Welcome to The Get Real Podcast, your high-octane boost and in the trenches tell-it-like-it-is reality therapy for personal, business and real estate investing success with your hosts, power-preneurs Angela and Ron. It’s time to get real!

Welcome to The Get Real Podcast. I am your host, Ron Phillips. My co-host she is not with us today, so we’ll excuse Angela. I’ll talk about that in just a little bit. Please subscribe if you haven’t to our podcast and GetRealEstateSuccess.com that’s GetRealEstateSuccess.com. Make sure you tell your friends about us. Don’t keep us a secret. Shoot us some love in the comments. Leave us some reviews. You can also ask some questions, suggest topics, all of that stuff at GetRealEstateSuccess.com.

Man, let’s jump into it today. I wasn’t really even going to, I was going to kind of skip this week and record when Angela got back because I really enjoy recording with her obviously, but this is a perfect opportunity to do this topic. And so we’re going to talk about, do you own a real business today?

Do you really own a business? Or do you just own a job? So for getting real, let’s ask some real questions today. And how do you know the difference? Is there a difference? Well let’s take a little bit of a talk about this. I mean, is it semantics? Do I own a business? Do I own a job? Which is it? I would submit to you there’s a pretty big difference. It’s a sizable difference.

But what is, I mean, what is it? And in some previous episodes we talked a little bit about why in the world did we even, why did we even start businesses? Or, you know, why don’t we try to strike out on our own? Why aren’t we just working for someone else? Those of us who own businesses and those of us, those of you out there who have not started your business yet, but I’ve been thinking about it and you still work for someone else before you make the leap, ask yourself that question.

Why do you want to go do this and what’s this all about? Try to figure that out. And if you’re in business, take a second step back and really try to remember why it was you started this to begin with. And if things have changed since you started, you know, why are you doing this now? Now I told you that Angela’s not here can very clearly see that if you’re watching the video and you can hear that, if you’re just on audio. Angela’s not here and the reason she’s not here is because, excuse me, she’s in Florida with her husband and with her parents. And the only reason I know her parents are there is because of Facebook. But she’s on making memories this week and she’s not here. I thought about doing this topic when she got back, but I think I’m going to split this and we’ll add a little bit to it because Angela can vary.

She can help a ton with systems and some of the things that are required to actually run a business. But I want to do the first part of this show or this episode with her not here because I want it to very clearly make a point and that point is this. If you can’t leave your business, you do not have a business, now take just a second, let that sink in. If you cannot leave your business for any length of time, go on vacation, whatever the case may be, and have your business function, have your business make money and I would submit even have your business grow while your gone then you don’t have a business. You have a job.

Now you maybe saying to yourself, well, oh well what if I don’t want to? What if I don’t want to leave my business? I mean, what if I really love my business? And, I can do my business from anywhere in the world. So when I go on vacation, I just take my phone with me I just take my computer with me I do a little bit of work and you know, I can just, I can just do it from anywhere. Like I can sit on the beach in Miami, I can go down to the Bahamas, I can go travel Europe, I can do whatever I want. And isn’t that the same thing? No, no it’s not. If we’re getting real, no, you still have a job.

Now can you perform the functions of your job from wherever in the world? Yeah, I mean I can to, you know, I’m doing this every week. I do this show from Charleston, South Carolina and Angela is in Utah and I can do it while I’m on the road because I have a portable mic that I take with me. I literally can do this show from anywhere in the world. But does that mean that and any of the other tasks in my business I can do those all from anywhere in the world, right? But does that mean that I have a business or does that mean I’m tethered in some way?

Think about it for just a second and then let’s think about it again. If you did leave when you come back, if you completely disconnect from your business when you return to your business and you can also do this with your job, you know, if you take a week off and you really take a week off, when you come back, is your life a mess?

Do you shake when you’re on the plane because you know when you get back, you’re going to have 500 emails? Everything’s going to be completely disarranged and your life is going to be hell for two weeks when you get back. If you don’t work, you know double time. If that is a reality, then you don’t have a business you have a job. Now you may be perfectly fine with having a job and that’s okay. But those of you out there who actually want a business, want to be able to return from vacation and still feel the effects of the vacation, right? The relaxation and everything like that. For those of you who want to go on vacation so that you can be charged up and fully engaged when you get back so that you can do more work.

For those of you who want that type of vacation, who really want a business that you can leave and have it grow while you’re gone. Well, let’s talk a little bit about how that actually works. I’ll never ever forget the first time that this happened for me it was a game changer. My family and I, we went to The Bahamas and I didn’t have my phone I didn’t have my computer. It was, well, if I’m getting real for the first two days, it was, it was, I mean, there is a physical connection a mental connection to your devices and to your business. And for those of us who enjoy business, for those of us who really, really have a fun building business, the disconnection from it man, it was physical for me.

