Podcast Episode 95 Transcript

Episode 95: The Importance Of Mindset In Real Estate Investing with Mandy Mcallister & Jamil Sayegh

Are you ready to bring your real estate game to the next level? My name is James Prendamano. I'm the CEO and founder of PreReal. And over the past 25 years, I've closed over a billion dollars in transactional real estate. Each week, a meeting with outstanding investors, high performing individuals and visionaries operating in the real estate space. These are the people that are actually out there in the real estate game right now. Getting It Done this podcast aims at bringing anyone's game to the next level. This is the PreReal podcast I know. For me, Mindset has changed my game completely over the last two years. I was in a position and while we had a lot of growth in the company, there wasn't much growth beyond that. And it took actually it was the podcast that helped me break free and start moving to the next level. Are there any books or any references you can point to that are good places for people to start as they explore their way and they start to explore what the Mindset really means for the individual? Yeah. So I did a whole list on this and I'll give you that list for the notes too, but one that's right off the top of my head and it's a little bit more advanced. It's not a very first one, but if you're kind of you've been doing all the right things, you need to figure out like what is the next step for you? Look up the Art of the Impossible. This is the whole idea of Malcolm Gladwell's idea. You need 10,000 hours to be an expert. The idea behind this is if you're in flow, if you're doing the absolute right things in this really deeper work state, you don't maybe need all of that time. You can get there far more quickly. And this Art of the Impossible has a ton of actionable ideas on how to get into flow. And I want to say one thing about this financial freedom and leaving your day job saying, I'm a single mom of a five year old. It's all me. So I'm also super empathetic of guys who have a stay at home wife and three kids and like that idea too, like my palm sweat thinking about it. So I kind of came up in this multifamily world with people that were looking for syndication. And for instance, the last syndication I was a part of on the general partnership side, I raised a million dollars. I did a ton of due diligence. I'm on the calls, I'm sending out new site. I'm doing all of the things as a general partner. My ownership percentage is one point 96%. That is the thing that no one really talks about if you're targeting syndication. So I call myself an equity hog and buy stuff that's just my own. Think about that. That 104 units. One point 96% of that. That's a duplex bro, right? Like how much benefit am I getting out of it? So the way those guys were looking to leave their jobs. Oh, I get this acquisition fee and that disposition fee. Awesome. All I got to do is four deals a year. Oh, my God, you have to do four deals a year. What if there's not four doable deals? How are you going to feed your kids? So that is how that calculator was born. I wanted the floor of income before I went on to do anything else. So premeditated planning with that buffer is really going to help ease a lot of that pain. So let's talk about that for a minute because it's something that a lot of people are not talking about. Right. So you see these Instagram investors and a lot of them are wildly successful, don't get me wrong, but there is another side of the business where I own 3000 units, I own 5000 units, I own 8000 units. But if you dig into it, as you're very astutely pointing out and a lot of people shy away from this, if you own 1% or 2% of those units, it's not quite the same. So as you're getting involved in these ventures, folks, you need to really decide first and foremost, are you a deal junkie? Are you someone that really profoundly understands and has experience in the markets where you're going to be analyzing the deal because you're going to be taking other people's money, right? You're going to be taking in money. If you're on the GP side and you're going to be running these deals, what does that GP side look like and what percentage of the deal are you owning? And another thing, Mandy, that people don't talk about all the time is everybody looks great on the wedding day. But as time wears on and different partners have different roles and those partners are not quite carrying their weight in those roles, I've seen some tough situations where the GPS look great day one. And as you get further and further into the deal, things don't look so great. So what are things that we can do at home? What are things we can do on our own time to start that exploration and to really start evaluating? Are we as self aware as we really think we are? Are there exercises, books, first steps that we can take before we end up at your doorstep, if you will? Yeah, man. First of all, I want to acknowledge what you shared. I felt the heart and the emotion behind it. And there's a bunch of questions that come up for me to share with the listeners that they can write down. Think of it like you can Journal on it. It might be something really useful, but prior to those and this also kind of counts as it too. It goes to what you were just saying. Who's counting on you? Who would you be letting down if you didn't do what it is you think you should do in my situation, not only was it family, but I was thinking about the impact that I wanted to have. I was thinking about the clients and the audiences that I would never reach if I continued playing small. I've had people reach out to me several times over the last ten or twelve years saying, I didn't commit suicide because of the support you gave. And I only spoke to them once, or it's like this happened or that happened or that happened. And I realized, wow, if I chose to stay playing small, potentially, if it wasn't somebody else that would have stepped in, this person wouldn't be here right now. And I keep that in my mind prior to it happening. So I can sit there and say, all right, wow, I'm not doing this just for me. All of the training, all the studies, all the work, all the whatever this is going to help save hundreds, thousands, millions of lives is going to improve the world. It's going to have a ripple effect, and every single one of us can step into that. So here are some questions that I'd like people to sit with. Number 01:00 A.m.. I happy. And it's interesting that such a simple question can be