Hello everyone and Welcome once again to another episode of Selling Greenville a real estate podcast all about Greenville South Carolina the greater Greenville area I your host Stan McCune realtor right here in lovely Greenville South Carolina trying to endure the pollen season that we have every year at this time I sneeze as soon as I open the front door or the back door or any door and I end up going outside I am ready for some rain to wash the poen away but nonetheless the weather outside has been phenomenal notwithstanding the yellow stuff all over our cars and plants and everything else but yes that is Greenville and this is one of the things that we have to deal with we take the good with the bad but here we are and here I am recording this podcast here we're getting towards the end of April we're almost in May and just a reminder as always if you're not subscribed to the show please go ahead and subscribe leave a rating leave a review we appreciate that I appreciate that it really helps me with the show and as well if you need to reach me for anything for any of your real estate needs for any questions you might have or anything you just want to discuss you want to go out and get a drink whatever the case may be please notate that my contact information is in the show notes you can reach out to me any way you want text phone email etc etc it's all there for you guys I hope to hear from you today we're going to be talking about this is of of course everything I discuss is filtered through the lens of Greenville and the Greenville Market but this is going to be more of a big picture type of podcast not not some of the things that we've done recently where we're talking more specifically about the Greenville Market this is going to be a more General podcast talking about mindsets towards real estate in general and the the main idea is the idea of focusing on processes versus focusing on outcomes now I want to preface this on where I came up with this idea this isn't isn't an idea that that I suddenly you know had a revelation for I didn't even read about it although I'm sure there are books that discuss this before I was actually in a web a part of a webinar last week with Alabama football coach Nick Sabin and He was discussing this as it's something I just came up multiple times in the interview and and the interview by the way was not a football interview it was a business interview and they were interviewing him just to get his insights as a successful business person in the football World obviously college football coach particularly when you've been as successful as Nick sabbin has there's a lot that those guys have to do you know all the recruiting and teaching and coaching and and drawing up plays and constantly evolving their mindset and all sorts of different things that go into that and the thing that kept coming up was that Nick Sabin said that he always teaches his players and his coaches and everyone else that they focus on outcomes they don't sorry I'm getting it backwards they focus on processes they don't focus on outcomes and what he meant by that was when they play a game or when they have a practice or whatever it is that they end up doing if a player makes a catch and and makes what's quote unquote a great play but he does it the wrong way maybe a receiver runs a route poorly but ends up scoring a touchdown on that route they aren't celebrating the the touchdown in terms of how the coaches approach it the coaches are looking at it and saying you locked into this you did it the wrong way we need to improve this this is not going to cut it when they win a game if they win a game but they don't play well they don't focus on the fact that they won or the fact that they lost they focus on how they did if they lose a game if they lose a game and but they played really really well obviously they're going to focus that on that but they're always looking at the processes looking at what happen and he said that when they go into a game they aren't talking about winning or losing not setting goals for trying to to get a certain number of points or or a certain number of wins or to even make it to the college football championship or to win the championship or anything like that they have a gazillion processes that they're working on each player has processes that they're working on each coach has processes that they're working on and they're trying to refine those processes to get them perfect and the thinking is if if all of the processes are perfect then you can basically guarantee that the outcome will be the outcome that you want and ultimately in football the main outcome that you want is to win but all of these players there also a lot of them that go to Alabama are as well trying to make it potentially into the NFL or or trying to get coaching gigs or whatever the case may be so there's a career aspect to this as well that they have personal outcomes that they want to happen for for for them and some of the coaches as well they might have career outcomes that they're looking for as well that they might want to you know try to work their way up the ranks or potentially get a gig in the NFL there's all sorts of things that are going on there but they don't focus on the outcome I mean like I said he went to the point of saying we don't even talk about winning a game we talk about executing on the field all of these different things that we're trying to do and that really got me thinking I thought that was really profound that really got me thinking does this have a real estate context how can I apply this to me as a realtor U which I'm not going to focus so much about in in this podcast but it it has very profound implications for me as a realtor specifically in in real estate and and I'll I'll just kind of mention this and then we'll back away like I said I don't want to focus on this but here's what you always hear right when when I get you know Brokers that are calling me or people that want to meet with me want want to talk about want to talk about real estate try to recruit me for their team whatever the case may be it's always how many closings a year have you had how how many what is the amount per closing that you're making on your commission how what what is your GCI that's