[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Join Ken as he talks with Blair Singer about how he is approaching the uncertainty going forward.
To learn more about Ken visit: http://legacy.kenmcelroy.com/membership-registration/
To learn more about Blair visit his website at: https://blairsinger.com
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Episode Transcript:
Ken McElroy (00:01):
Welcome to the real estate strategies podcast. I’m Ken McElroy and I’m here to give you creative ideas on how you can get started or continue your journey in real estate. Each week we will bring you inspiring and informative conversations with successful people and their path to obtaining or investing in real estate. Enjoy the episode.
Hey everybody. It’s Ken. Hey, look, we’re stopped in the office. My good friend, Blair singer. Hey Blaire. Good to see you, man. Hey, not too close, not too close. By the way. Check this out. Social distancing. We’re practicing it. Don’t touch that. So, uh, we are making sure that we’re, uh, we keep our distances, but, uh, Blair, uh, texted me this morning and he’s actually working on a deal down the road and I said, Hey, why don’t you come by? I’m at the office. Uh, I’m actually an investor in that deal. So we haven’t talked about it yet, but, uh, I would imagine it’s going to be a very interesting discussion with what’s going on with everything that’s happening right now. So, um, so first of all, uh, you know, Blair obviously owns properties. He’s an investor. He’s got cash flowing properties. He’s got lots of, lots of, lots of books.
He, he trains all over the world. He actually helped me significantly, uh, do presentations from stage back when I first started with rich dad 20 some years ago, I remember we were in New York and I remember I was scared to death. This is how Robert Kiyosaki does things by the way. He’s like, you remember that you’re up. Yeah. He’s like, Hey, come on, come to New York. I fly to New York and I’m a real estate guy and I’m, and there’s 4,500 people at this place in New York. And he goes, you’re up. So I started, walked up on stage and did my first talk in front of a somewhere over 4,000 people. And um, you know, I’m sure I fumbled through it horribly. And uh, but I, afterwards Blair grabbed me, he said, I see, I’ve just figured out, you know, how you can make your presentation even better. Basically what you did. And he broke it up into four or five things and it was kind of my launch to be able to speak. And, and present and, and all that. And, and Blair does that internationally, right. All over the world, all over the world. So blur real quickly for those people that don’t know you, once you give them a 32nd commercial.
Blair Singer (02:24):
Yeah, sure. No problem. Yeah. And cause that’s exactly what I, one of the things that I do, I’ve worked with entrepreneurs all over the world for the last 15 years, helping them increase their cash flow through sales and pull their teams together and create, get the message out to the world. That’s what we were working on is, you know, you get the ability to present, to present your dream, your, your mission, your product, your service to the world. So rather than going one on one, go one to many, and right now in this environment, the ability to go one to many is critical. So we’ve been doing that, you know, over 15 countries around them.
Ken McElroy (03:00):
I know. It’s been so fun, honestly, and I’ve learned so much from you. Um, so first of all, thanks, uh, literally, uh, guys this morning I said, Hey, you want to come in and, and um, and do something with us? He said, absolutely. Um, because usually you’re traveling a lot. I travel now. Yeah, I know. I know. Usually you’re all over the world and hopefully you quarantine yourself cause I don’t know. Where’d you come back from last? Well, actually, where was I last? I was actually in Germany last I was in Germany and it was there and then came back to Ohio to be with my family and then back here and then everything just kind of locked down. So we’re holding steady. So I know you have a lot of clients all over the world. Um, what are we, you know, everybody, you hear a lot, a lot of stuff. We watch a lot of stuff locally. What’s happening? What are people saying around the world? Well, you know, people that weren’t afraid got afraid. People that, that were afraid are not afraid anymore. It just depends where you talk to you. We have clients in Taiwan and they’re like, what? What problem? Life is normal back here in Taiwan and in Thailand and places like that. You have other places. We’re all like in Italy where we ha we have custom clients, people, members of my team that had been locked up for six weeks. You can’t get out of your house. You know, in Italy they got those big problems. But the one thing that that is true with everybody that we work with is that clear need. You got to pivot right now. If you’re not pivoting in your business and your messaging, who you’re talking to, even possibly who your customer is, you’re in bed, you can be in very big trouble. Or you could be making the first step into a giant new market for yourself either way. Right? Well, right. Some people, this is a clean slate time. Totally peop like people slates are getting cleaned now. They don’t want them cleaned. They’re getting cleaned. So let’s talk about pivot. I love