Like it was really difficult for the first couple of days to actually unplug and do nothing but be on vacation. But oh my gosh, after two days, I’m here to tell you, it was phenomenal, phenomenal. And when I came back on the plane, I thought to myself, man, because every other time I’ve been on vacation, I either had to work while I was on vacation or when I got back life was hell. So I’m prepping for life is hell. And I get back, I’m on the plane and I just checked my email and my email was pretty much the way it is on a normal day in the morning. I turned my computer back off and I sat there, I took a deep breath in and I got to relax again. And I thought, oh my gosh, this actually can be done. So for those of you out there who think it can’t be done, I’m here to tell you it absolutely can be done.

So how do you do this? How does this happen? Well, number one, this cannot happen without a team. You cannot do this without a team. Team doesn’t have to be big, but you do have to have a team and they are critical to making this thing work. So for me I was able to train people on my team how to manage my emails, how to take the calls and empower them to be able to do that, to be able to respond, to be able to solve the problems, attack the challenges. But I had to do all of that before I even thought about going on vacation, right. It took me months to put the systems in place to be able to make this happen, the people and then the processes to be able to make this happen.

And that leads me to number two. Number two is systems. You have to both have teams and you have to have systems to be able to make this thing work all right. Now it’s really, really important, I think we talked about this before, but it’s really important that your team members, you allow them to be able to fail. It’s really, really important. So teach them how to do something, but then empower them and enable them to do it and bring it back, no matter whether it’s wrong or it’s right, and then empower them to continue to get better every single day. Now let me, let me give you an example of this. I was at a mastermind one, I don’t even remember which one, and somebody got up in front of the room and they said, I have not had email on my phone for a over a year.

And it is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. And I’m sitting there and I’m thinking to myself, man, that sounds, that sounds unbelievable. And I asked him, I’m like, how in the world do you do that? Because today, I mean, everything is run, so much of businesses run an email? And he said, it’s really, really easy. I just train somebody in my office to go through my emails. It took a long time for me to get comfortable that they could handle the emails properly. But eventually they did and you got to commit the time. You’ll train every day on how to respond to emails, which ones emails are critical, which ones aren’t. And it takes a while for that to be able to happen, but you have to be able to empower like sort of what I was saying.

So that day I deleted email from my phone and I said, I’m going to do this when I get back. And so I did, it took probably three months to be able to train through this. And here’s how, here’s how we did it. It’s fantastic. I had an, I have already had the team member and man, she was fantastic at everything she touched. So I knew she could do this. So what we did is every morning we sit down and we’d go through my emails I’d let her go through them and try to figure out which ones she thought were important and how she thought we should reply. Now there were some in there that she absolutely didn’t know anything about. She didn’t know how to reply. And so what I did was I had her try the best she could.

Now I did not have her reply. I had her try to figure out how to do it and what she would say and then we would have a meeting a little bit later in the day and we’d go over all of them. We did that two times a day for about a week. And then we do that one time or two times a day and we just kind of keep shrinking it down. And then I would have her, once I felt like she had it, I’d have her just do it one day and then we would review all of the emails. And then she was actually replying as if she were me. Now she had been around me for quite a while, so she already understood how I think she already understood a lot about my business and how the business functions. But this was a game changer because she now she has the ability to answer nearly every email that comes into my inbox and very rarely does she even ever ask how to do it. And that took a long time to build, to get there. But I also made it a point to not put email back on my phone and I have not had email on my phone for a long, I can’t even remember how long, at least a year and a half.

Now, some of you out there saying there is absolutely no way in the world I could ever do that and I understand. But I once thought the same thing, but now I don’t if I don’t want to, I don’t have to check my email. And at the next meeting I did something even crazier. I put a voice message on my phone that said basically if you’re calling this number and you’re not a personal friend, then call my office because basically I’m not going to answer this phone live. Now I got on both of those things for a couple of weeks afterwards. I got serious push back, especially on the phone one. I did tell them if we’re, if we’re currently doing business, you can send me a text now that does a couple of things. When you put a voicemail on your phone that says that all the time, it forces people to send you a text.

If I’m on vacation, my on my auto reply text says I’m out you can’t get ahold of me. You need to call my office. Which is fantastic, right? But if I’m still in town, it people who are currently doing business with that I want to talk to, those people can text me, I know they need me and then I can give them a call. This was also a game changer for me, okay. Because it allowed me to be able to push all of the calls that weren’t, not critical to my office, and that did two things. It freed me up. But in addition to that, it forced all of my team members to be able to step up and take care of some of these things that normally, in the past they wouldn’t have taken care of. I would have taken care of, right?