the term that you you always hear what is you know how much how are you able to to raise your transactions from say $200,000 per transaction well you need to raise that up to $300,000 on average per transaction etc etc there's all these it's it's a lot of throwing around numbers trying to set all these goals trying to do all these things and it's almost all outcomes oriented almost all outcomes oriented and very little of the time are they focused on processes a lot of these at least locally a lot of these real estate people that are successful they they I'll grant them that they're successful but they're so focused on outcomes and for me I do try to be more process focused and I do try to think more about improving myself as a realtor trying to do all these things in in my daytoday life in terms of how I run my business trying to improve my business each and every day so that eventually that results into some outcomes that I would like and ultimately you know I have to make money in this job and so there are different things that I believe that if I keep working on processes that I'll I'll get to those outcomes but you guys don't want to hear all that unless you're looking to become a realtor which I recommend not doing not at this time at least this is the hardest time really outside of perhaps the you know Great Recession back in 2008 2009 this is about as hard of a time to to make a living as a realtor as there has ever been outside of some of those major economic recessions and depressions whatnot but what you guys want to want to hear is how does this apply to me personally and I and I think that there is a for those of you doing real estate investing or interested in real estate investing there are some very profound implications for a process oriented approach versus an outcome oriented approach and I've already alluded to this but I think first off you hear a lot of Real Estate Investors they talk a lot about money goals and they talk a lot about I want to make this much money in real estate I want to have this much passive income from my rental properties coming in I want to close this many deals etc etc and I think for starters I think particularly when it comes to money that's an outcome and there are a lot of things that you can't control in that and there are going to be some years that are going to be great years and some years that aren't going to be as good just because of just the randomness and the fluctuations in the market that come and go and so I think that one of the implications of of this approach is that we shouldn't focus on money goals in real estate investing don't focus on money goals Focus rather on understanding things better for instance understanding real estate expenses better come up with spreadsheets and things like that to have a very detailed model my my best investor clients they have things like this a a spreadsheet where they can just plug in numbers for a rental property for instance they can plug in a purchase price Plug in you know the estimated rents different types of of expenses and all of that and they can go ahead and just calculate immediately and know without really doing a whole lot more research to know if something is an interesting deal to them or not and I have my own models like this that I use and that I can share with people but everyone is a little bit different you know that you have to account for risk tolerance you have to account for you know appreciation that we talk frequently about oftentimes properties that are stable appreciating assets that don't require a ton of you know Capital that you have to keep pumping into it often times those don't bring in the the most cash on cash return but they might be the best long-term Investments so so you have to to consider all of these different things and the the more you educate yourself on that that's a process you can educate yourself on that and better understand that and try to to become a more knowledgeable investor is a better way to spend your M to spend your time and to spend your efforts than to to come up with an arbitrary money goal okay this is what I'm going to do well how are you going to do it just like a football team we're going to win a game and we're going to work hard to win it well okay that's that's great that's very inspiring but what are the processes that you're improving in order to win the game if you're going to invest in real estate you have to think through those process is think through all the different pressure points what are all the different things that need to to come together in order for you to make money in real estate another great thing to educate yourself on is just the market market rent for instance educate yourself on what are some areas that rent well that don't rent as well what are some areas that disproportionately rent well for instance they might have cheap housing but the the rent it still rents very well in that area where are the lines in terms of okay it makes sense to get a two-bedroom or three-bedroom or a four-bedroom house what are the differences in terms of a price points for purchasing those homes and also price points for renting them and then how does that influence your decision- making in terms of what to invest in whether you choose to focus on two bedroom Properties or three bedroom Properties or bedroom properties whatever the case may be is there a market that has pent up demand for one of those things you know there might be a glut of two bedroom properties on the market for rent that that will end up with higher vacancy rates whereas there's hardly any four bedroom properties I'm just starting that out there hypothetically I'm not saying that that's the case I'm just talking in terms of hypotheticals these are the types of things that that you can educate yourself on and a big part of being process oriented in real estate is to always educate consistently educate yourself and so rather than being like okay by the end of this year I want to have made x amount of money from real estate investing or or whatever the case may be instead say every week I want to have educated myself more on this one thing or maybe every every week I want to network with one real estate person and try to learn one thing from that person that is