0 (2s):
Lights that sparked by Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the shakeup today, we'll be focusing on how not to become a victim of your environment or circumstances, but be the Results of Your Actions and attitude to drop these value bombs. I have brought Chris Roberts in EOFire studios. Chris is the CEO of Sterling Rhino Capital, and as an entrepreneur author and real estate investor, he owns and operates multiple businesses and is an enterprise partner with Feeding America. Fire Nation. Here, we talking about how we can develop a meaningful mantra, also identifying our vision and purpose to develop our business model.

0 (43s):
We'll talk about building teams and how to save and invest the money that you make. And so much more. When we get back from thinking our sponsors ready to finally have repeatable, predictable and scalable operations for your business, Trainual can help visit trainual.com/fire. To take a guided 10 part business assessment to help you audit and plant your company documentation today, that's Trainual.com/fire. The HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business. Whether you're looking for marketing sales service, or operational guidance, the HubSpot Podcast Network hosts have your back, listen, learn and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.

0 (1m 34s):
Chris say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. JLD

1 (1m 44s):
Thank you so much. And I would like to share that failure is your fault, but you can fix it. And if you do so you will succeed. And what do they mean? I mean, by that is failure is a bad paradigm that you need to change in order to be success,

0 (2m 0s):
Fire Nation. I hope you take a second to think about that because what do we need to do in this life to take 100% responsibility? I mean, literally there's nothing else in my mind, but to take a hundred percent responsibility for everything that happens in your life, because you are making millions of decisions and they're all leading to the present moment you're living in this day. So just own it, live it and say, there's always the next moment. There's right around the corner. And we have a fantastic conversation today with Chris about not being a victim of your environment or your circumstances, but B the results of your actions and your attitude, Fire Nation. So I want to start off Chris, by asking you, how can we Fire Nation develop a meaningful mantra?

0 (2m 46s):
Well, thank you, GLD.

1 (2m 47s):
That's a great question. And by developing a mantra, it kind of gave me a blueprint, or I suppose, a beacon to follow through all the struggles and challenges I had as it related to building a model. And success is viewed in different ways by different people, but my mantra was, or is, and I still fall back on it. When I, when I get down is I am not a victim of my environment or my circumstances, but I am the results of my actions and my attitude. And I don't have the time for fear in my life because I'm out achieving my dreams. And that mantra was developed out of sort of a, I guess, sort of desperation a I guess if you will cry for help to try to figure out how to get out of struggles and challenges growing up.

1 (3m 31s):
And, and as I, as I grew and built businesses, I would fall back on that every time I faced a challenge or a circumstance that I didn't think I could get through and, and go back to the fact that it's about my mindset and it's about me dictating my future and the goals I want to achieve and not letting anyone else or any other thing dictate my success or failure. And that's where that comes

0 (3m 52s):
From. So giving the example of what a meaningful mantra is, like, maybe share yours or somebody you helped to develop their mantra. Like, what does that sound like? What does that look like? Yeah, absolutely.

1 (4m 3s):
The, so my mantra, which is the, I'm not a victim of my environment and my circumstances was, was developed out of, you know, deep passion for the circumstances I was in. And I'll give you one example. I was jumped by gangs, growing up as a kid, just trying to make it to school was born to single parents, was out on my own at the age of 15, and really just had to go out and figure life out and had to, had to come up with something that would drive me through those challenges. So a meaningful mantra is very personal and it's about using it as a way to almost be a voice in your head that can drive you through whatever circumstances are facing you, that you can't get through. And it sounds silly, and I I've talked to people about their visions, their goals, or mission big on that corporate America and all that stuff.

1 (4m 48s):
There's a reason for that. And the reason is that we all fall off track. We all lose sight. We all get down. No one is immune to that. I don't care if you're Tony Robbins, Bill gates, Oprah Winfrey, everyone goes through that on a regular basis. And so you need something that you can use as a rock to guide you. And so that mantra is very personal and you just have to sit down and really think about what you're thankful for, what you're grateful for. What drives you, what your fears are that can drive you, not scare you, but actually drive you. And I would build a mantra off

0 (5m 18s):
Of that. You believe that people should identify their value proposition. They should know it to the core of their soul. Expand upon that. Absolutely.

