Leap In Order To Look

Welcome back to another episode of Housing Literacy with host Matt Guarino, empowering dreams through Real Estate.

In this episode, Matt dives in to the power of MINDSET. One of the most important and essential Mindsets that we need to adopt is to take calculated risks in the pursuit of our biggest dreams and STOP talking ourselves out of it and putting off taking a first step because we believe we think about it more and take more time before we leap. Matt would say that:

We need to LEAP in order to look and fully engage in every moment in our lives.

Today, Matt is going to show exactly how he used this mindset in his personal life and how it applies to HOUSING LITERACY and using real estate to become the foundation to living a powerful life.

This key concept of living with BOLDNESS and is centered on the idea from JFK that said:

There are risks and costs to action but they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction.

The idea is that we can’t test our courage passively and casually. At some point and the moment is NOW…we need to decide that our future can be bigger than our past and that we can live our biggest lives but we need to start right where we are with what we have right now.

If you have any questions reach out to Matt directly at 303-885-1644. www.powerfulhomes.org

As always we provide relevant resources below:

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Housing Literacy Podcast with host Matt Matt Guarino, founder of Powerful Homes. That's mission is to empower dreams through home ownership. We're here to help. We're going to do this together and now Matt Matt Guarino.

Hey guys welcome back. My name is Matt Guarino. I'm the founder of Powerful Homes and the host of this podcast, which focuses on housing literacy and the vision of Powerful Homes is to empower dreams through home ownership. And specifically, our mission is to help 10,000 people in the next 10 years buy their first home or the first investment property and create a solid foundation and platform for their lives. So again, those of you are returning welcome back. So glad you're here. And for those of you, if this is your first time, just a couple of ground rules, one, this is a judgment free zone. I'm here and doing this specifically for the listeners so that I can hopefully bring you guys some value and give you some the mindset. And then some tactics, some specific tactics that you can use right away in your life to empower your dreams through real estate.

So today's topic I'm very excited about. I'd probably say once a day, not many, many times a day, is that to look at things in the mindset of leaping in order to look. Sounds like a little spin on a thing we've heard a lot of times. But basically the concept is in order to make our biggest dreams happen, in order for us to go for it in our lives, you know, we have to stop talking ourselves out of it. We have to stop kind of that voice, wherever that came from in our head to be really careful and look before you leap. So basically, one of the things that it goes back to a quote from JFK, that it says that there are risks and costs to action, but they're far less than the long term risks of comfortable inaction. So think about that; leaping in order to look is basically saying, yes, there's going to be some risks. There's going to be some tough things to overcome, but it's far less risky to do that in our lives than to kind of wait and wait and wait. And then tomorrow never comes and we never do anything about it.

So what I'm going to do today is reuse that JFK quote, the idea that action informed strategy versus the idea that thinking and thinking and taking, you know, having strategy one day will inform our actions. So flip it around. So we're going to go over a few different things. And what I'm going to do is talk about things in my personal life that I've done to kind of show this. One of the things on this podcast also is that everything I'm talking to you about, I've done, and I'm just going to put it out there and hopefully it some value for you. But to prove that I'm not just regurgitating something I've read or kind of assembling things from websites and throwing it over the wall to you. I've done all these things and again, hopefully they inspire you and give you some insight as to the things you might be able to do.

So the whole idea is that we are enough and now's the time and we can do this so we can leap in order to look. So in my personal life, going back to, I'll give you the personal story. And then I'll kind of weave in the housing literacy, the tactics that we can use with real estate. So when I was younger, I was raised in a very conservative family that said that risk in general, wasn't a good idea. Play it safe, be very careful, get a job as an employee. There's nothing wrong with that, but it was get a solid job as an employee. I remember asking my dad when I was younger, you know, saying, Hey, what do you think I should do? And he said well, I'd go into medicine, law or accounting. Then I asked him, is that all they have? So, you know, I am a young man, I wanted to please my dad on some level xo I went into accounting. And I also, one of my five sisters had a boyfriend at the time and he was a CPA. And I think I was 13 or 14 years old and he was a cool guy. So between what my dad said and, you know, trying to emulate this cool guy in my life I just decided to be a CPA. I really had no idea what that job entailed. I had no idea who I'd be working with or what it was, but I just decided to do it.

