5 Lessons to Uplevel Your REI Business

speaker 0:   0:00
you're listening to the flip houses like a girl podcast, where we educate, empower and celebrate everyday women who are facing their fears, juggling family and business, embracing their awesomeness and wholeheartedly chasing their dream of flipping houses. Each episode delivers honest to goodness, tools, tips and strategies you can implement today to get closer to your first or next successful house flip. Here's your spiky haired, breakfast taco loving host, house flipping coach Debbie DeBerry.  Brace yourselves, folks. Debbie's got a Sinus infection again. I sound like I smoked seriously like 472 cigarettes in just the last, I don't know. Five minutes. Oh, my gosh, My chest feels like it, too, if we're being honest. So Hey, y'all, thank you for tuning in today, and I just wanted to say that I am going to spare you from this voice of mine and I'm going  to play you the audio of one of the most popular videos that I have out there. So you're going to hear five of my biggest lessons over my entrepreneurial career and specifically the flipping houses part, and I'm even going to spare you from my voice and I'm not going to share a listener Shout out today which won't want That's no fun to one of my favorite parts. Anyway, the more I talk the more my throat wants to cough. So I'm going to spare you guys. And I'm hoping fingers crossed that next week my voice is back. All right, you guys, here we go. So my five biggest lessons now, I've been an entrepreneur since I graduated from grad school, which was in 2000. So I've always been self employed, right? So at this point, I'm pretty much unemployable. I'm pretty sure nobody would hire me since I've never been employed by anybody other than myself. But that's that I've obviously learned a ton of stuff being an entrepreneur. And when it comes to flipping houses specifically because it's such a male dominated industry, I had to learn. It's a very specific things around navigating all of that, being a female. Now, a couple of those are that Well, the 1st 1 being learning to speak up and totally own my power because I can't tell you my handy dandy notes speak up casting it and oh, my father. All right, you there are hundreds of times over the last 13. Well, 16 years since I've been in real estate that I have been completely ignored in the aisles of Home Depot and Lowe's and other lumber stores around here. I could just stand there and wait to be helped, right? I could get all pissed off, storm out. But either way, either of those options if I choose those, I'm not getting what I want. And I'm totally getting my power away to someone else through that. So that's just a very minor example off having to learn how to speak up and totally in my power that goes from competence. And that comes from practice. And initially, it comes from totally faking it. Yep. You are going to have that whole cliche of baking it until you make it. It is totally they. You absolutely will have to take certain things until you actually feel those certain Bates. All right. And the cool thing about that is that you trick yourself into believing it. Okay? Number to get rid of bad contractors and vendors quickly. All right. So waiting for them to finish will always Well, hold on. I don't like to use absolutes the vast majority of the time. It will take longer and cause more anxiety and stress and worry. Then, if you just get rid of the bad performers right away, okay? And I know it sounds Donte, and it's going to feel totally daunting. If you're in the middle of a project and a contractor or a vendor, stop showing up or really just starts delaying things, consistently delaying things and you can't make it stop and you can't make the project continue. You're gonna have to learn to get rid of people, and it doesn't have to be, and you don't have to be a jerk about it. It's a business I geared to you that men don't feel like jerks. When they get rid of people who aren't performing properly on their job sites, they don't feel bad. Okay, it's in business. So I had to interview me probably six years to really take that on and really start getting rid of people who weren't performing because I thought I don't want to start over. Why would I want to start over with somebody else? What if they don't show up? I, I promised, had Based on my experience, it has always led to better outcomes when I've just gotten rid of the people who didn't show up or stop showing up or, uh, just really ghosted me, right. It doesn't happen often, but it has happened. Just get rid of people. Just get rid of the bad vendors and contractors. It is a okay. And that's what running a business looks like sometimes getting rid of the people who are holding you back. Okay. All right. Number three, commit to a decision and move on. Guys, this was so hard for some people Make a decision. Look, if you don't make a decision, that is just as much making a decision as making a decision, okay? No, that's supercomputing. If you don't make a decision, you're deciding not to decide. And that is 100% a decision. So what? Make a decision and move on. If it was the wrong decision, make another one. Pivot, recalibrate and move on. You've got to be agile and flexible. You can't be super rigid And how things were gonna go because things will not go the way you want them to all the time. Road bump comes up. Okay. Great. Recalibrate. Something happens. Recalibrate. So they're gonna go your way. Recalibrate. You have to be able to do that. I can't stress that enough and then move on. You can't dwell on things like Well, what if I had done this or if only I had done this? You cannot do that. You could only control the things right here and now. Okay, So make a decision and move on. If you need to make another decision. Fine. Make another decision and move on. Okay. It's really simple. Okay. All right. Number four don't take things too seriously. Hi. Get this angle right back. Don't take things too seriously, man. Oh, man. Oh, man. This is a big one for me. Oh, fighting years of professionalism on and not wanting to look foolish and worrying so much about what other people think about me. The don't take things too seriously. One is huge for me. I have decided, probably since 2014 when my mom passed away suddenly that unless it's death or significant illness or injury, then all of it is small stuff and I just can't sweat. Otherwise, if we do sweat all of those little bitty things. We're going to end up huge balls of nerves and stress and anxiety and worry, and it doesn't look good on anyone. And it doesn't help us get to where we want to go. I had to learn to laugh at myself, and now I'm the 1st 1 to do so. I screw up and I laughed at myself all the time. And it's a trait that I am trying to really instill in my son because I see those perfectionist tendencies surfacing with him. He's nine and it terrifies me. It really does. I want him to just laugh about it and move line. It's just like making a decision and moving on. Just lack weren't allowed yourself be the 1st 1 to do so and then move on. Okay, Number five. This is so big. None of this is about me. None of what I do is about me, my entire wife and business. All of my business is shifted when I really, really got this, because none of what I do is about May. It's about helping the cellar and making it a win win situation. It's about the end buyer It's about the community. It's about my family. None of this is about me, though, really. When I finally got that and I got out of my own way and started approaching, everything about my business is in my wife as How can I best serve? How can I best serve the summers? How can I best serve my end buyers? How can I best serve my community? How can I best serve my family? How can I best serve my friends? How can I best or anyone? I come into contact with everything, came into focus and became so much lighter. All right, so there you have it. Five of my biggest lessons that I've learned throughout my entrepreneurial life. All right, if you aren't already a member of our free Facebook group, go join us. The Facebook group is called Women Flipping Houses, so check us out, find us and request to join. It's an awesome community, incredibly supportive and encouraging, and it's a safe bubble from all the negativity that's out there. Also, registration is open for the 2020 version of first flip done right, so if you are sick of being on the sideline sick of not taking action or maybe sick of taking action but not making any progress. That's a thing, too, if you want some help. If you want an incredible support system along with the step by step processes that you need to take, go to first flip done right dot com. Alright, check out the programs that we have available for this year and let's do this. Okay, you guys, you know what I like to say? Go out there, flip houses like a girl, leave people and places better than you find them and make it a great day by all.