that word. So when you talk to somebody about it’s time to pivot, what do you mean? Well, I think you’ve got to pivot from, from a sales person. I was talking about income. Okay. From an income perspective, you’ve got to pivot. What’s the message you put out to your customers? Is it going to, is it the same message today that it was two weeks ago? Because their needs are different. If you look at Maslow’s hierarchy right at the top, you want to be their best at that. Now they’re people, they’re worried about survival, they’re worried about security. So how do you take your whatever you’re offering and put it in terms that give them some sense of ease along the lines that make sense to them. So it’s part of it’s pivoting your message. It can also be pivoting your product or your service, your offering if you were offering. Um, like for us, we do a lot of work with teaching people to be teachers, leaders and trainers over the last five years. Our roots are in team and sales development, right? So we are shifting very much heavily back to S to helping people generate income. How do you crisis proof your sales team? I know, I’ll tell you a funny story. Um, true story. My trainer who I love, I’ve been training with this guy for four years. He’s in his fifties it’s done Ironman, all that kind of stuff. And he’s a great trainer. But I’ve been telling him for years, you know, I’m like, Hey, like you, you gotta like, cause he loves photography too. I go, you gotta go, he’s not on social media. Okay, think about this. And he’s like, ah, I go dude, you have to like, you’re a trainer, you’re not on social media. So I said, he’s like, nah, I don’t need it. You know, times are good, right? He’s got lots of clients, he’s busy, he’s, you know, he’s putting cash in the bank and you know, he’s traveling and you know, and he’s in great shape and all those kinds of things. So I saw him yesterday because all the gyms are closed in Arizona. So I said, Hey, can you come to my house? We’ll just work out at my house. He’s like, done. So yesterday he goes, I’m thinking about going on social media and I’m just like, are you kidding me? Like, and he’s like, yeah, cause I think then I can start to do short videos on training. I’m like, duh. You know what I mean? Like everybody has these resistance points and um, you know, his, and they all come during crisis. So I said, what are you doing? He’s like, I’m working at ACE hardware, what he’s working on because a lot of his clients, because training through a lot of people’s discretionary, you know, it’s 85 bucks an hour, not everybody has $85 an hour. And, and so he picked up a part time job at ACE hardware. And so then he told me this story, he’s like, there’s a gym that opened up next door as a franchise. And the woman came in and she was buying some things to put, um, you know, to put it in her, in the bathroom, like towel bars and things like that because she had just bought this franchise as a gym.
Ken McElroy (07:42):
And then of course, you know, the governor said, all gyms are closed. So she bought it. I put all his money in there, has this lump, and he’s telling me the story. And I’m like, are you like, this is exactly why I’ve been telling you to, you know, to build this internet presence, people know you need a personal brand and this is, you talk a lot about personal brand and this is a guy that does not have a personal brand. You know, he believes that neck, you know, tomorrow is going to be as good as yesterday. I don’t know about you Blair, but I’ve been through a lot of corrections. He, you know, and he’s not positioned to pivot. He’s now starting at zero. He’s not even online. Right. I know, I understand it. You know we S I see it a lot. It is a part of it.
Ken McElroy (08:23):
We, like you said, we’re having to pivot a lot too. And it, what happens is Mac Newton has a great expression. He told me, he goes, this is why and I love it. He goes, crisis is change trying to happen. That’s a good one, man. That’s a re that’s, that’s a rideable. One of these crisis has changed trying to happen. He goes, so what happens is you always getting invitations to change, but you don’t, with your health, with your finances, with your business, all that stuff, until you get to a point of crisis, like your body gives or your health
Blair Singer (08:56):
gives out, your finances give out. Now you better fricking change because, but now you’re in a crisis, which is much tougher because your emotions high and your intelligence is low and you don’t think clearly
Ken McElroy (09:08):
point. So I know it’s so horrible time. You know what I mean? I mean there’s some, but there are solutions, there are solutions and, and people are in pain, you know, financially. And there’s a lot happening. I mean, we’re having to retract on a number of things. I know you are too, right? Like we’re here talking, but the truth is we have our own fires going on. Plenty. Plenty of them. That’s right. And, and you know, there’s a number of them. And so I don’t want you to think that, you know, it’s all good all the time. It’s not, you know, but I will tell you, we both put things in place to make this a little softer. Right? Right. So when you’re talking, cause we were just talking before this, he’s, you’ve got one guy, a Alfredo who’s got 400,000 followers. You got another guy that’s got 2 million followers.
