Episode 23: Real Estate Developer: Big Goals, Small Steps
Summary
As a Real Estate Developer, BIG goals lead the way! You have to detail and map out your destination first, which sets you up for success. In today's episode, we explore asking the right person the right question, unplugging your emotion, and asking the HARD questions about real estate development.
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Full Episode Transcription
Welcome to My Life as a Landlord, where we untangle all things housing and educate the curious. If you're looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've come to the right show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it.
Well, hello there. Hello there. Welcome. Welcome to my life as a Landlord. Word. This is Dr. Jen. I'm so happy you've joined us today. It is my pleasure to educate you on today's topic all about real estate development. Big goals, small steps. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about what a real estate developer does. And what we're going to do is we're going to turn this inward and talk about how you actually plotted out personally, how do you do this? And this is sort of a soul searching episode that Mike and I mapped out together because this is hard. Real estate development is a very difficult and long journey, but. You want to make sure you start with the end in mind. And so just a reminder that real estate developers the whole idea of a real estate developer is to make land use its highest and best value. So you'd not necessarily the same as a real estate investor, but you can be it can be the same person, but a developer specifically is taking a piece of property and making its land use highest and best value. So when Mike and I started talking about this episode specifically, he know as a real estate developer, the first thing you've got to do is you've got to look where you're going first. You've got to start looking at your goals. Where are you going to end up? And that's where he came up with the title big Goals, small steps. Tony Robbins coined the phrase. He said, most people overestimate what they can do in one year, and they underestimate what they can do in five years. Interesting, interesting premise. So my question to you is, where do you want to be in five years or 20, knowing that most of us underestimate where we're going to be? The whole idea here is that you break it down more and more and more, and you've got to be excited about this. If you don't have passion behind the goal that you're trying to do, this is going to be a real hard road for you. And quite frankly, you probably will stop because it's going to get so hard, you're going to throw your hands up and go, oh, well, now, what are some examples? I asked Mike, I said, okay, you're helping me map out this podcast. What are your big goals? Give me some examples. And he said, okay, he's been working on a 34 unit multifamily build in British Columbia. It's 217 unit buildings with elevators, which will be new for US 1s class B building, which means it is. A bit of higher density, but not like luxury Paradise Ridge, which I know you're going to hear a podcast extra about the Paradise Ridge story. Those are the condos that we've built on Maui. That's a class A project and the one that we're hoping to build is a class B project. So it's still a bigger project. It's going to be longer and it's going to be more complicated. So that's just one of Mike's big goal. Now, Mike is a hunter. Mike wants to hunt in various places and he wants to hunt and try the meats. Because we don't hunt for trophies, we hunt for the meat. He wants to try and hunt all over the world, which, I mean, I'm along for the ride. I think this is incredible and it's quite the ride for me. But let's go back to goals. If you're looking at a big hairy goal that you're passionate about, 1s what would that look like for you? So I've told you, Mike's, but let me tell you mine. 1s My big hairy goal is a hundred thousand listeners to this podcast every episode, 1s every week. Now, even saying that out loud, I'm actually sweating because that's right now I don't have anywhere near that. And so just saying that going okay. But as a real estate developer, that doesn't have anything to do with my podcast. But I have passion behind it and my passion is teaching. My passion is becoming my legacy. This podcast is becoming my legacy. So let's dial it back in. As a real estate developer, big goals, small steps in development. If you are passionate about your goals, the real estate development aspect can be a vehicle to achieving your goals, of course, but it takes lots of capital and lots of time, lots of energy, and by far you will not have enough knowledge. You're going to get to the point probably pretty quickly where you're going to go, I have no idea what to do, I have no idea. And you just turn to good old Google or you just start getting resourceful and so. In this podcast, point one, make sure you're looking at the destination first for your goals you can solve nearly everything by asking the right person the right question. And many of you may know what I'm talking about if you start asking someone who is not knowledgeable about one aspect of this and go, okay, no, I have no idea what you're talking about, but let me transfer you to the person, to that department. And then it seems like a hand in glove when you finally ask the right person the right question. And it was the exact right person. And they go, oh, you just need to do this or fill out this. Form or do whatever it is 1s when you become resourceful and you have places that you can go to for answers like figuring out which U1 people you need to ask questions to. Like maybe some YouTube channels that are know they're solving things for you, giving you some solutions. It's pretty interesting. There's also a bunch of now of course, we're out of COVID local courses and there are online courses as well. There are some free courses that I have seen that if you are confused and you're passionate about something and you're wanting to take a course about it, well, there's all kinds of resources there, whether there's a charge or not, that's debatable. But at the end of the day, this podcast is all about real estate development and goals of real estate development. And it was really interesting mapping this out with Mike and he said, you know, Jen, he said, when