Summary: This two-part series covers our biggest takeaways from the Tony Robbins Business Mastery conference we attended earlier this month in Amsterdam. There’s so much that we learned from this incredible conference, both in relation to business and to life in general, and we’re very excited to share this knowledge with you.
Before we attended Business Mastery this past week in Amsterdam, if you’d asked us what our blog was about, we would have told you we taught physicians how to invest in direct-ownership real estate to achieve financial freedom. We might have discussed Fast FIRE. We might have mentioned the courses we’re building.
But now we know: we’re in the business of helping physicians and other professionals build the real estate empires that fund their dreams.
What else did we learn (and change) in our blog and real estate businesses after attending Tony Robbins’ Business Mastery? And what can you take away from our six day experience to help you revolutionize your psychology and business?
In this two-part series of posts, we share our conference experience with you so that you will be able to benefit from what we were able to glean from our experience.
Keep in mind that even though much of this information is targeted to those who are business owners, there are pearls in here that are applicable to everyone even in your everyday jobs and lives.
Since we were in the conference for 12+ hours a day for six days (a total of more than 70 hours!!), this is not an exhaustive review of everything we learned.
It does, however, include some of the powerful tools we consumed on our final day, which was a private event for those who signed up for the year-long platinum membership (so it’s unlikely you’ll find this information anywhere else). This day included lectures on negotiation using influence by Jeff Cochran and the geometry of growth by Jay Abraham as well as in-depth business interventions lead by Tony and Jay.
Psychology is everything
Tony likes to say that 80% of running a business is psychology. Only 20% is strategy and tools.
It’s the stories you tell yourself, over and over, that hold you back in business and life. These are your limiting beliefs.
If you believe that you’re not good at finances, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s because you won’t really make the effort required to learn finances and, when you face a financial challenge, you won’t believe you can work through it successfully. Consequently, you fail before you even try. You limit your own potential.
Tony likes to use the following sports analogy: have you ever watched an athlete about to kick a goal or toss a free-throw and you somehow knew they were going to miss it.
How did you know?
It’s because you could see and/or feel that the person who was trying to score didn’t believe he/she could do it themselves.
Likewise the psychology of a business owner determines if he/she is going to be successful.
This was reinforced over and over throughout the event. Guess who is the chokehold of our business? Yep, it’s us!
One of the most powerful examples was seeing how a small business owner psychologist was unable to build his business because of his focus on why things couldn’t happen. He was constantly ruminating on problems and why external things were holding him back in his business. As a result, he felt hopeless. He didn’t focus on solutions. He didn’t see what he could control. And he didn’t take action.
So how does this apply to you?
This idea applies to all of us. Because all of us do this to ourselves constantly.
We all have a threshold of what we think we can achieve. And we don’t try to go above it because we have limiting beliefs.
What if I told you you could grow your real estate investing business to 10 million valuation in five years? Would any of you believe that was possible? And if you don’t believe that’s possible, do you think you’ll achieve it?
That’s right, you won’t.
But what if you believed you could do it? And internalized that belief into your core? And then you took away the excuses of why you can’t do it and replaced it with solutions and taking action? Then what could you achieve?
You see, we all have much more potential than we think (and use).
This is a lot of what lead us to enroll in Tony Robbins’ Platinum Partnership, to really grow ourselves by recognizing and then challenging our limiting beliefs. As part of our memberships, we’re also both working individually with coaches to do this ongoing work.
Coaches are really helpful when it comes to people achieving their true potential. If you’ve never had a coach, we highly suggest you consider it because getting coaching will pay itself back multiple times over in what you financially and emotionally achieve as a result of your work.
Add massive value in your client’s terms, not yours
The idea of giving your clients what they want is applicable both in business and your private life.
You see, most of us give in the ways that we want to receive.
If you personally value receiving gifts, it’s more likely that you’re going to show appreciation by giving gifts. We tend to think what we value is the same thing as what others value.
This becomes important when we create products for our customers, negotiate, and even when we interact with our loved ones.
One of the most powerful stories we heard during the event was from Keith Cunningham about how he convinced his wife to be his partner.