Ken McElroy (09:58):
So this is the time guys, this is a time to monetize that. And these are followers. Guys want the, you know, followers like Kiyosaki. I don’t know what he’s got now. Few million Facebook followers, right? He’s hunkering down and he said, you know, I talked to him all the time. I know you do almost every day. And he’s like, this is what I’ve been talking about. You know, it’s horrible to see people go through this. But this is exactly what I was talking about and this is why we have financial education. This is why we, we’d go for cashflow, not capital gains. This is why we do personal development. This is why we try to understand that this is why we try to understand taxes all of because of what’s happening right now. Right? It’s a great time to educate.
Blair Singer (10:44):
Yeah, well you have to get educated now because nature of the marketplace, the economies forcing you to do it. Um, and I, and I think, and there are things you can do or things you can do and I think that if you’re an entrepreneur right now, um, if you’ve got a team, it’s time to pull your team together. Okay? If you haven’t done that, you pull them together. And then the second thing is if you’re not, if you’re not selling, don’t stop selling. Now you’ve got to sell more than ever right now. Don’t cut marketing budgets that you’d be marketing, creating more exposure. Now if you are, if you’re used to face to face selling, you better learn how to work on a camera right now. Pull out your phone as are working on it so you, and you don’t have to be great, but you just have to make that change now because here’s the thing, some people will do nothing. They’ll just try to hunt her down and weather this whole thing. We’ll live off their reserves or do whatever. And that’s, and that’s okay. Now, somewhere down the road, smoke will clear, right? There’s other people, they’re gonna jump right on this thing. And in, even if what you’re doing is not necessarily the right thing right now, but you’re doing, but you’re doing the right things, but you’re not doing them perfectly yet, by the time the smoke clears, you’re gonna be so freaking far ahead
Ken McElroy (11:54):
of everybody else that was doing nothing. That this is the greatest opportunity in the world to get ahead in business right now. I know, I was talking to Curtis, you know, uh, today and um, you know, he’s like, yeah, I lost 20 million bucks in Oh eight. He goes, I literally spoke to him today. I go, yeah, I know there’s a lot of people lost a lot of money in 2008. He goes, you know what it was. I go out and he goes, practice. He goes, it’s practice for what I’m about ready to go through. Right. Because it’s true. You don’t really learn much when times are good. I mean, that’s been my experience. So, you know, when, when everybody’s making money, what are they doing? They’re buying cars or buying houses, they’re, you know, they’re doing it. They’re doing all these things that are access related but now is when everybody really learns the lessons.
Ken McElroy (12:41):
That’s right. That’s, and again that’s what I’m saying is that I work with a lot of entrepreneurs. I got a big team, we’ve got about in terms of trainers, we’ve got about 450 of them deployed around the world. I mean they’re their own business guys, they’re entrepreneurs, but they are all part of the same group and you know, working with them and pulling them together and just cross Pawnee, well this is working for you, that what’s working for you, what’s working for you and people going, I tried that to do that joint venture. Let me share your posts. And if you’ve got a network, it’s probably even if you got nothing right now, my suggestion is you jump on a network, jump on a net, become part of one part of something. Yeah. Because being alone is two problems. First of all, you gotta, you gotta lose out.
Ken McElroy (13:23):
Second thing, it’s not good for your mental health. The first sign of depression is isolation. So if you isolate yourself and say, well, I’m not going to, you know, you’re not doing your, you’re not doing your little voice and your mindset any good at all. And we, I’ve seen a lot of that right now. So if nothing else, pull your team together, creates the connection, creates energy, the energy creates confidence, et cetera, et cetera. So kind of wants walk through like, you know, there’s people, you know, going through different stages at different times, you know what I mean? What the first stage is typically shock, denial, right? Right. I mean, and so the question is, is how resilient are you? Right, right. Yeah. I mean, obviously we’re all in shock and denial, but then you have to, you have to just dust yourself off. He goes, Nope.
Ken McElroy (14:15):
You know, no one’s watching. No one cares. You know, everybody’s pretty selfish, right? So nobody’s like judging you. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. They care about themselves and what’s happening next. You know, there’s no one watching. That’s right. You know what I mean? This is your time. This is your time to do something for yourself and your family. You know, and, and it’s interesting you say that too, is that I, Robert was at work, I was at Robert’s house the other day and we’re talking about sales and he goes, okay, so if you’re going to help people with sales, what is it all boiled down to? What’s the big, what is, you know, you know how it gets in your face?