1 (5m 28s):
It's my belief. And this is just based on my experiences. I've, I'm an avid reader. I love reading, learning from those that have been there, done that, but one thing I found that's very common in folks, regardless of their successes or failures in life or their status is that they, they haven't identified truly what they're good at and then built upon that or, or gone out and tried to find puzzle pieces to build around that strength. I call it the value proposition, the kind of, kind of a common phrase out there. And then, and then go out and build your around that in other words. And, and I've heard this many, many times, and I've seen it in business, you know, you're, you're trying to build spreadsheets. You're not good at them, but you're trying to do it because you think you need spreadsheets to build a business plan.

1 (6m 9s):
Well, you can outsource building a business plan. You just need to have a little passion, enthusiasm, and energy and go out and figure out the basic building blocks of what you want to do. And then you can outsource those things. Me personally identified my value proposition as prioritizing seventy-five percent of my time for my clients and always being there for them and outworking the competition. It was very simple for me to do that. It was a matter of not playing video games when I was younger and not going out and partying and buying boats and things like that. It was I'm going to be there for my clients on the weekends. And then I went out and started organizing a lot of their chaos and problem solving for them. And I found that that was a value proposition. A lot of people didn't have the patience to do that. So I built upon that and then started building a team around that to help me build my business.

1 (6m 51s):
This is

0 (6m 52s):
In foundation. My value proposition is honing my skills as a podcast host, to bring you Fire Nation, you the best interview experience that I'm capable of delivering. And so I want you to be thinking right now, what is your value proposition? Do you even know what is your north star? You should be driving towards that every single day. So how Chris, how can we identify our vision and our purpose and use both of those to develop a meaningful business model? Yeah, absolutely.

1 (7m 24s):
The thing is about a vision and a purpose or mission statement. All of those things, even, even, you know, building out your mantra is it's very personal and you have to think about where you want to be and the type of company you want to be. And it doesn't matter if you're a carpet cleaner, a software engineer, an aspiring coffee shop owner or whatever. Again, you need that beacon of light. You need that foundation. And so my vision at the time was to be the best sales rep. And I figured, well, if I could be the best sales rep, I could make money and eventually I could retire. And all those kinds of things didn't know what it meant, but started following some of the best of the best and taking their best practices and then eliminating the things that they didn't do very well. And then I built out my own process.

1 (8m 5s):
You know, it's, it's a matter of figuring out your purpose, you know, where, where do you want to be? And do you want to give back, do you want to leave a legacy, whatever that may be, and you want to write it out and as you write those things out and you follow them, you'll find that it makes it a little bit easier to stay on the path, to success,

0 (8m 21s):
Fire Nation. I really hope that you're taking all of this and, and that you're going to use the examples that both Chris is giving and the ones that I gave as well, to make sure that you are implementing this in your life and in your business. And one thing that I love that we're gonna be talking about after the break is building teams. We're also be talking about saving, not spending the money that you make, and then investing. It's very meaningful and helpful and flourishing future. And then we also want to diversify our income streams, of course, because you just don't know what's happening in the future. It is good to be protected in multiple areas, all of this and more, when we get back from thanking our sponsors, it's a common assumption that words like automation and scaling equal losing that personal touch.

0 (9m 7s):
And it's just not true. Automation is not only the thing that will help you scale and grow your business. Overall. It's also the exact thing that allows you to spend less time on busy work so you can focus more on what matters connecting with your customers. If you're ready to work faster, not harder. You can start today with the time-saving automation capabilities available in HubSpot CRM platform. HubSpot's CRM platform lets you automate tasks. Email sends in more allowing you to put your prospecting on autopilots, but still keep that personal touch. And HubSpot has workflows that will help you automatically rotate leads to your sales team. Seamlessly update contact properties. As a prospect works their way through the sales process. Keep your data cleaned and organized, automatically update information or notify sales.

