- Listen to me.
If you don't do this one, you're going to be in trouble.
you're gonna be so disruptable,
you are going to have some problems.
Now, why?
(upbeat music)
Hey, welcome to the #TomFerryShow.
I wanna go back in time just a moment.
August of last year,
we had thousands of people together in a room
and 20,000 on our live cast
at this event we do called the Success Summit.
Now, why do I bring that up?
My opening speech, what I shared with the audience,
that I felt that the vast majority of them
were one of three of the Three Little Pigs.
Now, you all remember that wonderful little fable,
that wonderful little story about the Three Little Pigs
that leave their mom's house,
and they go out to set their way.
One, being rather lazy, builds their house out of hay.
Another one, being a little more industrialist,
builds their house out of sticks,
but both of them did it very quickly,
and we both know what happened to them.
And of course, the last little pig took his time
and built his business, oh, his house,
out of bricks.
What I did by sharing that metaphor
was have everybody reflect and look at their own business.
Where in your business are you made of hay,
where are you made out of sticks,
and where are you made out of bricks,
and then, what are we gonna do
to make sure that going into a new economy,
a new market, a new cycle,
that your business was undisruptable?
Well, I can tell you of the eight points,
I got a lot of positive feedback,
a lot of DMs and private messages,
and I did a short little video on a few of them,
you know, right back in September after the summit.
Today, I wanna drive home the one thing
out of all of them
that if you and I were sitting together one-on-one,
I would literally, I'd grab you by the jacket,
I'd give you a giant hug and say, listen to me.
If you don't do this one, you're gonna be in trouble.
You're gonna be so disruptable,
you are going to have some problems.
Now, why?
Because everything in the world changes.
Markets change, economies shift.
I'm not saying that the world's gonna fall apart,
and yet, you've heard me talk about,
with Steve Harney and others,
that whether it's 2020 or 2021 or 2022,
we know as much as the sun's gonna go up
and the sun's gonna go down,
that we will have another time in our world
where things slow down in the economy.
The question is, knowing what I know now,
knowing what I know as a business coach,
as an entrepreneur,
as someone that started multiple businesses
and have tens of thousands of people around the world,
what would I ask you to do?
It was point number two, stockpile cash.
Stockpile cash.
Now you might be saying, wait a minute, Tom!
I'm not making enough money to stockpile cash!
I'm in the growth stage
where I'm reinvesting in my business!
Listen, I get it all.
I wrote down eight different things I want you to consider.
Eight different requests that I would make
as your friend, as your coach, as your advisor,
someone that you tune into on a weekly basis
for insights to keep moving your business forward.
There's eight different things you can do.
Some are relatable to the person
that's building their business.
Some, you're already a cash cow, what should you do?
Some, things are a little bit shaky.
What are some adjustments you can make?
We're talking about your money,
and we're talking about your security,
and we're talking about your stability,
so check it out.
The point that I said to everybody is, winter is coming.
Winter is coming!
Now, we don't know if it's Tuesday
or if it's Tuesday in 2021, sometime in September,
but we know it's coming, so what should we do?
I wrote down eight things.
Number one,
you wanna be top-line revenue-focused.
You wanna be top-line revenue-focused, what does that mean?
On a daily, weekly, monthly basis,
I want you thinking about how much money
am I bringing in today, this week, this month,
compared to what I did last year?
You know, your year-over-year performance.
I don't want you just thinking about, for example,
is my marketing getting going out,
which, that's important.
I want you thinking about how many open escrows,
how many pending sales,
how much business am I closing.
I don't care what business that you're in.
You know the leading and lagging indicator
of closed business.
That's where you need to be focused,
every day, getting up and saying to yourself,
what am I going to do today
to move the needle on revenue?
How can I attract more clients,
how can I convert more clients,
how can I bring more value to the marketplace
and get the rewards because of it?
The number one thing is being revenue-focused.
Number two,
I said you gotta be ruthless on your ROI results.
So, look,
we make investments every day inside our business,
both investments of our time, our money,
our resources, et cetera.
I run ads on Facebook.
I'm sure you do the same.
Do you have a ruthless return on investment focus
with your Facebook ads?
If you're investing in any online platform
in the real estate space,
Zillow, Trulia, Realtor, HomeLight, whatever,
whatever you invest in.
I don't think you can actually invest in HomeLight,
but you know what I mean.
