This is episode number 2096 and we talk about Implementing Five Daily Habits Until You Can See Automatic and Direct Financial Results. 

I cannot wait to hear what they are. Do you have a list? 

I have a list.

I wonder if I do all five. Do I do all five? 

Probably. I think that a lot of these things are just automatic for us. When I wrote all these topics, these are all automatic, regular things that we do because you and I are obsessed with changing, implementing, and making things better and increasing our net worth week by week. 

Very true.

I don’t think normal people wake up like that. 

No, we definitely have a problem. We know we are the problem, but at least we’re in it together.

All week this week, we’re talking about reframing your mindset for 2025. It’s New Year’s Day. It is the first day that most people try to make some change. Each day on the show, we answer a question from our Land Academy member Discord forum, and we take deep dives into land-related topics by popular requests.

James wrote, “Has anyone sold a property without using a real estate agent? What is that like? Any advice?”

The vast majority of properties that we have sold, we have done it without real estate agents lately. For the last 24 months, we have utilized real estate agents to sell property, largely because we’re sick of doing it. It’s something now that we can effectively outsource and focus on what matters, which is buying undervalued property. 

It’s a great way to scale. It’s so lovely when I’d say think about, “Let me paint this picture for you. You have twenty properties out there and they’re all over the country doing like what we do. You have twenty different agents running around, getting photographs, writing the description, managing the sellers, and getting the stuff sold for you so you can focus on buying more property and just throwing it their way. It’s the greatest thing. Like, “That’s your staff. That’s your sales team.” Like, “I didn’t look at it that way.” It’s really nice. 

In the very beginning, I started all this when the internet was very young. I would put properties in the classified ads of the newspaper, believe it or not, or what was called back then the Penny Saver, which is a little coupon book that in rural places people got. There is a lot of for sale by owner property and they’re really good deals on the buy and the sell side. Enter the internet, Craigslist. Craigslist was amazing in its day for exactly what I’m talking about, just exactly. 

It’s just an electronic version of the classified ads and then eBay. The largest real estate seller on eBay for years. That was just auction off rural vacant land, properties that nobody wanted. There was an endless supply of $500 to $800 to $1,000 properties, especially out West.  I think we bought them all. Yes. 

I’m sure of that. 

James, we have sold properties without a real estate agent. If you’re going to buy for 30 and sell for 90, which a lot of people like to do in our group. That’s a little tougher but I will tell you, Facebook Marketplace is a super effective place to do that. Here’s the key. They have to perceive whether it’s true or not. Hopefully, it’s true for you, the seller, a deal. Who doesn’t like off-market real estate deals that are undervalued? No one. Everybody loves that. They will get their checkbook out as fast. That’s why I want you to buy it as cheap as you can and I want you to sell it below retail value. 

Habit 1: Identify And Remove What’s Stopping You

It’ll sell it that week if you put it in the right places on the internet. Our topic, Implementing Five Daily Habits Until You Can See Automatic and Direct Financial Results. I’m not just talking about implementing habits. I’m talking about changing who you are so this just becomes who you are and what you do. Number one, excellent. Something is stopping you from moving forward. I’m going to deep dive into this. If I do my job here in the next few minutes, you’re going to feel uncomfortable. More than you already do.

Whatever it is that's stopping you from moving forward, nobody cares except you. It's all solvable, whatever it is. Share on X

More than me? 

There’s something in the back of your head that is stopping you from being the coolest person in the room. It might be some type of self-image. It might be, in my case, it was a lack of academic performance and I found out why later. It was a dyslexia thing or it might be other obstacles. Maybe you cannot throw a ball. We the high school experience and the primary education experience in America, it can be brutal.

I saw something on Facebook recently that stuck with me and it was a cartoon. It was a picture of a person standing in front of a chimpanzee, an elephant, and a gazelle, and a bird. The person in front was a teacher and this teacher said, “We’re going to climb a tree.”  All the characters were looking with a dumbfounded look on their face. The caption was, “The current U.S. American school system. One size does not fit all. There are winners and losers in every environment in our education system. It can spit you up if you let it. It can grind you up grind you up and spit you out, If you let it.

I like to spit you up. 

Spit you up. That’s for you. 

Thanks. Life can spit you up. That’s awful. 

That’s the name of the show next week.

Yeah, it is. Don’t let life spit you up. Happy 2025. This is my goal. I wouldn’t wear that on a shirt. You’re saying, “No, I feel like life spit me up. Thanks.” We’ve all felt that. Don’t let it happen every day is the point. 