so polarizing or jarring. Like, whatever you write down, please know that nobody has to see it. So respectfully, don't bullshit yourself. Am I happy? Am I living the life that I believe I should be living? Does my life right now represent the fullest expression of who I am? There's an expression that I learned from Dr. Wayne Dyer, and he said, don't die with your music still in you in that same kind of way. Am I singing my song? Am I playing my music? Is that what I'm doing on a daily basis or no? If the answer is no, why not? What are the stories? What are the reasons that you give yourself about why it's not the right time, why you can't? What are all the justifications you have for not being the real you? And with each one of those question them, is that really true? Is there another way I could look at this? And this is oftentimes kind of where people come to see me because they think, yeah, it's really true, but it's because they're so locked into seeing their world in a certain way. There's an expression we don't see life the way that it is. We see life the way we are because everything that you experience in life is coming from you. It's coming from your five senses, and it's coming from your thoughts and all that's in you. So life is expressing something. Right now, you and I are speaking. I'm seeing you over Zoom right now, but I'm not really seeing you. I'm just seeing, like, lights hitting my eye. And then there's a picture of you in my head and my eyes projected out. Right. And not to be too technical about it, but then let's say you're really happy. Someone else is really depressed. Someone else is really excited. Why not? Because of what's happening around them, but because of how they're representing it to themselves and the meaning they're creating about the situation in their head. Because if somebody says, hey, James, I am so sad right now. And you say, Why is that? And they say, because it's raining. There's someone else down the street who says, James, I am so happy right now. I'm so excited. And you say, Why? And they go, Because it's raining. It's not the rain. It's how we relate to the rain. It's not covet. It's not the person passed away. If this is true, it has to apply in every situation and it does. It's not. The economy collapsed. What are we making that mean? Am I making it mean? We're screwed? I'm hopeless. I'll never recover from this. This is the end for me. Or is it an opportunity? Is it a learning experience? Is it an experience to challenge myself, to grow? Is it, hey, I lost my job, but I really didn't like this job to begin with. And I've been afraid to start my own thing. And now I can kind of do that. Very often I find that we look at our lives, and right now there are certain things in our lives that we're really happy about. Maybe it's your job, maybe it's your business, maybe it's a family member, maybe it's a spouse, it's a child. There's something that you have in your world right now that brings a lot of joy to you. And potentially, if you look back on your journey from birth to now, there's a lot of hardships that you experienced along the way and you wouldn't be who you are now, and you wouldn't have what you have now if you didn't go through those are the employer based moves where the employers are saying, I'm not sure we're going to have people back five days a week or three days a week or in some cases at all. We're seeing some big companies decentralized locate in the outer boroughs and locate out of state. And that next wave will be the companies pulling the first were people leaving. And this next wave, I believe, will see companies pulling that employment base out to these other markets where they're going to put down roots. Well, and how many employees can work from afar, right. So what are we I have a friend of a friend was working in New York City downtown as a designer or something computer based, and was able to have that exact same job and move to Kansas City and live like a King because she didn't need to live in her $3,000 a month apartment anymore. Hardships. There is not anybody that is hopeless. There is not anybody who can't be helped. Everybody can get where they want to be. It's just they have to have the willingness they have to have enough desire to say, you know what? I'm ready. I'm ready for a change. Like enough is enough. I've been doing this for so long and I can't go on living this way. Yeah, at least for me the bag got heavy, right? You carry that bag around and again, it's very relevant and accurate analogy. You carry the bag around and eventually some of us get to a point where we just say, I just want to put it down. I just don't want to carry this bag anymore, this burden anymore. And that's just the awakening, if you will. But then there's a really difficult path, right? There's a really challenging path that you have to walk. And I was wondering, in your position, is there must be a heavy burden? Do you carry this incredible level of responsibility? You're advising people, I would assume in instances to make drastic life changes and choices based on what they're communicating to you toxic people in their lives, toxic situations that they're in where they're crying out for help, they're looking to break through or they're performing well. I'm a good example. We've had a lot of success. We've been blessed. We've done really well, but not nearly where I know I can and should be. So for me, a lot of it was about, hey, I'm playing small ball. I've been playing small ball. Only small ball. You're doing $50 million deals. It's small ball. There's other things in places where I should be and where I want to participate, but they come with tough decisions. Does that weigh on you? Do you have that sense of responsibility as you're advising people through this? So there's two things I want to share about that. So the first thing is I want you to notice and it's for everyone listening. This isn't just calling you out, James, because we all do this. Notice how we take things as a given. So you said once they make that decision, now they have this really challenging path ahead of them. And so notice how we just say that as if that's true. There is no such thing as a challenging path. There's a path and you can have a challenging experience of that path, right? There's no such thing as a stressful job. There's a job and you can't is you can have an extremely stressful experience of that job, but not everybody experiences that job the same. And so when we recognize that, we make it challenging.