0 (9m 48s):
When dad has gone stale and more imagined empowering your team to tee up a series of hyper personalized emails and follow-up tasks to prevent prospects from slipping through the cracks, it's all available to you on HubSpot CRM platform. Learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity at hubspot.com. That's hubspot.com. Every entrepreneur knows what it feels like to be wearing too many hats. You're a creator, a visionary and administrator, a finance person, and that can feel overwhelming and get old really fast. That's why I'm excited to tell you about train. You will a software that makes it easy to document and delegate the things you do to someone else and be completely sure that the handoff is successful and can scale consistently without you.

0 (10m 29s):
It's like creating a playbook for repeatable, predictable, scalable operations that all live in one place for your entire team to use. Whether you're a small team of less than 10, starting to document processes for the first time as you prepare for a few new hires or you're getting ready to onboard and train 100 people in repeatable roles Trainual can help create everything from your employee handbook to your new hire orientation process, to role and department specific training and even test to keep people accountable. Visit trainual.com/fire to take a guided 10 part business assessment to help you audit and plan your company documentation today, that's trainual.com/fire. And if you decide to give a train, you will try use promo code EOFire for 15% off after your free seven day trial, that's trainual.com/fire.

0 (11m 18s):
So Chris, you know how to build teams. So share with us your best practices for building a team. And then afterwards, the outsourcing, the delegating and the automating that we should implement once that team is in place.

1 (11m 32s):
Absolutely. I think part of the challenge for people building teams is most entrepreneurs are a one man band or one woman band. Let's say they want to go out and they want to do everything. And that's a good way to learn and start. But in order to scale, you need team, you need players. And the way you can draw a good team to you is to lead by example. So if you're out there and you're building a brand, you're building a thought leadership platform that could be as simple as a YouTube channel. It could be blogs. You write a book. I mean, there's so many ways that you can create status out there for yourself. You will have good team members want to gravitate towards you because they recognize that they have weaknesses and they want to find those missing pieces as well. And so for me, when I built my real estate business, that's exactly what I did.

1 (12m 15s):
I knew what I was good at. I knew I could do those things, but I went to masterminds. I went to meet ups. I traveled all over the country and I started looking for those missing pieces. And as a result, we found an incredible team. It took a little time, but now we have the recipe for success and everybody plays their

0 (12m 33s):
Part. So just a little bit about the outsourcing, the delegating and the automating that you do currently with your team. There's so

1 (12m 40s):
Many things that need to be done in a business. You know, I'll give you an example on the, on the real estate syndication side of things, you know, we have to go out and do these due diligence. We have to underwrite hundreds of deals sometimes a hundred in a month and try to try to dig into the data there's hours and hours, dozens of hours of, of analyzing on just even one deal sometimes. And any deal from start to finish could be three or 400 hours. So you have to recognize, okay, what are the first things first for me that I need to be doing to utilize my skills might be the 30,000 foot view, dealing with banks and lending and debt and things like that. Over here, I might outsource somebody to just extrapolate all the important data. In other words, pull out all the things that are relevant of all this information that's coming in.

1 (13m 22s):
And you could outsource that stuff on Fiverr Upwork. You could use VAs overseas, there's all kinds of places you could go to get that work done. And then you want to use software and automations. There's tons of things you could use out there, active campaign and Monday morning and all kinds of stuff. But I recommend that you start digging into all the things that you can outsource so that your skills are utilizing and getting the best return you can possibly get on your time Fire Nation.

0 (13m 47s):
That is what it's all about. Getting the best return on your time in multiple areas when you're working and then when you're not working. So you can be enjoying life so that you can be living that lifestyle, freedom that so many people are striving towards. And speaking of a lifestyle, freedom, I mean, most people in this world, Chris, they spend all the money that they make. And oftentimes then sound, which is why so many people are debts. I mean, there's a stat that just freaks me out and this is 40% of Americans. So not like people in the world, these are 40% of Americans cannot write an unexpected $400 check. And that's insane because we never know what's upcoming.

