Today we'll go over some tips for setting your real estate goals for the year, how to look at them on a daily, weekly, monthly and on a yearly basis, how to organize your day, and when is the optimal time to hire a full time VA. Bronson Hill, principal at Bronson Equity has been in the real estate investment world for the last four years, he has raised over $30M and shares his insights.
Tell us a little bit about you.
I'm a big goals guy. I make goals each year, go to goals events, and I even started recreating these on my own. I went away for a couple of days at the the end of 2022 to review how did I do with the goals that I created for last year, which was about 50-50 on achieving the goals and not achieving the goals. Some of them were lofty and some were out of my control, but I made progress on every single one, even the ones that I did not achieve. So, sometimes even if you create a goal that's too lofty or too big, that's okay because it keeps you centered and focused.
I try to read them every single morning, this year I have 10 goals, I have my personal mission statement, my values, and my intention. I read those every single morning and I think just by doing it, that really keeps it top of mind. Some successful people write them down every day. But I think whatever you do, whether you use a vision board, or you have goals, it's just keeping them in front of you so that you keep coming back to them. And as you remember them, you look at them, you're reminded, and you see yourself as somebody who achieves these goals. And it's not always about the goals themselves, it's about the person that you become, as you move toward those goals. I think that's a Jim Rohn quote. That's something I'm striving towards, being a person that becomes a better person by having goals.
Last year, you raised an incredible amount of money, what do you think was the biggest step you took in the last four years to get yourself to where you are right now?
We've raised about 30 million, we have about 200 million in multifamily, we're raising money for an ATM machine fund, a carwash fund, and other types of alternative assets in the energy space, so we're constantly doing deals.
I get this question a lot, how does somebody move from another field and into real estate, I was from medical device sales, I was making a good salary, working with physicians. The biggest thing that happened was that I made the decision that I was going to leave my job within a few years, and I was going to figure out a way to do it. By doing that, your subconscious tries to figure it out, you go to events, meet people, make connections. I started a meet up in Southern California, and found my first investor there. I'd had so many calls with friends and family to raise money for real estate deals and zero invested. It was so frustrating, but this guy, whom I'd never met before, saw me at the front of the room, didn't see me as an expert, but as a leader in the space. He's the first that invested and put 100k on one of the deals that I was a part of. When you're getting started, it's important to find a way to add value, like this podcast, or by going to events and trying to find a way to help people on their journey. We create a lot of content now, a lot of emails, videos, we have our YouTube channel and all types of things to create value for people.
You mentioned that you talked with friends and family and couldn't raise funds, what are your thoughts regarding putting yourself in front of people that are ready to invest vs trying to convince somebody that hasn't thought about real estate investing and doesn't even know much about the tax benefits and things like that?
There’s a difference between sales and marketing. Sales is going out trying to pitch your idea to everybody and marketing is how you position yourself so that people come to you. I've had 1,300 one on one phone calls in the last four years with accredited or high net worth investors and that has been awesome because these are people that are already interested, they've opted in to have a call. And how that happens is by creating value around the topic by talking about how to reduce taxes to zero, or how to be able to leave your job with passive income or topics like that, and people say, hey, I'm interested in learning more about how this works. For example, on my website there's a guide I wrote called How to Use inflation to Your Advantage, it's a free eBook that gives ideas of how to invest in alternative assets such as multifamily. People download it, then I start sending them emails every week or periodically. I don't try to sell something to somebody that is not asking for it. But if somebody's saying, I'm interested in this, they're thinking about how do I stop getting hurt by this or how do I protect my wealth, so it's a farming strategy versus a hunting strategy. If you're a hunter, you're a sales dog in a used car lot, you have to try to get people to buy what you have to sell. But when you're farming, you're just putting information out there and you're inviting people to either invest or to get something of value for free.
That is how I used to pick my startups that I was working at, I looked for a startup that already had a good product that people actually need and want vs trying to sell something that they don't even know exists. The sale is a lot easier when you have something that they know that they need it. How do you organize your day to achieve your goals? How do you break it down?
I have annual goals; and I spend a lot of time thinking about them, in the areas of health, travel, time with my daughter and with family, and in financial as well. I then create smaller goals for this quarter: what are we doing, we have this number of investment deals, or we're trying to do these certain events.