a process that will in the end it will result in you having a a good real estate outcome in in some way ultimately I would say as well don't you don't want to focus on the number of flips or the number of rentals that you have again that's an outcome you say well in five years I intend to have 20 doors well that's great that's very ambitious but again how are you going to do that like you can't just speak that into existence you have to actually come up with a way to to do that and so again what why how why don't you focus on educating yourself on for instance construction learn more about construction you know what in real EST State you can never be too educated on construction buy a book watch YouTube videos say you know what every day I'm going to watch 15 minutes of YouTube content on construction I'm going to start with plumbing try to understand Plumbing as well as I can then I'm going to go to electrical try to understand electrical as much as I can listen you that will pay dividends for you you will have so much knowledge that you'll gain from that and again it won't replace actually like doing some of the work and and by the way don't think that you know everything just because you watched a few YouTube videos I can always tell when I have my you know my armchair electricians or whatever and they're like you know well that GFCI doesn't look you know like it was hardwired correctly and might not be grounded because I don't exactly see the way this blah blah blah BL and you can always tell when when someone starts throwing around words but it's like they don't exactly know what they're talking about I just actually I just met together I just met with a guy recently that was looking at selling a property and I was interested potentially in buying it or or previewing it for some clients that might be interested and I could tell right away that he was he was way in over his head in terms of this property was a property he intended to flip himself and then you know he had a reason why he said that he wasn't able to do that I think he wasn't able to do it because probably he had a partner that he was depending on to actually do the work and that partner couldn't do it or perhaps he realized that he just didn't know what he was talking about cuz he was like saying all these different things about you know throwing around these construction words and I was like yeah yeah you don't know what you're talking about of course I didn't say that to him but like I would ask him questions be like well what do you think about what do you think about this what do you think about the fact that you know that this part of the house is kind of sagging and you know he didn't really have answers to a lot of these questions and just kind of seemed kind of perplexed by it all but he would he would throw around the jargon and throw around some words listen don't don't be that guy all right educate yourself but also realize that that it's still armchair knowledge but that armchair knowledge can help you it can help to prepare you for for flipping houses it can help to educate you if you have an electrician that comes in and starts trying to rip you off it can you might not come back at him or her and say no you're ripping me off you might say well here's what I think here's what I understand how this works what are you telling me and and how is this different than than what I've heard again educating yourself on on the market so construction is a great thing to educate yourself on another process educating yourself on on the market we've talked about that networking we've talked about that I think it's a great idea to try to make a process make it a process to just network with as many people as possible to to try to improve your network who you know and and to make that a wide range of of people and you know what you might have to buy them you might have to have a budget for buying coffee for people and that's totally fine it's a realtor I'm used to having to do this so if it's the first time you've ever heard of this idea you know that just know that there's a lot of us that have had to do that for a while obviously building your credit that's that's a great one or or saving money these are great processes these are the types of things figure out a plan for okay I am going to save this much money every week or this much money every month I'm going to do these steps to build my credit I'm going to start paying off this maxed out credit card I'm going to start paying down this student loan whatever the case may be different processes like that if you focus on those things and as you're accumula in all of these different processes as they all come together just like a football player that's working on his route running that's working on his speed training that's working on weightlifting that's working on catching the ball that's working on building chemistry with the quarterback doing all these different things working on on you know chip blocking on the outside whatever the case may be as they're doing all these different things all of those things come together on game day and it's like oh wow this guy can play he can play because he has worked on all these different processes and now guess what the outcome is going to is going to it's all going to come together and so if you have all of these different processes that you put together and and you're working on this eventually it will all start to click it will all start to make sense you'll figure out what you need to do in order to take that next step in real estate and then that next step will turn into another Next Step as you continue to refine those processes and those steps will start to acre to the point where hey guess what now you do have an outcome now maybe you have a little portfolio of properties of rental properties and maybe they're bringing in passive income or maybe they're doing this or maybe they're they're doing that maybe you you've figured out a way to to flip houses that that you know is a little bit unconventional who knows there are all sorts of things but this is how I have really cut my teeth in this industry is that I had to learn early on that there were some things that I wasn't good at in terms of flipping houses and different real estate