Whatever it is that’s stopping you from moving forward. Nobody cares except you. It’s all solvable. Whatever it is. Might be public speaking. You might be incredibly shy. I don’t know what is, whatever it is, address it. One of the greatest things about the internet, one of the greatest things about being alive is the amount of information you can get in thirteen seconds on the internet. You can get all kinds of help, whatever your goal is, including being rich. 

Habit 2: Establish A Daily Routine

There are resources like Land Academy like there never was before. Figure out what it is, and get rid of it. Number two, establish a daily routine.  I want you to absolutely remove doing anything based on feelings in the beginning. If you wake up and you say, this is Jill this morning, “I don’t really want to do the podcast.” It’s on the calendar, so we’re doing it. You can imagine how that goes in our house. It doesn’t go over well. I have to compromise with her and be and promise.

There’s no room for feelings around this house.

Habit 3: Schedule Everything In A Calendar

If you wake up in the morning and you have feelings and that dictate what you do that day, you will never become wealthy, never. Number three, it has to be and then we’ll get to it in a second number three ties in our number two. I don’t care who you are and where you are in your career, I want you to schedule everything, every event in Microsoft Outlook. I used to say any calendar that you have, but I don’t think so. I think Microsoft Outlook is what you need. You have Microsoft standing in the corner of your ring from here on out. One of the largest companies in the world trying to improve their product every single day.  

If you wake up in the morning and let your feelings dictate what you do that day, you will never become wealthy. Share on X

They do. When we started Microsoft 365, whatever it was, 20 years ago, it was just a shell of what it is now.  It’s amazing now. I cannot say enough good things. It removes the difficulty of communication in every way between people internally, externally with customers, all of it. Every single thing you do should be, in the beginning in Microsoft Outlook, including sleeping. If you want to watch a football game, that’s fine. Put it in Microsoft Outlook and it better be a reward for doing all the other work that you had to do to get wealthy that day or that week. 

I do that. Fan of that.

What’ll end up happening is you’re going to look and don’t delete it when you’ve done it. You move stuff around, things happen, you get interrupted, children get sick, and all kinds of things happen, but you need to move all those events that you’ve put in your outlook to make sure that you get wealthy in the timeframe that you’ve given yourself. You will quickly find out what’s wrong. Why do you feel like you’re spinning your wheels or what’s happening? It’ll smoke out exactly what you should be doing the next week and then the week after that and on and on and on.  You’re going to find out you’re wasting a bunch of time, probably at your job in a bad relationship or maybe you have a commute that’s ridiculous. You have to get rid of those things. 

That’s funny. I was raised on that. My dad always had those annual, sick little spirally calendar books. I was raised that way that you schedule everything out and keep track of things. Fast forward before phones and everything, when they first came out, a little organizer that was a flip-up. Little to the handheld computerized calendar.  I would use that, carry that around. It was really cool. Before that, I even had checklists. I would write things down. Here we are. It’s just so much easier and everything synced. Fortunately for me, I grew up with that and I’m very grateful because my dad was always moving forward. Maybe that’s part of why he was successful. 

My dad was too. My mother was not. 

That’s interesting. I never thought about it like that, but I think that’s part of it. It was a nurture. It was a good thing. 

I bought a Franklin planner in a dollar bin in a drugstore way too late in life. This was before the internet. From there was addicted to it. It just was perfect for my personality. From there, there’s a CRM, it’s still around called ACT with an exclamation point and that was life-changing for me.

It’s good. You’re right. You cannot like, “You don’t get those things done.” Number one, if you didn’t get it done, did you overschedule that day? That’s on you. You need to plan this out a little bit better.  Number two, if it didn’t get done, you better reschedule it for another day that you will get it done because you won’t get ahead if you just let this list keep growing, you’re never going to get there. It can overwhelm you.

That’s why this is not an exercise. This is now a way of life. You’re not going to do it right. Probably the first year. I still over-schedule stuff. I still make scheduling errors. Jill and I, every single thing that Jill and I do socially, and professionally is in the calendar that we share. Every single thing. 

This is good. 

I also think that I’ve said this a few times and then showing people have contacted me years later and they said, “I wish I had done this right from the beginning.” At the end of every day, your email inbox needs to be empty. I don’t mean the three things that are at the bottom. I mean absolutely empty because the vast majority of people that I know, look, the most people are never going to get to this point. They’re never going to schedule things.