Do you have a ruthless focus on,
if I invest this dollar,
I expect $4 back, $5 back, $2 back, $20 back?
If you do, guess what happens.
You treat every lead better, you're much more focused,
you're much more responsive,
you do whatever it takes
to turn that dollar into $2, $5, $10, $100.
It's all about being ROI-focused,
which means I'm not just gonna spend money freely and say,
well, you know,
if I just get one more deal from them, it's gonna work out!
That is stupid thinking in an environment
where you probably don't have
the type of savings and security that you want.
You need to be thinking,
if I do this, I want five deals, 10 deals, 15 deals.
That's the ROI focus.
You should have everything you're spending your money on,
what's my ROI, what's my ROI, what's my ROI?
You do that, my friend,
your cash is gonna go up, your savings is gonna go up,
your concentration's gonna go up,
and your business is going to grow.
Number three, you ready?
Along those same veins, I wrote down,
never give up on leads.
If you're really, really committed to stockpiling cash,
you're not gonna have a hot, motivated customer
and reach out to 'em three times and forget it.
No, you're going to reach out,
as the old, cliche line says, until they buy or die.
'Til they buy or die,
that level of consistency, perseverance,
that is what's required
if you wanna go the extra mile
and make the additional money
so you can stockpile the cash
so you are in a great place when winter shows up.
Now, number four,
a little more tactical regarding just your life and money.
Start living off less.
At the summit, I actually said, "Stop buying dumb shit."
Yes, that's exactly right.
I said, "The next time you go to San Diego
"or wherever you go on vacation,
"don't go into Starbucks and buy a stupid cup
"that says San Diego on it."
Now, I'm using that as a metaphor.
It doesn't mean that I dislike coffee cups or San Diego.
- Go (bleep) yourself, San Diego.
- But $2 here, $4 there,
$10 here, 50 bucks there, $30 there,
that adds up, and then guess what?
You wake up and you go, I have no money, right?
I'm working all the time
and I've got nothing to show for it.
A lot of it is because of emotions, right?
You're like, I deserve it, right?
I worked hard yesterday for an hour,
so I should be able to do this!
I'm telling you right now,
if I was your coach, I would literally tell you
how many times you go out for dinner, do it less.
Make your own lunch if you must.
Be a little more frugal.
Learn to live off less so you can do number five,
which is save more.
Save more.
Do you really need to get the next iPhone?
Is the current one working okay?
We just keep spending and spending
and spending and spending,
and then guess what happens?
When the market adjusts a little bit,
all of a sudden, you're in trouble.
I want you to be in a position
where your financial fortress is made out of bricks,
not sticks, and definitely not hay.
Do a little exercise.
Go through your credit card statement the last 120 days
and look at all the dumb shit you've bought.
Look at all the stupid things you put money on.
Look and see, where's my credit card being charged
for three gym memberships,
and you don't even go to the gym anymore.
We know this is a critical exercise
because awareness is the first step of change.
The moment you become aware that, you know what,
I'm kind of a shopaholic,
or when I have a good day, I buy something,
and when I have a bad day, I buy something.
I'm just someone that just buys stuff all the time!
You know what?
I love Amazon.
Amazon can be addicting for some people.
I know I'm going a little nutty here,
but I hope you get where my heart is
and where my head is.
We're only a decade and a year or two
since the global financial crisis.
I remember that deeply.
I remember watching friends
who had overleveraged, overspent,
didn't save their money,
get completely pummeled by the market,
good human beings that lost their houses,
that lost their riches, that lost their jobs.
Now, no one is expecting us to go back to that situation.
I've talked about it, Steve Harney's talked about it.
Everybody is saying the same thing.
But you know what?
The person that lives like this financially,
when a little adjustment occurs,
suddenly they're underwater,
and I don't want that to be you.
So, if you hear my passion and my intensity,
if I sound a little more,
I don't know, intense,
it's 'cause I don't want you to do that.
Does that make sense?
So, number five is save more money.
Pay yourself first, right?
It's biblical, you with me?
Take care of yourself first.
10% of every check, 15% of every check,
20% of every check, whatever it takes,
live off less, have more cash,
and you will laugh all the way to the bank, all right?
Number six, you ready?
Now is the time to consolidate all stupid debt.
Go to your bank, sit down, and say,
"I have all this stupid debt.
