Welcome to Making of a DM. The F word, the F word that would change your life if you allow it to. Focus. Are you ready to focus? If so, let's get started.
Mark: Hey there troops, Mark Evans DM coming to you today from Montauk, New York. Actually sitting in this beautiful house over here looking over the pool, wishing I was outside right now, but the truth is yesterday I was sick as a dog, the day prior I was on calls from 7 AM to 4:30 PM sick as a dog as well, but when you have commitments, you have commitments. [0:01:10.8]
And the wife wants to go to all these places, which I get. We all do. Good news is they're at the beach right now, so I'm shooting a show for you today, because this is important to me to share something with you, so today may be a little shorter than normal, but my goal was, the hope that I share enough information with you to kind of paint the picture to the next level so it can give you some context so when you're pushing forward and making these decisions the number one thing you're doing is staying focused, and that's what today's show's about. Is being focused. See, I get a lot of guys, I'm in the real estate business, that's one of my companies I've had that for 23 years and I was thinking back about I almost went bankrupt twice, I think I've told you guys this before, but I nearly went BK twice. Once I was around 20, another when I was around 23 and I never did, but almost did. [0:02:03.7]
I still have the paper actually because I keep that as memory to not want to do that again or have to fill out the paperwork again. But I remember those moments when I was like, "How did I get here?" There's a lot of reasons of how I got there, but the number one real reason is I lost focus. You see, in real estate people talk about creating income streams, passive income streams. Let's say buy a rental, make $300 net a month after you buy the house, you get it, put a tenant in it, do all this stuff and now you're making $300 a month. That is awesome when it works, but also if your business is actually something else now you have two different companies going on, and you've lost focus of something that's working. See, a lot of times when I got in trouble, all the time actually when I get in trouble it's when I take my focus off of what I'm supposed to be focused on. Ultimately it's very frustrating. [0:03:05.0]
It will literally set you back many days, months, years if you can even make it through the storm. Because depending how unfocused you get and how long you allow it to creep in, it could literally devastate you financially, and in time. It could take time away from. So for example I have some guys that I'm working with, and I was talking to them about, they're like, "I want to buy some rentals." and I'm like, "That's awesome, but why?" "I want to make passive income stream." Truth is, guys, there's no such thing as passive income, really. They're still active, you so actively got to buy something, you still got to actively manage it, so it's kind of a hybrid and it's not hard work. I'm just sharing this is not a real passive stream, there's no such thing as really ultra-passive streams, because you're actively doing something to generate it. That's a whole another story for another day, but as I'm talking to them, these are younger guys in the game and they're like, "I want to own rentals so I can create passive income, so I can actually grow my company." [0:04:06.1]
Keep in mind, one of my guys is making $30,000 a month doing his kind of property strategy, and I'm like, "Why would you take when you're making $30,000 a month to go chase $300 a month?" and it's a shiny object syndrome. It's, well this looks cool, this is sexier, this is neater to say when you're hanging out your friends at a networking event, you're like, "Dude, I got rentals, I got this, I got that." You're talking about everything you have going on, and when I hear people talk about them having all these things going on, especially in the beginning stages because they're typically responsible for all the pieces, means disaster in the making. As I'm talking to you and talking to him, I'm thinking, "Why would you do that?" Let's say if it's a $50,000 house and you had cash to pay for it. Why would you take $50,000 of cash to make $500 net cash flow on a rental property? It's a real question, and he's like, "$500 a month, why wouldn't I want to do that?" and I get that on the surface level, but now what I got to do is educate them like, "When you start to do this, how big do you want it to get?" "I want it to be $10,000 a month." [0:05:16.8]
Great, that's easy to understand. $500 to $10,000, you need 20 of these rentals, that's a million dollars in cash if they're all $50,000 a piece. I'm like, "Do you understand that's a business? You have to find the properties, you have to find management, you have to make management type decisions, meaning if the water pipes break or the hot water tanks break you've got to fund it, you got to do this, you got to do that. Why wouldn't you take the same $50,000 and put it into the business that you know makes $30,000 a month and up your marketing? Hire an assistant?" Because that $50,000 could make way more than $6000 a year. $500 a month times 12 months, $6000. Why aren't we thinking about that? [0:06:02.9]