stuff and this predates when I became a realtor because I was doing that stuff well before I became a realtor and so I had to to to take a step back be like okay I I start the way I started was that I had money and I had a little bit of real estate knowledge and I wanted to find a way to make the money work with my real estate knowledge and I had a few successes and I took my lumps and then I realized okay I need to take a step back and to focus on some of these processes and so I actually did that and so I actually without realizing it applied some of sabin's logic early on in my real estate days now that I understand what that logic was I think now I can do that even more and do that even better but in real estate investing I think it's a very valuable way to think about it now if you're not a real estate investor if you're an owner occupant it's a little bit different right because at the end of the day if you're looking for a home to buy you do have to be focused on outcomes you can't just be like well I'm just going to focus on all these processes and then all of a sudden I'm going to find the house that's perfect for me it it's doesn't quite work that way when you're when you're buying a house for yourself but I do think that there are some shades of this logic that can be helpful so for instance I would say don't Focus so much on if you're looking for a home to move into don't Focus so much on arbitrary metrics an arbitrary metric would be I need to be in this area for this price I I get that a lot or I need to we need a house that is 1,800 Square ft in this section of Greenville and it needs to be less than $200,000 and and I'm just like which Greenville are you planning to move to is this Greenville you know Arkansas Greenville North Dakota I don't even know if there are green bills in those areas but like you know a lot of people will will throw these arbitrary goals out there that that simply aren't realistic and so part of it again I I've focused a lot on education but I encourage my clients they need to educate themselves on the market so so the simplest way to do that is just to start looking at what's on the market and a lot of my clients they've already started doing that by the time they reach out to me but I also help them with that that's something I get them set up on an MLs search and they can start seeing what's on the market with actually in their price range by the way don't look at what's on the market right now you have to track it every single day because when things are selling as quickly as they are right now what's on the market right now is really not indicative of of much of anything outside of the fact that there's just not a lot of inventory you've got to track it every single day to educate yourself you need to to be looking at you might need to look at what was on the market I've had to do this before by the way for some of my clients I've had instances where I've had clients that are like we're looking for this type of house but we're really picky we don't know if this type of house exists at our price point and it's and sometimes I'm able to just be like yeah it doesn't you're going to either have to to change your criteria a little bit or go up on the price or whatever the case may be but sometimes oftentimes if my clients are reasonable and and they're somewhat educated on the market often times it's kind of like well maybe it it depends on on some of your subjective criteria whether we can find that house or not and so I've had some instances where it's like I I basically do the search for them okay we set up the whole search here's what you want here's what you're looking for now there's not a whole lot available right now but why don't we go back six months let's look at what's come on the market the past three months or the past six months that fit your criteria but that has sold and let's look at that and see okay are you seeing any homes here that look interesting to you if you do that's good that that means that probably in the next 3 to six months we will find homes that will fit what you're looking for if you don't that's a really bad sign so that's another way a a little outside the box way that you can also kind of reverse engineer education on the market is by looking at what has sold in the past now you don't want to go too far back because you know I wouldn't go P go much farther than 6 months back because the data is going to be skewed at that point but that's one that's one way that you can educate yourself on the market another one with regard to this focusing on educating yourself and and different processes versus just arbitrary metrics is thinking through the actual Financial impact of your move so this is particularly true when a lot of people just have kind of like a number in their mind they're like I can't pay more than $250,000 for house but they don't even necessarily know like what that translates to in terms of a per month mortgage payment and they might also not know like how how do property taxes factor into that how does homeowners insurance factor into that if they are at a Crossroads where they're trying to decide whether want to rent or whether they want to buy they probably haven't extrapolated okay here's how much money I will have spent on rent versus how much money I will have spent on a mortgage and what that means in terms of my net worth 15 or 20 years from now after having done this and the fact that rent payments are going to keep going up whereas a mortgage payment stays flat and actually could go down if you pay pay it down to 20% and then get rid of your PMI that's a great way of really of starting the process of looking at a home is making sure you really understand all of that and trying to educate yourself as much as possible on all of that trying to stay up to dat on where mortgage rates are going what they are right now what they have been what that means for the future all sorts of of different things extrapolating and looking at what might happen if you wait a few years what where is the market going sorry if you hear that plane going overhead as I've said before I'm right by the airport so we get some loud noises around here but you know maybe you're like I don't know if I want to buy right now maybe I want