Blair Singer (14:52):
What’s the thing? No, it’s not that. No, it’s not that he’s yelling at me or the yell. Okay, so what do you want? He goes, what is it? I go, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s fucking discipline. He goes, yeah, discipline. And it just popped out. I mean, he’s brilliant that way. Right? And so, and so it’s like, he goes, explain to me, discipline. I go, well, in my life and in your life, we, all of our lives, there’s something that you’re probably very disciplined in something that you’re going to do. Cause you know, it’s the right thing. It could be your health can be working for me. It’s health, it’s working out. You know, it’s honing my personal, my personal skills and I’m really, I’m really diligent about that and studying and those things. And so then out of the question is right now, if you’re going to generate income, you got to take that discipline and that area of your life and now move it to this area of the life because that’s what’s going to keep you going.
Blair Singer (15:45):
I mean that’s what’s true for me. It’s kind of like what Mac dude said. Totally. Totally. So I’m working out with him online, right? So he’s doing everything online and he’s are the workouts now online are harder than what? I’m in his freaking studio. I’m going, he goes, he yells at me, he goes, Hey, what’s the temperature in your room? Cause he always turns it up really hot. Look, and I could lie to him, but I got to, it goes 75 turn it up to 90 right? So he’s putting, so he’s going through this workout and I’m dripping wet and I’m thinking to myself, this is what I need right now. Me, I’m not saying you, I’m saying me because it reminds me that I can do this. I can do that. I can be disciplined here, I can be disciplined there. We all know that you’re, you know, you’re the leader in that area.
Blair Singer (16:32):
How many times have you climbed Kilimanjaro? Uh, 11, 11 times. So, okay. Blair is a rockstar when it comes to health and some of you are, and some of you are not. Right? Right. And so the question is, what’s your financial health exactly? What’s your spiritual health? What’s your relationship? You know, everybody focuses on their physical health, you know, which is super important, right? Yeah. It’s a balance. Yeah. And, and you know, and different parts of your life in different times of your life, you’re gonna be called upon with a crisis or a challenge. And what I got from Mac is the only reason it’s a crisis because you kick the can down the road too long. And you and I have had this discussion more than once when you’ve been in my face and you probably just heard this guy say, I told you.
Blair Singer (17:17):
Right? But, but we all know that, and you know it at the time that you make the decision, you know, at the time that you make the wrong decision that, that you should’ve done something else. Well now it’s all on the table and now we ought to just fricking deal with it. It’s the best of times. I tell you what this time is, it’s your financial report card. That’s what it is. Totally. Yeah. Period. Yeah. So what’s your GPA? Right, right. That’s it. So I remember Robert telling me, he’s like, yeah, Blair’s working so hard, the gym and I’m
Ken McElroy (17:50):
just riding my little bike. He’s watching you run live.
Blair Singer (17:54):
Yeah. Yeah. He goes, cause he goes, uh, well what he say? He said, I’m going to be re, I’m going to always be richer than you. And I go, yeah, well I’m going to live longer than you. Yeah. So he got this back and forth and right.
Ken McElroy (18:07):
So we don’t want to make light of what’s happening guys, but I got to tell you it’s, it’s actually a healthy release. I haven’t actually talked to Blair since all this happened. And um, you know, we have friends, family businesses, all in trouble. Yeah, we do. Right. And um, you know, it’s um, everybody’s just trying to come together and learn.
Blair Singer (18:27):
Right? That’s right. And, and your education is more important than ever. Don’t sacrifice your education because right now the universe, the marketplace, your F your financial statement is talking to you. What are a couple things people can do today? Well, if you’ve got a business, let’s go there. I mean, if you got to, if you’ve got, well, no, let’s go personal first. Personally, you got to keep your little voice in order. Okay. Because it can go pretty crazy pretty quick. Uh, that’s why one of the things we’ve been doing for years is we have a Mo, if you don’t have a morning routine, you should have a morning routine. Right. Uh, how Al rod I believe was his name, wrote the book miracle morning book. Yeah. Get that and follow that system. I follow it every single morning
Ken McElroy (19:14):
without fail is important guys. You know, cause I, I now, you know, I get up, let my dogs out, I meditate. You know, I spend time on myself, I spend time on my company. I have a routine that I do every morning. I don’t, before I get on email, before I get on tax, before I do anything, I knocked this out. It’s super important to get set your mind for the day.
Blair Singer (19:35):
That’s right. Because if you don’t, this whole crisis will dictate every action
Ken McElroy (19:40):
you’ll get up, you’ll get right on the internet and you’ll start going right into panic and fear and anxiety and stress.
