I had to take a couple minutes out of my crazy day to tell you a bit of good news (for me anyway!).On Tuesday I found out that I won a paid trip to Orlando to a week long business building event put on by Rich Schefren.

If you haven’t heard of Rich, he’s one of the top business building experts in the world.

So… this will be a great opportunity for me to build my businesses and share my new knowledge w/ you.

This conference for the whole 7 days is $8,500… but somehow I pulled one out of my @$$ and won this little contest.

The Reason I Tell You About This

So, why the heck would I tell you about this trip I won?

2 reasons:

1. This is a big deal… and I just couldn’t NOT share it.
2. It’s a lesson in success and life

#1 is obvious…

… but what about #2? How is this a lesson for you to learn from?

Here’s how…

For the past 5 or 6 months I’ve been wanting to go to an elite business building conference like this to build my businesses past where they are now.

And…

For 5 or 6 months there have been some great conferences that I’ve really looked at going to… but they are all in the $6k and up range… which is a pretty penny!

But, in almost all of these event “launches” there have been contests where they give away a pass to a lucky person.

In each and every one of those little contests it was either create a video of why you deserve the trip… or write an article on “why I deserve to be the VIP at this event”.

And…

In each and every one of these contests I planned out how I would win, did my best at creating a pursuasive piece, and got it out there.

What Happened?

Well…

For the first 5 or 6 little contests I entered in…

I CAME UP EMPTY HANDED.

I spent all of that time for nothing (at least most people would have that attitude).

With each and every failure I studied the entries of the winners carefully to find out what made those entries stand out above the rest.

With each and every entry I made, I added in the elements that I picked up from the winners of the previous contests.

(hold on here… this does apply to you and your success)

This last contest (the one that I won), I used what I had learned in all of my failures
and from what I had learned from the previous winners.

Some of what I learned was:

• You have to have a unique selling proposition for why they should pick you above everyone else.
• I learned that of the thousands of people who knew about the contests, usually between 50 and 100 people would enter (those are great odds!)
• Be honest and tell a story. Don’t try to impress people… just tell your story and your honesty will come through.

And most of all what I have learned over the
years is…

** That every failure only means you are getting
closer to success.

Yep, each time I didn’t win… I knew my turn was just around the corner.

How does this apply to you and your real estate investing success?

These little lessons apply to everyone on earth.

The funny thing is that most people know about these little “tips” already… but just don’t
apply them to their own lives.

Why?

Who knows. It doesn’t make sense to me.

It’s like there is a $100 bill on the table in front of you and all you have to do to get it is reach out and grab it…

… but your mind starts to play tricks on you and instill fears in you that aren’t
real.

• This $100 bill might be fake
• It’s probably someone elses anyway
• I’ve never gotten this kind of thing in the past, so why would I now?
• I’m not sure what I would do w/ the $100 if I had it

Ya, the $100 bill example is a bit more simple than our life decisions… but really it’s the same principle.

Most people know exactly what has to be done to reach your goals… but for some reason false fears and doubts creep into our minds and keep us from taking action and following through.

So, here are the big lessons that you can take away from my little $8,500 win this past week:

1. You can’t win if you don’t give yourself a shot

• In this last competition my statistical odds of winning were 1/70. In actuality they were much better because my entry wasn’t this shot in the dark. It was built from my past failures and on the successes of previous winners entries I studied (don’t recreate the wheel).

2. Failure is just your chance to iron out the kinks and shorten your learning curve.

• Can you imagine where this world would be if everyone gave up after their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th failure? We’d still be in the stoneage! Like I said, I failed 5 times before I finally won.

3. Success isn’t an accident… you just have to put in enough effort to find your groove.

• With The REI Brain I toiled away with less than 100 visitors a day for over a year. It would have been easy to quit. But, now our little site brings in a good amount of traffic, we are building a new website, and it is starting to generate a bit of $ for me to pay for the costs finally. I found my groove… after a year of almost no results.

4. When you visualize success, and really believe you can do something… it’s gonna happen.

• This sounds corney… but after I wrote the article, the whole week I for some reason felt like I would be heading to Orlando tomorrow. I visualized myself meeting fellow entrepreneurs, flying to Orlando, sitting in the seminars, etc. I had won half the battle before they ever picked me as the winner.

5. Most of all, I look at life and business a bit differently than most people.

• This conference is worth well over the $8,500 people are paying… but truthfully I wasn’t prepared to fork over that much right now.So, just like w/ REI you have to use your current resources to make things happen. For me, I poured a ton of effort and research into winning this contest. I think I’m a decent writer… and was confident that I could win my way to the conference (which I did).Most people would make the excuse of not having the resources to go (time, mo.ney, smarts, etc).That’s just a poor excuse.It’s not the resources you have, but your resourcefulness… that makes or breaks you.

  Resourcefulness means using what you have to make happen what you want. Time, mon.ey, smarts, education, etc. are just excuses and means that you aren’t being resourceful with what you already have.

Anyhow, this went way longer than I wanted.

But, I feel it’s important for people to realize that there’s a whole lot more to REI and success than just learning techniques.

You need to learn how to be successful first… then you can begin applying the techniques.

So, are you stuck in the “resources” mindset or have you begun to grasp that your “resourcefulness” is by far more important that the resources you have?

Either way, I’m going to be in sunny Orlando starting this Friday and will be there through
Saturday of next week… and I didn’t ever for a second think that my resources would stop me from getting there.

Hey, keep your questions coming and get to action today.

People who use what they already know are action takers and successful…

People who keep learning and never use what they learn are called librarians…

Are you a librarian?

Cheers,

P.S. – I’ve had some readers mention they would love teleseminars on certain topics.

What do you want to learn about REI, life, or builing your REI biz? Let me know.

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• We’re gettin’ out the hammers and saws…
• #2 Most Important Element to Real Estate Investing Success…

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