to sit this one out and just wait and see if the market calms down and it's like okay the market might calm down a little bit but historically What would that even mean would that even mean that that you would be able to find what you're looking for in two years how much higher will prices have gone during that time how much higher will mortgage rates have gone during that time based on what we've seen historically so there's all sorts of of different things here that you can educate yourself on to focus on rather than creating just an arbitrary goal or throwing out there an arbitrary number you can put all these processes into place and then and and and start focusing on these things and and bettering yourself and and being a more educated buyer or seller so that when the time comes you have all this data in your head you know exactly what you need to do I would say as well don't focus on how challenging the market is and saying we need to be moved by X date you know I hear that a lot as well and obviously are some some deadlines we can't just throw deadlines out the window and just pretend like there are you know no deadlines but there are things that you can do rather than stressing yourself out about I got to be out of here by by this date do things to improve yourself make yourself a more attractive buyer if if you put there are way there are processes that you can do to then ensure that you're able to to meet the deadline that you want as your outcome so saving more money for a down payment for instance that makes you a more attractive buyer taking steps like I said to improve your credit Shameless plug finding a realtor that understands how to write an attractive offer these are things that pay dividends for you down the road to to ensure that you actually are able to meet those goals there it's not like these goals are just out there and it's like we just got to somehow meet them no there are things that you can do in order to set yourself up for success in Meeting those goals and you need to focus on setting yourself up for Success more than you need to focus on the goal I would say as well you don't want to focus on how your local market is changing as you prepare to sell again not necessarily an outcome but it's kind of an offshoot of this same logic don't focus on how the local market is changing as you prepared to sell a lot of people are like well if I wait a year how much more will my home have appreciated or is it possible to depreciate or you know will it become a buyer Market will become more of a seller Market blah BL blah blah no don't listen as you're getting ready to move as you're getting ready to sell your home there are so many things that you can be doing that are are going to help your home to sell regardless of what's happening in the market focus on those processes decluttering everyone everyone that is selling their home needs to declutter I don't care who you are I don't care how minimalistic you are you have clutter and you need to declutter okay that will save you a lot of stress down the road maybe have someone look at your house whether it's a realtor maybe a friend that's good with construction or whatever the case may be and just nitpick different things different things that you've just gotten used to you know we all get used to that weird you know we got that faucet that just drips all the time and it doesn't you know it takes a while for the hot water to get to it and it's a slow draining sink and all these different things and and you just get used to it but those are things that when you sell a house they they can be very stressful things they could be things that that are a turnoff to buyers they could be things that derail a transaction and so walk through your house with an open mind maybe with someone else and and start to work on those things start start improving those things you don't need to dump a ton of money into the house a lot of these things are very very cheap I find and people have just gotten used to being without them you don't want to be that person right you just go ahead and start knocking those things out and you know what if the market swings and it becomes more of a buyer's market if your house if you have done all these things to your house and improved it it's going to make your house stand out compared to the others and you're going to set yourself up more for success I always tell people look at your house and think about what are the negatives here we want to flip negatives into at least neutrals but if you can flip a negative into a positive that is awesome so if you can take that leaky faucet that old leaky faucet that's gross okay you can clean it up and make it stop leaking that turned your negative into a neutral but if you do the cheap repair of just replacing the faucet and putting a nice you know a higher end faucet that's not an expensive thing to do you just flipped a negative into a positive that that has just added way more value to your house than that faucet cost you and so you want to turn negatives into neutrals you want to turn and into positives when possible and turn neutrals into positives these are things that if you're focusing on all of these things rather than you know stressing out about about what's going to happen with the market or or what's my neighborhood doing you know that person down there they I think they're going to foreclose and they've got a crappy roof on on on their house that looks like it's about to cave in and how's that impacting my home value listen block block that out and focus on what you can be improving on your property and most of the time everything will turn out all right and that's it that is kind of where I've been thinking with all this again a more of a big picture type of thing but hopefully it gets your wheels turning how can you how can I I be more process oriented than outcome oriented if you are process oriented the outcomes will come you will get those positive outcomes at some point but there are so many things that you can do along the way I hope that was helpful for you guys let me know if you have any thoughts or any questions I am here if you need me please reach out all my contact information is in the show notes hope you guys have a great rest of your week [Music]