being lazy? Where am I being greedy? How am I being greedy?” That’s it my friends. If you can detect and pinpoint where you’re being greedy and where you’re being lazy in your life and your business, as soon as you can pinpoint those areas, you focus on them, you improve them. You course correct and you’ll soon be back on track to creating results. Once again, I love and appreciate each and every one of you. I thank you for listening to the show. Until next time, I look forward to helping you create the results you desire in your life and your business.