Don’t you find it pretty magical when you either find or stumble across the same powerful bit of wisdom from multiple different sources within a few short days? It really makes the message hit home.
This is exactly what happened to me with the wisdom behind the power of saying “NO”.
I’m confident that most people reading this will have heard about the ‘Power of No’ before so I wanted this to serve as a helpful reminder and prompt property people to think about how it applies to your property business now.
The fact is, we are what we say YES to. To explain that another way, there are certain things that your former self would say yes to that your current self wouldn’t. So for example, as the starting out property investor, the first investment I said yes to is one that the current me would definitely say no to- naturally I’ve learned a few things since then and refined my investment criteria. The SA operator I was in 2016 said yes to things that the SA operator version of me today would definitely say no to. The way I structured my days in 2013 are very different to the way I structure them now, and the conversations I say no to now are conversations I likely would have said yes to a couple of years ago. You will have your own similar examples.
In a new marketing book by Australian entrepreneur Sabri Subi, I was reading about his take on thinking like a billionaire. From his studies of high achievers, he concluded that to think like a self-made billionaire we must first understand their choices in life and business ie where do they derive their income from? What do they spend their time on? What tasks do they focus on?
With the most valuable, non renewable asset in the world being our time, how do billionaires spend their precious time?
Are they constantly checking email, or social media, or engaging in low level tasks that could be outsourced or delegated? Clearly not.
The truth is, the more successful people get, its what they say ‘no’ to that makes the difference. Warren Buffet, quoted this exact point in his words as follows:
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
Instead of working on important needle moving tasks, many property entrepreneurs let the squeakiest wheel get the grease, especially when starting out. In other words wasting time on low yielding tasks that make them feel busy, like checking emails and time consuming admin that could be outsourced. Meanwhile they forgo the activities that produce the bulk of the revenue/value creation ie those things could be generating SA booking demand, or sourcing the commercial conversion with big uplift opportunity- ie the highly leveraged and income generating activities.
The thing about these self-made billionaires and millionaires is that they have clarity on what their high leverage activities are, and they concentrate their time on just those activities.
How different would your week look if you were to allocate just 2 focused hours per day on only the highest leverage activities for your particular type of property business? You know the ones I mean, the 20% of input that creates 80% of the result [Pareto’s 80/20 rule].
So from 4 different mentor type figures, I heard this same message over the last 7 days, just packaged up slightly differently each time. And each time it caught my attention and prompted me to challenge myself, and I in turn wanted to share this message so that you might challenge yourself, positively of course.
Here’s the key insight I picked up from Dr Benjamin Hardy summarised, and when I heard these words, it resonated so clearly,
“Your future self says ‘no’ to things you are currently saying ‘yes’ to, just like you now say ‘no’ to things your former self said ‘yes’ to”.
4 STEP NEXT LEVEL ACTION PLAN
Here are some exercise questions to help you figure out your version of this ‘billionaire thinking’:
#1 – Make a list of all your property business activities
#2 – Conduct an 80/20 analysis of those activities (decide what you activities you need to say ‘no’ to in order to get to your next level)
#3 – Create an action plan to help you delegate, automate or outsource a chunk of the 80% of your activities that don’t produce revenue or move the business forwards.
#4 – Invest your time in the activities that move the money needle and directly create value towards your next level.
What does the next level version of you say ‘no’ to that you need to eliminate from your life now?