I started it. When I built my first house. Mike built his first house when he was 21. And he was not a builder then. He was a logger, 21 year old logger. I said, Well, Mike, there was no YouTube back in the Stone Age when you were growing up, what'd you do? And he says, I asked the building inspector. He said the building inspector would come over. I would ask him and say, did I do this right? Did I do that right? And the building inspector, most of the time would make him take it all apart and go, no, you didn't do this right. And he would learn. The other thing he did was he asked business people questions about business. Now, how did he do that at 21? He was owning his own company, had payroll, had guys that he was taken care of. They were all logging, but he was not an entrepreneur at that point. So what did he do? He joined a business club. Many of you know it as Rotary International. He joined Rotary and he has actually been an active member. Paul Harris, fellow of Rotary since then, right? That's actually over 40 years. That's pretty incredible now that I'm talking about it. But he joined Rotary and he did that also for the networking. But he learned how to communicate. He gained some mentors in that aspect. And again, he was able to ask the right person the right question in his. 1s In his aspect, in his pursuit of trying to build his first house. 1s Now, let me ask you a very awkward question in this. Is saying as a real estate developer, is real estate development right for you? This is hard. It's awkward. It can get really awkward really fast. It's uncomfortable. So if you're not passionate about what your goal is, what your end goal is, and real estate development is sort of on your radar, but maybe not. Maybe real estate development isn't for you. So coming up, one of the things that Mike and I struggle with when we're doing real estate development and we're also doing budgets, that's the biggest thing is he'll talk about different things that could be that we could do this and we could do that, and we could okay, fine. I'm a numbers person. So You have to unplug your emotions. You have to unplug your emotions. You have to speak in facts and go. This costs this. We think this costs this. This is a contingency. And then you've got to be prepared. Again, unplug your emotions when obstacles appear. When they appear, there's always going to be obstacles that show up. It is going to be difficult. And this is where if you don't have passion behind what you're doing, really, it's going to be a real hard trek for you. Now, Mike and I, we create communities. Housing is what we do. That's what we do, and we are thrilled to do that. And there are many aspects of creating that housing, which is exactly the topics of this podcast. Right. This is only one topic, and it rotates every week. And so unplugging your emotions when you're talking about real estate development and you're talking about overcoming emotions is very hard to do. But sometimes you can't make it a discussion. You have to move forward. Don't make it a discussion. Several years back, while we were in Texas, I surprised Michael with a Skydiving trip. Now, he had never been Skydiving. I had never been Skydiving, and I was absolutely scared to death. Why did we do this? 1s Because I wanted to show myself. And I know Mike wanted to do the same thing, that this was mind over matter. We're not making this a discussion. The event of the day is skydiving. We're going to strap ourselves to somebody else. We're going to go up in an airplane and we're going to jump out of the airplane. And we did it. And I hated it. I hated it. It was terrible. It was loud and cold, and I was super frightened. But the whole jump was not about the jump. It was we're not making this a discussion. This is unplug. Your emotions speak. In fact, when we have to, can we take the plunge into the ice water? Yeah, you can. Don't make it discussion. Just do it. That's really tough. It's really tough. Let me review the three points and then we'll do the call to action. Okay? Point one, look at your destination. First you've got to map out your goals. Ask the right person the right questions. Be resourceful number three unplug your emotion and be ready when obstacles appear. Speak in facts. Here's your call to action. If you have not already written down your goals, just three things for this exercise. Three things s you've got to write down your goals. The act of writing down your goals is so therapeutic, and it embeds. It in your brain 1s that writing down your goals must be your call to action today. Now, if you're really serious and you're really passionate about your goals, real estate developer or not, you would discuss your goals with someone else. These can be a three year goal, five year goal, one year goal, whatever you prefer. You've got to have passion behind your goals, though, and they've got to be written down. Those of you who know me best know that not only are my goals written down, I have a magic whiteboard. In fact, I should probably do a podcast extra on what my magic whiteboard is and why I call it my magic whiteboard. Yeah. So that's this week's episode real estate development. Big goals, small steps, very much inward looking. Next week, episode 24 as a real estate investor, we're going to talk about cash versus equity. Cash versus equity. What's the difference? Why do you care? What are the different tools you can use them both with? Thanks for joining me this week. We'll see you soon.
So, thank you for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes and all the links mentioned in today's episode, visit our website at www.mylifeasalandlord.com. If you're looking for educational resources for getting into real estate investing, becoming a landlord, or even a better tenant, then I have a page on my website to get you started looking for a solution to the pickle that you're in. I have suggestions for that too. You can throw your situation on my Facebook group, my Life as a Landlord, and let our community help you with solutions. Also, before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they're released. You can either subscribe right now in the app you're listening to this podcast on, or you can sign up at www.mylifeasalandlord.com. Thank you again for joining me. Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. In this episode of my life, a landlord I'll see you next time.