"I'm looking for a consolidation loan.
"What do you recommend?"
Something with low interest rates, favorable terms,
and then, you know what you do?
You do exactly what my wife and I did
when we first got married, my goodness, over 25 years ago.
We put on our bathroom mirror credit card debt,
line of credit,
all these things that in the early status
of our lives together, right,
that we did, you know?
Okay, too much on this Visa, too much on that MasterCard.
She was in the real estate business at that time,
she's like, "Oh my gosh,
"I got this line of credit that I always use,
"it's revolving, that I've kind of just been using
"and not focusing on paying off."
We said, "Let's set an intention to pay it all off."
And you know what?
There's just something inspiring
about watching $10,000 in credit card debt
go down to seven, then go down to five,
then go down to four, then go down to three,
then go down to two, then go down to nothing.
You with me?
And all of a sudden, (sighs)
you sleep better at night.
You know what I'm talking about?
Consolidate it and pay it off.
I've had people say to me before
on my Instagram Ask Me Anything,
"Tom, how do you stay motivated, what you recommend?"
And I'm like, "Look at your financial life!
"That would scare a lot of people!"
You with me on this?
You're not sitting on six to eight months of savings
for your entire business and your life.
You don't have the investments that you want.
You don't have the cash that you want,
and you're telling me you don't wanna make phone calls?
Whack!
You with me on this?
Wake up!
This is the time.
Winter is coming.
If you don't adjust now,
how many more people do you need to talk to
during seven, eight, nine, 10,
or I can go back and say 2001, 2002, right?
During the post-stock-market Internet bubble,
when all of that stuff happened,
a whole bunch of people
that were totally overleveraged
and not doing something with their money got wiped out.
Let's not be a statistic.
And if we're gonna be,
let's be the one where they say,
I wanna be like that gal,
financially stable, smart with her money,
very intelligent, ROI-focused,
driven on top-line revenue, lives below her means,
saves her money, yeah, baby!
You with me on this?
All right, number seven, very important.
Get your lines of credit in order today with your banks.
Get your lines of credit in order with your banks.
I don't care if it's a $5000 line of credit
or a $5 million line of credit.
When you need the money,
no one wants to give it to you at favorable terms
when you need the money.
When you don't need the money,
everybody wants to give you a loan at favorable terms.
That's the way it works.
I gotta tell you,
I got two of my guys inside the room as I'm filming this.
The number of people that have reached out to me, Mark,
and said that one point, right?
I paid off my stupid debt, they consolidated it.
I started to live off less,
I was really being mindful,
I went through all my credit card statements
I looked for all the stupid places
where I'm spending my money,
I got a little more financially sound,
but then I went into my bank and said,
"I'd like to get a line of credit,"
and they're like, "No problem!"
Prime plus a point, it was just ridiculous,
the terms that you get when you don't need the cash.
But boy, when you need the cash, the vultures come out.
You know what I'm talking about?
So get your line of credit in order.
Do what you gotta do.
I'm not saying use it!
I'm saying, just have it.
And then the last one, number eight.
If I was in your position,
in your world, in your business,
I would be figuring out right now,
who are going to be my investors for 2020,
2021, 2022, 2023,
and I'd start lining them up now,
'cause what we know is this.
The world is super attracted,
especially to the real estate space,
the mortgage space, the title space,
the insurance space.
Small business around the world, everybody's interested,
and you know what?
There's a lot of cash right now floating around
where people are looking to make good investments
into smart businesses,
and whether that's buying real estate
or investing in you,
I'd be finding your investors now
so you got 'em when you don't need 'em,
just like the banks.
Make sense?
All right.
I know I covered a lot of ground,
and I know it was rather intense.
I can't wait to read the comments.
I think this is gonna be one of those videos
you might wanna have your spouse watch,
your adult children watch, your friends watch.
This would be a very interesting sales meeting
by a sales manager, a sales leader,
who is passionate and compassionate and empathetic
and loves their sales team,
'cause they want them to be financially stable.
Does that make sense?
So, give me some comments, share this video.
Remember always, your strategy matters,
and now more than ever,
the way you manage your money
is the difference between a good winter and a bad winter,
being on a snowboard and having fun
and being freezing cold outside.
The choice is yours.
Hey, thanks so much for watching.
If you want more of this,
make sure you subscribe to our channel.
(upbeat music)
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