And so then there I was, I went through college and then I went through my early twenties doing that work. Got married and basically at that time started having this tension and I really wasn't happy with my job. I was happy with everything in my life, except for that. And I was even working for one of the best firms in the world, so I shouldn't have been unhappy. Does anybody ever have that feeling where you're doing something and thinking like, how did I get here and what do I do now? So going back to leaping in order to look right. So the first thing I would say, ask yourself, well, there's three things; ask yourself when, ask for help and ask great questions.

So the first thing was asking yourself when., So the whole notion of leaping in order to look, it's kind of a timing thing, right? Do I leap now or do I wait? And I would say that the biggest thing about that is the time is always now. I'm in my early fifties and it doesn't get easier. You don't ever kit more time. You don't ever lose, for me anyway, lose that 20 pounds or read that magical book that is going to solve it all. So now you can have a perfect try with nothing else, nothing going ever wrong. So part of the ask yourself when, is flipping it because we hear so often right now, especially when we're younger, Hey, you got to find your purpose, find your, why, find your big why. What if you don't know your big why? What if you just don't know it? And again, this whole podcast today is about leaping in order to look, not looking in order to leap or being careful.

So I think that, you know, the wind is even more important than why. What do I mean by that? I mean that in my twenties, I had some tension, that friction around the job I didn't like. I knew that I couldn't wait any longer and I didn't want to wait any longer. I had two young kids at the time and that was a real spark for me. I was looking at my kids saying, Oh my gosh, I'm kind of miserable. And I don't want them to catch that vibe from me that I don't like my job or I'm unhappy. So the first thing is to ask yourself when, and I always would invite you to think about now, it doesn't get easier. There's no better time than now. I'm not saying overturn your whole life and you have a big upheaval of everything and I'm not saying it'd be reckless. I'm not saying to quit a job and go do something. I'm saying, start taking the action, jump in and start making it happen.

So I decided it was then, you know, in my late twenties. So the next thing is to ask for help. So ask yourself when and ask for help. So what I did at that time is I got a career counselor. It's a lot different than today with the internet that we have now, and you can just get answers like that. So I found a career counselor, her name was Kay Prince. She put me through a battery of tests and she said, no wonder why you're not happy in you have tension and friction with your careers, that you should be an entrepreneur. You should run your own business, or you should be in sales at the very least working with people. So I said, okay, so asking for help. And I said, well, what do you think I should do? She's like, well maybe take a next step. So the last thing I think you need to do in to leap in order to look, is to ask great questions.

So I asked Kay Prince, and we got these, these results that said, I should do something else. And I knew the time was then. So what I exactly did is I joined the South Metro Chamber of Commerce. I was I was living in New York at the time, I was working in this corporate job. And you know, when you ask great questions, you should think we know that everything you need to know about the next step in your life, somebody else already knows it, and is an expert at it. So think about that again. Let me say that again. Everything we want to do most likely somebody's done. So now we just have to think of some great questions and think of the people. So what I did is I joined the South Metro Chamber of Commerce that had about 350 people in it. I wasn't even living in Colorado at the time I was living in New York and every day at lunch, during my lunch break, I would go to SUNY Purchase.

I'll never forget this because Patrick Ewing for those MBA fans out there and John Starks was practicing in the gym. The gym door was open, and I would sit in a phone booth, if you can imagine. You get a roll of quarters and just call people. I would send them letters, everybody in the South Metro Chamber of Commerce in Denver, which had a lot of entrepreneurs in it and salespeople. And I would say, my name is Matt. I'm in the process of moving to Colorado because Colorado, I decided it was the most entrepreneurial, and it was the most entrepreneurial city in the country and I want to be an entrepreneur. Do you have a few minutes to let me ask you a few questions. So what I found there is, you leap in order to look, you decide, when you ask for help, it's amazing how many people want to help you when you kind of take the mask off, you get really vulnerable and you just stand there and say I wouldn't ask them for an hour of their time, I would just asked them three questions.