As he told it, when he had a chance to have a date with his wife 15 years after they first met, he took out a piece of paper and asked her what she wanted.
She said that she wanted to be loved and adored. But instead of just saying, “Okay, I can do that,” Keith then went a step further. He asked her, “What do you need to feel loved and adored?”
Apparently that resulted in an hour and a half of her listing all the things she needed to feel loved and adored, which included receiving a love note from him every single day.
After she finished, she did the same exercise for him.
Now they each knew what they could do to truly meet each other’s needs. Because they understood what was valuable to the other person, they could now serve each other.
As a result, Keith has been writing his wife a love note each day for the entire duration of their relationship.
Do you think he would have done that if he hadn’t asked her what she wanted? Of course not.
Out of that story, came the acronym for Keith’s “Success Formula:” FOWTW, GAGI, GITT.
This stands for:
- Find out what they want.
- Go and get it.
- Give it to them.
This is a success formula for business and life.
Let me ask you: how many of you have actually sat down and asked your significant other what they want? And found out how they wanted to receive it? And then did it. Every day.
I know Kenji and I haven’t. That’s one of the first things we’ll be doing when we get back from Europe.
So, from a business conference, we learned something really, really valuable for our lives.
Become an owner, not the operator
Many of you are worried about getting into real estate investing because you fear leaky toilets or the day-to-day headaches of owning rental properties.
I’m not here to tell you you’re never going to have to manage your property managers or file LLC minutes or deal with an eviction. Especially if you’re putting in the hours to achieve real estate professional status.
But I’m here to tell you that you have a choice. You can choose to be an operator, or you can choose to be an owner.
What is the difference?
A business operator tries to do everything himself/herself. As a result, the business is reliant on that person for growth and success, and the systems are not in place for it to run independently or be sold. Business operators are also frazzled because they’re trying to do it all, and they eventually burn out.
A business owner, in contrast, manages the overall vision and operations of a company. Because there are systems and people in place, a business owner can actually take time off, and the company keeps functioning without him/her. You’ll know if you’re an owner if you can leave the business for 9 months to a year and it will operate just fine without you.
We’ve been stuck in operator mode for years now. But, after Business Mastery, we’re motivated and know we have the skills to take the next steps to become owners, both in our blog business and our real estate business.
Have a business or product manager you want to send our way? Let us know, we’re hiring!
You need thinking time
I must admit, I never thought about scheduling “thinking time” before attending Business Mastery.
However, Keith Cunningham made a strong argument for how setting 45 mins aside three times a week to ask yourself the right questions about your business and think about the answers can catapult you to the next level.
He suggested thinking through what and why questions like, “What would I have to do to make my customers think it was crazy to buy from anyone else?” And, “What would my business look like if I got my customers 100% from referrals?” Some other classic questions are: “What do I not see?” and “What is the downside of that decision, and can I live with it?”
Kenji and I are going to be integrating this practice into our business immediately. I can only imagine the difference it’s going to have on our real estate portfolio and blog.
Begin with the outcome in mind
A lot of the time, we move through our days just putting out fires. Or working through to-do lists in an effort to make a dent.
At Business Mastery there was frequent discussion of the importance of starting projects with the end in mind.
Whether it was Keith Cunningham advising us on how to hire employees (with a vision for what role they will play 3 years from now) or Roland Frasier and Tony advising us to have an exit strategy from day one. Outcome-based decision making was a strong theme throughout the conference.
One of the useful ideas that we gained was to come up with an “outcome list” instead of a to-do list. This way you focus on what outcome you want, not just what needs to be done. As a result, some of the to dos might even fall off the list since they weren’t necessary for achieving the outcome.
Tony advised that there are usually only 3-4 things you do that make the big difference in a result. The key is identifying those things so you can get to your result more efficiently.
You cannot know what to do without knowing what you want as an outcome.
This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we learned in the Business Mastery conference. From the psychology of business to determining the desired outcome first, there’s a lot of valuable information for building the real estate empire that will fund your dreams.
But it doesn’t stop there. In the next post, we’ll continue to share our takeaways from this incredible experience.
