Whatever Happened to Hustle?

A great deal of my time is devoted to teaching and I’m always confronted almost everywhere I appear with three different types of people in my audience.

The first type are those who are bearing me for the first time and just beginning their awareness stage of their training. They never knew so much opportunity was available or how to get at it so easily. Their lives are catered to conventional wisdom, listening to broke people tell them how to get rich.

Then they get a dose of Ron and you can see their faces change expression, their seating posture changes, and an aura of hope and prosperity lights them up like a Christmas tree.

The second group within the audience is repeat visitors who are doing well and for the first time in their lives feel in control and on fire with possibilities and excitement. They can’t wait to share their success with me and others and once their recent achievements become public knowledge, they become the stars and the focal point for people in the room who want to hear how they’re winning the game.

These are the same folks who sat in the room a few weeks or a few months earlier in the awareness stage looking for answers. They are the group that’s fun to be around and light up the room with energy because they took action and made something happen with information they willingly sought and paid for.

They are the winners, the success stories, the reason I still do what I do and the by product of a system that works. This group also consists of many who are doing well, but would rather I not tell the class about them and/or afraid to approach me with their success.

Then there is the third group, which unfortunately is way too large. It’s the group who live a life of complacency. They know what to do or at least think they do, but never get around to doing it or they make a feeble attempt and quickly give up or await a miracle to change their life.

Unfortunately……..

Miracles Happen Mostly In the Movies

This group is fully aware of their possibilities. They’ve attended seminars, boot camps, listened to countless CD’s and made a positive movement toward a quantum leap by investing both time and money in an education.

But, then reality sets in. That great big, ugly fact of life called

MOVEMENT

I wish I could train folks and as they leave the room, make them pass through a success scanner that instills all the qualities of a winner into their brain to eliminate failure and complacency and insure success.
Actually, that’s not true. I really don’t wish that because then they’d miss the biggest reward of success…….

The Ability to Fail and Recover and Grow Strong from Adversity and Action

The biggest key to success is constant and decisive action. Many people have succeeded in real estate with no boot camps, books, or tapes to learn from. They just kept moving until they figured it out. Of course, it took years, failure, pain, and constant peer pressure, but in the end they succeeded.

Why then, with all the systems and training available to people today doesn’t everyone succeed beyond their wildest expectations.

A big, ugly answer is…..
By and Large Most Americans are Spoiled Rotten and Forgotten or Never learned what it’s Like to Hustle.

We have it too easy. Times are good and we’re the largest country on earth as people, because we can be. There’s really no external forces making us do everything, but survive. It all must come from within.

Complacency is easy. Just getting by is the norm. Succeeding wildly is the exception, although, gaining popularity and the number of rich people is growing rapidly. Did you know the wealthiest 5% of all households have over 21% of all income while the poorest 20% have only 3.4% of all the income? That’s a staggering ratio which I’m sure has never been duplicated in our history so I guess it means more and more people are….

Getting off Their Dead Ass and Making it Happen

And I truly believe our members are among that group.

I truly believe adversity creates grit and the strongest people I know are those who’ve faced the demons and survived. Ask any elderly person who’s survived the depression what they think of our lazy society. Ask any immigrant who comes here with nothing and gets rich what their secret to success is and you’ll get the same answer….

They Worked Their Ass off.

Good old fashioned hustle, day in and day out until the struggle was past.

A lot of people who have not experienced adversity and truly developed a winner’s attitude will be in for rough times when the economy changes and things aren’t so easy anymore. They won’t be prepared because they have no memories of hard times. They confuse minutia with hustle and live under the illusion that making money will always be as easy as it is now and the cash flow spigot never gets turned off.

I’d suggest you not become one of these ill prepared folks who take so much for granted and live life on the edge of bankruptcy because things will change, they always do and…….

The Time to Hustle is When Things Are Going Well.

It Will Require a Fraction of the Energy as it Will When Things Slow Down.

When I started in real estate in 1982 the prime rate was 18%. If you were a Realtor selling houses you had to hustle to survive. Many didn’t. I did! I didn’t know any better. I bought 23 houses my first six months and sold every one for a profit.

When the 1986 tax law changed the rules, chaos was rampant in the industry and you had to hustle to stay ahead of the game if you owned any real estate you bought for tax reasons.

Then came the early 90’s, when inflation was high, the economy was in poor condition and commercial property owners really had to hustle, including Donald Trump.

The winners survived. The losers left the scene. Some folks went bankrupt, others got filthy rich and life goes on. The big difference between the winners and the losers is…… HUSTLE.

If I were you, I’d turn on the juice right now and grab all the gusto you can, while you can. No one knows what’s coming, but if you’re prepared, it really doesn’t matter. In fact, you may even silently be hoping for chaos just cause you know you can handle it and….

Wealth Comes From Chaos.

Here are a few things I’m working on in my businesses that perhaps you may want to consider.

1. Get Liquid- No business asset is more important than cash or cash equivalent. It’s the thing that causes peace of mind in crisis and gives you the power to make intelligent decisions from strength, not chaos management. It also opens up lots of opportunities created by those without it. So simply stated, having cash leads to more cash. Not having cash means you’re a slave to those who do.

I’m working toward getting very liquid, but don’t confuse that with not creating a lot of free equity. In real estate, it’s hard to get to the cash without the equity to convert. Of course, this means you shouldn’t tie up your cash in real estate long terms. Use it to get to equity you can turn into cash short term.

2. Be Wary of Personally Guaranteed Debt- Nothing new here, but if there is a market correction you’ll be a whole lot stronger if you’re financial statement isn’t overloaded with debt that takes you out of control. Guaranteed debt does just that. “Subject to” debt will always give you the upper hand and puts the lender at your mercy, not the other way around. You’d be surprised what lenders will do in tough times to get problem properties off the books. I’ve been there. So have many of our readers. When all your assets are at risk, you have no leverage.

Each time you sign a note you risk three things…
1. Your credit
2. Your assets
3. Your marriage

Make sure the reward is worth the risk and you have one or more short term exits in mind before you guarantee debt.
Having said that I’ll confess, I guaranteed over 10,000,000 in debt last year, but I expect it all to be paid off by the end of this year with handsome dividends called cash.

Cash>Equity>Cash
Debt>Equity>Cash

3. Develop Multiple Income Streams- Income is a safety factor in tough times and I’ve never met anyone with too much of it. Last count I had over twenty income streams. Some large and some small, but income none the less. Focus on the large ones.

A large income also makes you more lendable so you can create more debt so you can create more cash so you can create more debt so you can create more cash so………

Ok you get the picture.

A strong income makes you feel and act like a multi millionaire even if your bank account doesn’t show it yet. When you’re not struggling to pay the bills opportunity just seems to find its way to you, even if you’re not actively looking.

4. Work Toward Putting Yourself Out of a Job- That means you should be building income and assets that don’t depend on you every day. This is the only way you’ll ever become truly financially independent.

I continue to seek these kinds of opportunities and good people to make them happen. It’s amazing how fast you can grow if you quit trying to do it all yourself.

Consider this…..

Cash Flow Frees You up to Allow Others to Make the Required Mistakes to Build a Fortune for You and Them

You should always be training your replacement and expect some little things to go wrong until it just doesn’t matter anymore.

That should give you something to think about, but it will always come back to a simple truth about wealth….

You Must Stay in the Game

Which is a synonym for Keep Hustling.

To Your Quantum Leap