Why wouldn't we take $50,000 on something we know that's absolutely working and scale into our business? The truth is because we get bored. The truth is because we never asked ourself this question. The truth is because we feel like we have all or eggs in one basket. But why do you think if you're making $30,000 a month that's the most you could make in that industry? What if you could make $50,000 a month or five million a month? Why are we going to chase $500 a month to lose tens of thousands of dollars a month? Makes zero sense, right? So as I'm talking to you, we have to start focusing on our business, and kind of an analogy I gave yesterday because I did take a walk yesterday, barely, but I did take a walk here Montauk, it's very foggy out early morning. I walked down this private beach and I'm standing there and it's very, very foggy. Like literally it's like a swimming area, they have orange ropes that go out like 100 yards and then that's all you can see, is like the orange ropes 100 yards out. [0:07:08.7]
But really through a clear day you could see like 13, 14 different layers of stuff, so you see the little islands, and then you see another piece of land and another piece of land, etc. One thing interesting about fog, I remember if you're driving in the fog you're not looking at the destination, you're looking what's in front of you today and you're taking a turn by turn, stop light by stop light and yet so many people lose focus and they're going, like if you're sitting here swimming I want to go out to the 14th piece of land out in front of me. You never get started because it's such a big obstacle. When it's foggy you only see so far in front of you, so that's where you go to, that's your destination. Swim out there, "Okay great, now where else can I go? Great, I can see another 100 yards, another 100 yards, another 100 yards." as opposed to a lot of people want to get shiny object syndrome, they see everything and they execute on very little, if anything, because it's so overwhelming. [0:08:05.7]
Like I said, especially if you're a newer business person, you don't have teams. I own multiple companies, but I have people that work for me. When I start a company now I'm not thinking how do I do the work, I'm thinking who can do the work for us as the company. Who has the skill sets that help us elevate. My media company, I hired a person who was in that industry for 10 years, first thing I did. Second thing I did, I hired a tech person because you need tech person. Third thing I did is I hired a person that could run the day to day. Put those three together, guess what? Things start happening. Then we had to hire sales people, then we had to hire deployers, etc. That wasn't a distraction to me, it was more of an investment. See, when you're investing in future growth and you have a direction of where you're going, you're investing in your company, you want to invest in your company constantly. Invest in yourself, number one, invest in your company, and always invest. [0:09:06.1]
Because if you're not investing, the money's sitting in the banks doing nothing, and I know I'm talking about focus here, but what are you focused on? See, you could be like, "Mark, but I'm focused. I want to grow my cash flow." I get it, but it's tiny. See, if you're starting off new or have been in the business for a while and you're still not hitting your numbers, why would you take your energy and put it anywhere else? Everyone listening to the should be hitting six figures a month. And until then, nothing else matters. How do you do it? It's simple. The secret is focus. You don't have to believe me. Go to all these networking events, go to all these events where everyone's hanging out at, see what they're up to. They're going to be bragging about how many things they're in, and in the same breath they're going to be saying, "Man, I wish I shoulda, coulda. Man, I don't have enough time to do X, Y and Z. Man, I'm just not doing that well right now." [0:10:09.0]
And what's happening is their lack of focus is causing them issues in the future, and they don't even know it. See, back to the same story about the real estate. If you have a business that's making $30,000 a month and you're looking to also make $500 a month in the rental business, these are two totally separate businesses. And then if you want to add something else to it, now you have three companies, and you don't even have one dialed in you. So it's too premature, and I see 99.9% of people do it. I do it and I used to do it all the time and I still catch myself doing it and I'm thinking about it. I'm not knocking you, I'm just knocking, what happens is we get anxious, we get excited, we like to say yes and make the move quick because we think we're invincible, we think we have enough time to do everything. We don't. [0:11:01.3]
I still catch myself getting into those situations. The good news is I have a good team around me that says, "Mark no, this is a distraction not an opportunity." See, a lot of times opportunities are distractions. And they're disguised as opportunities. I always love people to tell me, "Mark, I need you to sign an disclosure stating that you're not going to take my idea and run with it after I show it to you." I'm like, "Dude, I don't have a problem with ideas." The truth is I don't have to take those meetings, Why? Because I don't want to get excited about something I'm not going to get involved in. Why waste the energy, why get excited about something I'm not even going to do anyways? I'm focused on my businesses now. I have multiple companies, I'm super dialed in and focused, and yes, still oftentimes I feel unfocused. Does that even make sense? Am I the only one that feels that way? Where I feel like I'm focused, my actions are very focused but my results still are not as focused as I want them to be or as big as I need them to be or want them to be. [0:12:07.3]