So team and you can have the right team, but if you don’t empower your team members to go out there and make this happen, it will not happen, all right? That means you have to get out of your own way and you’re going to have to let people fail. Now I keep saying that, but it doesn’t mean that you need to just stand by and watch people fail over and over and over again. It means that you’re going to have to empower them to do it and if they fail because they will, if they fail, then you come back in and you teach, you instruct and then you empower them to do it again all right? Because we all failed when we were learning how to do this business. So it’s inevitable that the people who are, that we’re trying to teach how to do this are also going to fail, right?

But we have to be able to understand that and be okay with it. Now once you’ve got the team, once you’ve got the systems built, and I think once Angela gets back, we’ll do another episode and we’ll do a whole segment on systems and how this works and team and structure and things like that from my business. And of course that’s not going to apply directly to your business, but I think it will apply in a lot of ways and we can go a little bit more in depth.

So team number one, number two, number three, let go and let your team handle things, okay. Which is really going to be difficult for the business owners out there, okay. But this is kind of like, you know, we just got done with football a little while ago. This is where the two minute drill in football comes in, right? This is where the hurry up offense comes in. In other words, they don’t need you anymore in their helmet. So who’s your quarterback and can you trust them to run the game in the last two minutes on a hurry up offense? Can you? Have they practiced the plays? Have they practiced the drills so that they can play without the calls? No calls in the helmet. Quarterback is going to call the game on his own or her own. And is your quarterback pro bowl material?

Are they? Can they make it happen? And if they can’t, it’s likely not their fault it’s your fault, because you didn’t let go and let your team start to handle things on their own all right? And you got to do that before you leave town, okay? That you have to know that they can do this. Now, number four is it’s also just as critical and it’s really difficult for business owners. It’s really difficult and that is you’ve got to allow yourself to take time off. Now you may be saying to yourself, goodness, if I had a team like that, you wouldn’t have to allow me to take time, I’d be taking time off all the time. And I’m going to suggest to you that that’s not true. Most business owners that I know really enjoy business and it’s really difficult to actually 100% disconnect from your business.

So for some of you, it will need to be forced time off. You will have to force yourself to do it, which means you probably have to not take a computer and if you take a phone, go out of the country somewhere in then don’t buy the plan. You know the special plan that makes it so that it doesn’t, you know, completely like the bill is not ginormous when you get back, right? Don’t buy the plan. Just take your, take your phone, leave it on airplane mode and use it for camera or better yet, don’t take your phone, have somebody else in the family take a phone for emergencies and such and then just get a camera, okay. But for some of you out there, you’re going to have to have a forced vacation. And man, I mean for me the first time, like I told you for the first couple of it was it was crazy.

It was very difficult for me to disconnect. And just, you need to push through it. Do not call the office and ask if everything is okay. Do not get on your email and check and make sure somebody’s in there doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Disconnect, have an actual vacation. Number five is just as important, if not more important. Now I want you to listen to this. There are a lot of business owners out there who say that they love their team but don’t act like they love their team.

Now hear me out on this. This is really, really important. You’ve got to allow your team the same courtesy. Now what I mean by that? That means if when they go on vacation and you can still call them and expect them to do something for you, are they really on vacation? Are you a do what I say and not what I do, leader? Because if you are, then you are not a leader. So you’ve got to allow your team members to disconnect as well. And that means that you’ve got to cross train members on your team to perform the functions of every team member so that when your team members go on vacation, they can actually and literally go on vacation and unplug the just the way I just explained to you, you need to unplug because they need that as well. And if your team members are good, they deserve it as well.

So unless you’re a jerk and unless you are not a leader, because a true leader teaches everyone on their team to become leaders themselves. So unless you’re not a leader, this is really, really important. And if you don’t feel about your team the way that I’m describing, then you really need to go look in the mirror and find out what’s wrong with yourself. Maybe you got the wrong team members, but who’s fault is that? You should be able to feel exactly the same about your team members as you feel about yourself. They need the vacation as well.

So why did I choose to do this episode without Angela? Because she is on vacation and the only interaction that she and I will have is on Facebook when I like her pictures of whatever it is that she’s doing while she’s on vacation, if she chooses to post them. And that’s it. So recap really quick. Do you have a business? Is it really a business or is it a job? Now you know how to tell the difference, okay? And if you don’t, do you want one? And if you do, how do you get there? I’ve given you five steps.

Team, Systems, let go and let people fail. Allow yourself to take time off and then allow your team the same courtesy critical pieces to owning a real business. Now if you like our show, please give us a like, give us some comments, share with everyone that you know you can get to and subscribe to our podcast on. GetRealEstateSuccess.com. If you want to know or learn about something specific to business, real estate, success in life, leave us some comments at get RealEstateSuccess.com. Really appreciate you guys out there. And until next time, get real folks.

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