0 (14m 28s):
We never know what's around the corner. So what does that tell me? That tells me that most people, not everybody, of course, because some people are just doing everything they can to survive. But I mean, that means a lot of people are just spending all the money that they make. So why do you think that we need to live well below our means so that we can save and invest. This is a big number, fire nation, 40% of our income, none of that pansy 10% of our income stuff. This is real deal. Holy field stuff. And to give you even a quick, quick side note, I remember in 2008, when I signed up, when I took a job with John Hancock and went to sign up for my 401k, I literally went to HR and I said, yeah, what's the max.

0 (15m 10s):
You can put into your 401k from my paycheck. And they're like, oh, 10%. I'm like, no, no, no, w what's the max. I know that's what most people do. They're like, well, you can invest up to 50%. And I'm just like, that's what I want to do. And they're like, well, I don't get like nobody's ever done this before. And I'm like, yeah, I know. But I have my savings that I need. If I need to dip into them, they're there. But like, I want to just absolutely max this out every single month. And like, they had a really hard time with it because nobody was doing it, but I did it. And I'm so glad that I did for multiple reasons we won't get into. But Chris take that away. The whole spending the money that people make and then some, and then how we can actually liberal or means and invest 40% of our income man.

0 (15m 50s):
JLD

1 (15m 51s):
This is my favorite part. And I got to tell you a fire nation. This is critical. And I tell you, I have had so many conversations, dozens and dozens and dozens of people, if not hundreds, about their finances. And oftentimes it starts with us in a mindset and measuring, and I'll give you an example, how did I get to 40%? Well, so I, when I was young, I stood in food lines as a kid. So there was a drive in me that a lot of people obviously didn't have because they were fortunate enough to not have to do that. And I knew that money would create some, some degree of freedom. So the fancy, shiny things that I bought as Covey says a satisfied need no longer motivates, which is one of my favorite quotes. It's, don't buy fancy things because they're tired very quickly thereafter.

1 (16m 34s):
And they mean nothing to you. So when you start making money, it's really important to save as much as you possibly can and might start at 10%, but strive to get to 40, 50, 60. And then as you make more money, keep putting that money away, pay down those bills. If you have them try to pay cash for everything and then create more streams of income so that income can be invested. And I'm going to give you one quick note. I drove the same car for 12 years, 450,000 miles. And when I was done driving that car for 12 years, I took the money I saved because I continued making the car payments. And it was about $50,000. I invested that in my first piece of foreclosed property.

1 (17m 14s):
And that led me to just seven years later, having almost 500 doors that I not only own, but I'm also passively invested in 2,400 apartments across the country. And that all started with saving car payments and living below my means critically important. However,

0 (17m 31s):
You do it, fire nation. I really hope you realize the truth. And just the opportunity that Chris is talking about here. And this is one reason why I absolutely live the quote, which is it takes money to make money. It is so true. Like if you actually want money to start working for you, you need to actually have money. And yes, there is that quote of the rich get richer and the poor get poorer because the rich have money. They can use to make more money. They can make investments. They can have time to see that compounding action happened in compounding fire nation is the eighth wonder of the world. It's amazing when you see it in fruition, that is why Warren buffet is so gosh, darn rich.

0 (18m 14s):
Cause he's been doing it for so gosh, darn long. And man, I mean, I'll tell you, like, I love the opportunity that I now have to invest my money and to watch it grow and compound. And guess what? Not every time you make an investment, it's going to be a win. Sometimes it will be a win. Sometimes it'll be a loss, but at least you have an opportunity instead of just having the money going towards, you know, things that we really don't need, you just want. And then you can, you know, I love that quote, which applies to this kind of conversation as well, which is as an entrepreneur, you need to work like people are unwilling to work. So that's in a few years you can live, like people are unable to live.