That's my point, is like when you do become so focused you get so obsessed with the results at the end of the day, it's hard to do one. It's very tough to do two, it's near impossible to do three if you're responsible for all the pieces. So I want you to get focused, I want you to get clear on what you want to do, what you stand for, what you're capable of accomplishing with what you have. Stop chasing pennies to avoid dollars. So this is a true story, I created a software, I've invested a half a million+, maybe way more just than dollars not counting time and money, but in dollars to create systems online that I could make millions on, I thought, when I'm creating them. Instead of paying a company $20 a month, I went out and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to do the same thing myself. [0:13:06.5]
Guys, I'm not a tech guy, I don't even know the first thing about html codes and all that stuff, but I took my focus off of it to create this, and it was amazing, at least on paper, but it never made a dime and I lost a year and a half of my life and I lost a lot of money, I don't even care about the money as much as I do the time. How much money did I really lose in my real company that was making me real money that I realized once I would put my head up, "Oh my God, focus Evans, focus." I've done that many times before. So again, this is something we need to consciously be thinking about, every decision has a consequence to it. So when you say, "Yes, I'll buy that X." there's stuff to it. There's things that have to happen, it's not just do it in that's it, there's a waterfall effect that takes place. In real estate for example, when I buy a rental we have to do paperwork, we have to do closings, we have to do management agreements, we have to do X, Y and Z. Right? [0:14:07.6]
That's a real thing, which is fine but I have to be okay with taking the time to do all that, and I personally don't want to deal with it. I have team members that can help me deal with it, but now I got to explain to them, I got to update my CFO, I got to update my assistant, I get to update everyone to get on board, deal coordinators. So that same energy to do all those things, I could be taking the same exact energy and deploying somewhere else in my company that I know works at a whole another level. So what I'm talking about is focusing on time and dollar value. If I can take the same exact time and do the same exact thing, not same exact thing, same exact time and accomplish way more with the same exact timeframe, where would I be in my company today? Guys, again, this may sound silly, this may sound elementary, and the truth is it is, but what got us to where we're at isn't going to get us where we're going, you can't be making decisions on the fly that are causing massive ripple effects. [0:15:13.6]
You're going to cause yourself issues in the future, you're going to get overwhelmed, you're going to get frustrated, you're going to get pissed off and you're going to get behind the 8 ball and not accomplish what you're capable of because you're not focused. This is why I don't like people going to events, this is why I don't like, meaning going to an event once a week, once a month or once every two months in the same genre that you're in, because you're learning about the next new trick, the next new strategy, the next new path or this is hot, this is hot. There are always hot pieces coming out, but what happens is you are not mentally strong or emotionally strong at that moment, you're going to tend to sway towards this cool, new, sexy thing instead of the very boring simple mundane task that you know work. [0:16:04.4]
See what I mean? So like what we have to do is we have to get tighter in our brain before we start showing up to those events. The truth is I stopped going to events, and I'm talking real estate mostly, real estate events and I started going to business building events. I want to learn how to build a business, I don't want to learn about a tactical strategy. I want to learn how to grow something worth having, culture, all these pieces can be related in many, many different ways. If I learn a real estate trick or tip, that's only good for that one individual piece. And not only that, it might only be a timely strategy. So for me, I'm only looking for things that I can learn today that can go across the board in many levels, if not all levels of my life. So focus, focus. What's the word of the day? Focus. And I can tell you if you focus you will achieve financial freedom. [0:17:01.5]
There's no way you can't, if you're super hard core focused, you're following your path, you know what works that's creating revenue, just simply focus, stay in the game, stay focused, learn what's going on, learn who the competitors are, learn who the competition, you know, everyone is in your environment. That's what I always love when people like, "Yeah man, I'm the biggest investor in my town." "Okay, who are the other investors?" "I don't know." No, you're not the biggest investor. Right/ So these are things that we're thinking about all the time as we're developing into a business owner, and as a deal maker because that's what you're here do is become the Making of a DM, the DM has to be focused. The DM in you has to get so laser focused that nothing can distract you. If you know your product and you're so involved, whatever comes at you don't even hear it because you're so focused, and that truly is what a DM stands for. [0:18:01.5]
So with that said, if this show or any of my shows have made an impact on your life, if you could please share it with your friends, get over to iTunes or wherever you're listening to this show at and leave a review, that would help me out greatly and would be greatly appreciated as well, but we need to all focus on more. And again, this is a lesson for me to tell myself out loud because focus is our friend, and when you focus it creates less friction to create financial independence to the next level. Focus, focus, focus. So my friend, with that said have a great day, keep focused and make today count. Talk to you soon.
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