You just by doing it are a huge minority. You’re probably in the top 95 percentile. Most people I know use their email and inbound contact is their to-do list. It’s controlling them. You’re not controlling it. Those things in your inbox need to be scheduled and addressed when they’re appropriate. Very few things need to be immediately dealt with. When you clear out your email box, you have no choice but to schedule stuff out in your calendar and address it.

If you do it right then and there because it’s the stupidest thing to leave it in there and every day you see it again. You see it again and you’re wasting your time. When it comes to addressing it or not right when it comes in, when it’s the scheduled time to review your email, that’s really smart. Maybe every day at lunchtime, you catch up on your email while you’re cooking your lunch thing. You open it, you address it, and you’re either going to address it right then and there, so it’s done, closed. If it needs something else, it’s scheduled and you don’t have to think about it. 

Let’s go back to number two. Now, are you having actions in the morning based on feelings? No, you’re looking at your schedule and saying, “I have a bunch of stuff to do today.” At 6:30 PM, I get to go to the bar. 

You can have feelings. 

You can have feelings with your scotch. 

Exactly, then you don’t feel anything. It all works out great. Just erase those feelings. 

Look, we’re horsing around, but the fact is, if you continue to do this, it’ll become automatic and you’re going to get a lot of stuff done. This business really lends itself to this activity, because if you want to make one hundred thousand dollars this year on the side, buying and selling real estate for some people, that’s one deal for some people, it’s five deals. It’s really easy to schedule the stuff that you have to do to make sure that your pipeline’s full so you can start buying and selling property like that.

It’s a lot harder to accomplish these types of things when you start a manufacturing facility. You cannot cut things. There’s certainly a to-do list to do all that, but you cannot cut up things and say, “Got one deal done. I need to do three deals this year. I made $35,000 on this deal. I need to do two more to hit my goal, and it’s August. I better reschedule some stuff to make sure I get this done.” This business really lends itself. it’s very forgiving. 

Habit 4: Educate Yourself On Getting Wealthy

Let’s call it that. If you start a manufacturing facility and the first dollar that you see inbound dollars two years after you started it and you realize you hate it and you made a mistake and that your manufacturing is not conducive to making money, you have to start all over again. You never have to start all over again if you’re getting the mail out and doing this stuff in this business that you’re supposed to do. Number four, educate yourself on getting wealthy. Again, this is the internet age. 

This is the greatest time to ever be a human ever. This is the greatest time. Pull yourself out of a situation that you don’t want to specifically financially. There’s so much information out there starting with Land Academy and this show to continually educate yourself and surround yourself with people who have already accomplished what you would like to accomplish.  You can learn 

from them and exceed what they’ve done. Forget what you’ve observed absorbed until now. There’s so much negative stuff there always has been. Now it’s just online, it’s on your phone. 

Put yourself in the right places with the right people and they’ll help you. They’ll help you and you can ask them questions. It’ll be great. It’s the fastest way I think to pull yourself up and get you to that level. It’s put yourself in those rooms as uncomfortable as it may be but you need to do it.

Habit 5: Question Everything You Do

I was very good at math at school age and everything else, no, not at all. I learned it doesn’t matter, but then that was it for everybody in my life. Welcome to the machine. That was the answer. I always knew that was not the case. Number five, start there on the path of self-awareness. You should be questioning every single thing that you’re doing, why you’re doing it, what the sentences that you’re saying, and to what end are these actions. You need to be doing everything, thinking about why you’re doing it and what end it is bringing. I looked this up before writing this down. Something you can train yourself to do. I always thought you were born with it. That’s not the case. Very few people. 

Really? Seriously? 

It’s Maslow’s hierarchy. If you’re either self-aware, they say you’re either self-aware or you’re not, but now the conventional wisdom is you can train yourself to do it. 

That’s cool. I love that. I hope that was not too awful for you.

Let me ask you this. Are you self-aware of this right now? Is that why you’re asking? Is your self-awareness kicking in? Like, “How did this come off?” Join us tomorrow. It’s Thursday and it’s a new year. I guess it’s a new year. We’ll talk about Reviewing a Personality and Making the Appropriate Changes that are Conducive to being Wealthy. What? What is he talking about now?

I just cannot wait to review your personality. 

This is a full-time job. If you’re going to get wealthy, you’re going to change every single thing in your life. It’s a full-time constant for the rest of your life. What am I doing today? Should I be doing it?

I love it. Am I doing it good enough?

There are not a lot of spouses that can handle this change. 

Thank you. 

You are not alone in your real estate ambition. We are Jack and Jill, information and inspiration to buy undervalued property.