0 (18m 55s):
And I'll also remember when I was in law school, there was a quote going around that was live like a lawyer when you're in law school, you'll live like a law student when you're a lawyer. Cause you'll just attain so much debt and it's just going to be a bear to get out of. So you need to think about this stuff and let's move on to our last topic of the day, which is diversification. I mean, it's so key because we don't know what's around the corner. So how Chris can we build multiple businesses in multiple streams of revenue to protect us,

1 (19m 25s):
Go back to the 40% today. That's about 70 to 75%. And I use that money to build multiple businesses and create multiple streams of income touching on exactly what you said JLD, which is okay, as you make money, try to figure out how that money can work for you and create more money while you sleep right. And that's why we love the real estate business. It's that passive cashflow. So I went out and I took this money that I was making and I invested some of it in a software company that a gentleman I met on a, on a charity board. And now that is developing extra streams of income for us. I went out and bought more properties in each one of those creates a multiple stream of income. I then started investing in larger assets with a group of people, which is what we do today.

1 (20m 7s):
That creates more streams of income. You could easily open up a coffee shop or a food stand or whatever it may be, but the ultimate goal should be for you to replace your existing income. And if, if you do it right, it will be passively or at least require minimal work on your side of things. So the idea behind building multiple businesses is it will take time, but if you do it right and live below your means, these things are building blocks. They'll put you in a position to then go out and build smaller businesses. And a business could be an LLC with a single family rental, but all of those things can create cashflow and give you incredible tax advantages, especially in the real estate space.

0 (20m 44s):
So many opportunities out there, fire nation. But again, only if you're living your means only if you are saving, hopefully sooner than later up to 40% of your overall income. So Chris, you shared so many value bombs here today. Give us the single key, biggest takeaway that you want to make sure we walk away with from our conversation today. Then give us any call to action you have for us about how we can connect with you and a gift you may have for our listeners. And then we'll say goodbye, thank you

1 (21m 11s):
So much. I appreciate the opportunity. You know, my call to action would be Anne and I found this for myself is, you know, just identify your value proposition and just get out of your own way. You know, we, we, we fill our minds with just wasted time. We fill our minds with no offense game of Thrones reruns and, and all these different things that just suck up our time. And then we talk about how we have no time. So just sit down and build a plan. You know, mantra may help you and, and just get out of your own way and just focus on what you're really good at and put people around you that can help you to achieve those goals. And, you know, as far as a call to action for you guys, I wanted to, to forward something. And, and what we're going to do for you listeners today is we want to give you our early retirement calculator and our multifamily apartment syndication guide.

1 (21m 55s):
It's, it's passive investing. And we're also going to give you a copy of my book. And if you go to Sterling rhino, capital.com forward slash fire, you can download my ebook, which is you've earned it, how I refused anything less than success. And you can too. And we so far have actually fed over 300,000 people through our partnership with feeding America, through those books, sales, with a goal of feeding a million. So we're really proud of that, but I want to give you all a copy of that for free today. So thank you so much for the opportunity fire nation. You're the average

0 (22m 29s):
Of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with CR and JLD today. So please keep up that heat and head over to EOFire.com type Chris in the search bar and his show notes page will pop up with everything we've talked about here today. And Chris, one more time, give us that URL and what people will get when they,

1 (22m 47s):
Yeah, our company is Sterling Rhino Capital and the URL is SterlingRhinoCapital.com/fire. Chris, thank you

0 (22m 56s):
For sharing your truth, knowledge value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you brother and we'll catch you on the flip side.

2 (23m 4s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's

0 (23m 5s):
Value bomb content was brought to you by Chris and Fire Nation or the last decade. I've interviewed more than 3000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs and created a revolutionary 70 step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book. The Common Path to Uncommon Success personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance. You need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com to learn more and order your copy today. And I'll catch you there, or I'll catch you on the flip side.

2 (23m 44s):
Ready to finally have predictable and scalable operations for your business? Trainual can help. visit trainual.com/fire to take a guided 10 part business assessment to help you audit and plan your company documentation today, that's trainual.com/fire. The HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business. Whether you're looking for marketing sales service, or operational guidance, the HubSpot Podcast Network hosts have your back, listen, learn and grow with the HubSpot podcast network at hubspot.com/podcast network.