Blair Singer (19:45):
That’s right. So you’d have that time, you know, for me it could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half, depending upon, say with me how I go through it and I meditate for five minutes as honestly sometimes I meditate longer. Right, exactly. And you know, and then you get a workout somewhere in there, you know, I’ve got to get physical with this thing. Get your cause, your, your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. And they’re all hooked together. You change one, you change them all. So that’s, and then I have a routine at the end of the day, I sit down and I do a gratitude exercise. Part of my gratitude exercise at the end of the day, list all your wins for the day. No matter how little they are, all those wins, go to bed. Okay? So that’s the first thing that I would do. Really important. Guys, you got away, I want to put his point out, cause I’ve known you a long time.
Ken McElroy (20:32):
All of those things that you just mentioned probably took you 10 years to implement, right? I mean they sound like, Oh I’m just going to go follow this checklist. No, no. Something came painfully slow. Then it was adopted. Then the next thing
Blair Singer (20:48):
was adopted a year later, two years later. Right. You know, then we let the children read the book, what, three or four years ago, try this type of meditation or that type of meditation guys, you know, don’t think that we’re just following some checklists and all of a sudden their lives are better. I mean these are, you know, these are trial and error. That’s right. Right. That’s right. And new. The good thing about it is because we’re a team and we’re friends, he said, can’t go is why try this, check it out. Go. Yeah, I’ll try that. Check that out. I hate you. And so we vet the resources together. Yeah, check out this video. Robert probably sends me almost every day a YouTube video. I say this is a book I’m reading. You know like we have a network and this is the network we’re talking about.
Blair Singer (21:30):
You know your lifeline outside of your house. That’s right. Right. You need it guys. I’ll wake up in the morning and some, and I’ll have the rich dad advisors for example. We always have a chain of something going on. Sometimes it’s a lot of smart ass stuff, which is always good and makes you laugh. But a lot of times it’s super educational because everybody looks at the world a little bit differently. Right, exactly. And what’s the business one? So the business one is two is two things. First of all, you got to create it. Well, first of all, if you’ve got a team, pull your team together because the cause, there’s synergy there, or there’s dysfunction there, one of the two. And right now you need synergy. You need to bring them together, get them together, get them to cross pollinate resources, how they’re feeling, what’s going on, and give them tasks to do.
Blair Singer (22:13):
Give them meaningful things to do. Don’t let them sit around. I heard somebody say a real good quote the other day, go fear lives in stagnant water. That’s not a good one. That is, yeah, this is the time for leadership. Yeah, this is it. And right now you’re finding the people that that can lead. And you know, so that’s number one. Pull your team together. Number two is you must freaking sell. Don’t stop selling. And you, and on top of that is you gotta get your team to sell. We’ve always talked about this for years and years. Everybody on the team must sell. Well, now everybody’s got to sell. I mean, in my office, everybody’s got a sales quota every day. A number of calls I gotta make. Even people, you know, customer service, even my bookkeeper, she, okay, I’ll just call these people, check in with them.
Blair Singer (22:58):
How are they doing? I was there any way we can help them. How can we support them? You’ve got to keep that flowing out there. Um, because this is a, you know, we talk, we call them touch points, right? Yeah. How many times we’re not trying to, you know, you’re not necessarily trying to sell them on anything. You’re trying to keep the relationship. That’s right. Let them know your existing clients right now guys are gold. Exactly right. Goal. Yeah. Some of the other thing is, is that sometimes when you’re selling in these days, you’re not just selling your coaching. You’re actually coaching your clients. You know, cause some of them, they’re sitting on the edge, right? They’re like, well, I don’t know what we going to do. So you’re not just selling your product or your service to them. You’re actually coaching them. So how’s it going on for you?
Blair Singer (23:42):
How can I support you? What’s going on here? I saw this video over here. Can I send it to you? Will that help you? How can I support you? How can I support you? That’s it. You know, and I even have people that go, well, I don’t have anything to sell. Okay, here’s, I’m going to give you one other thing to do. If you don’t have anything to sell, go out and help somebody. Just help somebody serve some, find something that people want and need and help them get it, which is basically all sales is anyway, and there’s a tremendous amount of gratitude around.
Ken McElroy (24:09):
What a great episode. I hope you learn something new from today’s guest. For full show notes, check out Ken macra.com if you enjoyed the episode, then jump on iTunes, subscribe and leave a five star review. Also, if you can check me out at Ken McElroy official on Instagram for daily real estate advice. See you next week.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]