I’d like to share something that I started doing in 2020 that has been very useful for my real estate investment career.

You can read this entire episode here: https://bit.ly/3se26jQ

It's a very simple thing that I developed that has been very beneficial for me. It’s what I call the “Word of the Year”. It started in 2020 when I decided that that year I would focus on diversifying my investments because of the chaotic environment we were in, especially where I was in CA. My word for 2020 was “Diversification” and I decided that I had to diversify not to optimize for returns, but to decrease risks, well because the entire globe was shut down, nobody knew what would happen and that the country would print so much money. I ended up purchasing car washes, self storage, land, some crypto and some unique stocks I hadn’t thought of investing in before. The car washes and self storage did well, land we are a bit above what we invested, and the stocks initially went up and today they are down, so I am on the red at the moment. Looking back, it seems like I have achieved my goal of decreasing risks. I haven’t sold the stocks yet so that is TBD.

For 2021 I realized that I was getting overwhelmed with doing everything myself, I knew that in order to expand my business I had to start putting processes in place and delegating as much as possible, so that I could focus on the important things and the bigger vision. I decided that my word of the year for 2021 would be “Delegation”. That year I started writing down everything I was doing, step by step, creating videos, making it as fool proof as possible, and hiring virtual assistants. Not all VA’s worked out, but I ended up with a couple of them that are working out quite well. You then start to see what each of their strengths are and you move tasks accordingly. In order for this to continue going smoothly throughout the years, the processes will have to be reviewed every 6 months to 1 year in order for us to make sure that the steps are up to date and that the videos are up to date. I will delegate that job to my VA :)

Because you spend all year focused on the word of the year, it really engrains in your mind, so the words trickle down to the following years. For example in 2021 I invested in short term rentals. In 2022 I made a point looking at every task I was doing and to first ask myself: Can my VA do this? I am delegating more and more and finding more time. It can be literally anything from personal things all the way to calling the city planning department and finding out if this property is zoned for something we want to build there.

The 2022 word just came to me in April, I am a part of a book club and the book we were reading The Almanack of Naval Ravikant and one of the quotes that stuck with me was “You will get rich by giving society what it wants but does not yet know how to get. At scale.” The way I made it work as far as real estate investing is, giving investors (when I syndicate) the absolute best service ever, they are our customers from a communications perspective, to great returns, to implementing technology in our investments as much as possible, and doing that "At Scale". Doing real estate at scale. With this mindset, everything that I am doing and thinking and looking at is, How am I going to be scaling this business?

It has been wonderful, and I think it’s important to keep it a word of the year, or maybe every 6 months, but definitely not a monthly word because that may not really stay with you and you may not end up doing everything you want to get done during a month.

Add me on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/steffbold

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