On a day-to-day basis, I usually try to structure my days per tasks: today I'm recording videos, or doing interviews, I try to batch things together. I'm in the process of writing a book, currently at 20,000 words and I'm getting them to get to about 30 to 40,000, so we're almost halfway there. How do I do it? I write an hour a day, that's about 1,200 words in a day and that helps me get towards my goal. One big thing about goals, is celebrating even small wins. When something good happens, when you get a new deal under contract, or when you get an investor investing half a million in your deal, you got to celebrate it. There's an app called WinStreak and it records three wins, it could be personal wins or work wins, just three things that went well that day and three things you're looking forward to about tomorrow. What it does is it subconsciously gets me in the feeling of I'm somebody who has wins each day, it develops confidence that I'm working toward these goals that I'm excited about because otherwise, it's very hard to think about this big, long-term goal that's a year out, or years out, and how am I ever going to get there. But if you celebrate the small wins, it really builds a sense of confidence and encouragement that I'm doing this right, which is really neat.
And celebrate also the medium sized wins, if I get a property and contract, I'm going to go to the spa for a day or take myself out to a nice dinner, things like that are also important to recognize. And writing all the things that you accomplished the year prior gives you a huge perspective.
It's easy to structure your day especially if you're somebody who is working real estate full time. You have to take time out to reflect and celebrate it all. Life has a lot of negative things, there's a lot of resistance that comes up against us in different ways, try to look at what good is happening and what are the things that I am making progress in and that has to come from internally because the world is not going to give that to you. You have to find a way to do that in yourself so that when you have enough positivity, because you'll face challenges in every single thing in your life that's worth going after. Affirmations are powerful too. Things you say about yourself to yourself, we all do it, that self-talk is really important. All that gives you the power to be able to achieve great things.
You have a specific number of days that you're literally taking off, that you're completely disconnecting for the year. How do you do it?
That’s new for me. I'm a guy who’s always working and doing things even on a day off but what I've realized is that it's really good to have a certain number of free days. A free day is defined as you don't answer an email, or you don't pick up the phone when somebody calls for business, you're out of the office. It's so hard to do but if you're an entrepreneur, you can have team members that can help you. You can even train your people, work with your partners, your investors, whoever, and let them know that you don't pick up the phone on the weekends unless it's an emergency. My goal this year is 115 free days where I don't do any work on those days.
How do you delegate those calls and emails?
You just have to train people. This was the first weekend I've done it, I got a call and somebody wanted to talk and I also had an investor that wanted to chat. I said to myself that I'm going to wait and see, I called them back on Monday morning, and it was just fine. People understand if you don't call him back on the weekend, or you don't text him back, that maybe they're busy. I can always text someone and say, do you mind if we talk on Monday? That's totally okay, and it counts as a free day.
At what point do you decide to hire somebody full time to help you?
I do have one full time VA and I've a couple of part time people, a part time marketing person, a part time video person, somebody who writes things for me and I hired a full time VA a week a couple years ago. I was still doing my full-time medical sales job and it was really helpful. I have a friend who believes that every single person in the US that makes over $100,000, should have a full-time virtual assistant to help them with their personal or work tasks because there are always things that come up, things we need to research, things we need to do. In the beginning, we don't know what this person would do, but after a while, you have so many things you could have them do.
How I really structured my business is I tried to create repeatable processes where when I send out an email, you can see the process and how does that work. Then, I can create a video on Vidyard, which you can capture the screen and you can pass it on to someone else. Another person I used to work with said, if I learn how to do something, I can teach it, and that was really helpful. Record yourself doing it, put it in a Google document, some screenshots and the steps. Once you share that, even if you lose this person, you've some record of how this actually works. You don't have to really start over and teach the whole thing again. Somebody can watch and get a sense of how this works.
A lot of times when people decide to take a week, or a month off, and they just really let the team take care of the business, more often than not, the company actually does way better than when they were there watching over everybody. That's something to try out, do it for maybe three days, and then a week, and see what benefits come out of that.
And a lot of times, they don't want us to be around doing micromanaging. They want us to be off doing our things. And as a leader, you have to be somebody who sets the vision, this is where we're going, and this is what's important. You have to celebrate those wins as well with your team. They get some feedback and you let them do their thing and don't micromanage.
Is there anything else that you think is important for our audience to know regarding goal setting that we haven't covered yet?
Have written goals. When you write it down, you're creating something, and something doesn't exist unless you create it, you either speak it, or write it down. And then put that up, I have my goals typed up with my mission statement, I laminated on the backside, there are pictures of what those goals look like, and I read those every morning. Keep that in front of you, that's really important.
A friend of mine recommended Fox Planner, I believe you can buy on Amazon. I've been using that for a few months and it's wonderful for that purpose as well.
Bronson Hill
www.bronsonequity.com
VA finder: www.virtualstafffinder.com
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