Things like what I asked were; how'd you get started as an entrepreneur? What were your big wins or losses? And what would you say to somebody starting out? And that was it. And I always had a third or fourth question, which was, can I ask you another question in the future if I have any? It was incredible how many people came to help me; leaping in order to look deciding when asking for help, having some great questions. People went out of their way and the CEO of Celestial Seasonings, tons of consultants. I even got two or three job offers from that. I ended up taking one of those job offers and moving to Colorado a couple years later. And I started working in real estate, which brings me to the housing literacy part of this.

So applying those things, which I just showed you, I used in my life. I didn't have words for it at the time, but my instinct was you had to leap in order to look. You had to just start and engage in your life fully. So, one of the things I'll give you a quick rundown of chapter seven in my book, Powerful Homes, I talk about this incredibly hard project. So ask yourself when. I was showing with my son looking at some colleges in North Carolina, I got a phone call. I don't even know how the guy got a hold of me. And somebody said, I've heard about you, and I want to sell my property to you. And so I was in North Carolina, I couldn't be there. So what I did is I decided then was the time. So I asked for help. I leaped in order to look at this property. I had my whole team go look at it.

Chapter seven of the book, it was this hoarder house. The ceiling had caved in and there was a tree growing out of the living room and you can't even make this stuff up, an insane project. So my whole team went there and they, you know, found that it was an amazing house with great bones on a huge lot, in a great part of Denver. So sight unseen, I don't recommend anybody do this. I bought it, but it was 20 of my people looking at it; all my contractors, all my people. And then I went on to have the hardest project I've ever done. I remember going back to great questions, you know, I leaped in order to look. I decided I would do this project with this guy. I leaped in order to look and the questions I was asking, you know, we had so many challenges on that project.

Things like filling in a pool, fixing the roof that caved in, all the rafters, the water, the water infiltration, the mold problems, on and on and on. It took months to do the job, six months to do the job. But here's the thing engaging at that level with such a difficult project. That messy middle, right? Sometimes you won't want to leap in order to look because it gets really hard in the middle. Ask any parent, ask any owner of a business. How's it been in the middle? They would say it's really hard, but they'd also say being an owner, committing, leaping in order to look into your life more fully, owning a property; I think they would say, you learn so much, you pay attention so much more closely when you're an owner.

So what happened was I learned the most I've ever learned in my career doing that extraordinarily hard job. The coolest part about it is, if you've read my book or if you haven't, it's powerfulhomes.org, you can look at it and grab a copy there. I'm not trying to sell anybody anything. I'm just kind of pointing out where it is. But the thing that was so cool is that the owner of that property had so many personal issues. He had dementia and his two sons, his two brilliant sons, one lived in Lakewood, Colorado, one lived in Columbus, Ohio. We ended up becoming very, very close. We ended up helping them recover some milling equipment that was in the garage that was worth a lot of money, returning that back to them so they can help pay for the grandchildren.

We had a big reveal, it's sponsored by the Denver Post, how everybody in that process, even the new buyer attended it. So the new buyer attended it, the prior owner attended it. It was just one of the most wonderful outcomes ever. And I learned so much and I think so much good happened not only for the people who bought it. And then I sold it to somebody who then bought it. My contractors were moved and inspired by it. Just the ripples of all of that came through leaping in order to look, just like I did when I leaped into a new career and then a new city and went forward in my life. I learned that there's patterns. There's a mindset that you have, and then you can apply some tactics, which you can look in the show notes of this podcast we'll have at the end, we'll have some links to get you additional resources. But when the world kind of conspires for you, around you, if you take the mask off, get vulnerable, get real, and really put your heart out there. Really put your heart and soul and your guts into what you're doing.

And I would just say that leaping in order to look in the real estate game is one that there's a little bit of a plan where it's leaping in order to look also means you take, put something contract to start there, put a property under contract that you get really real. Then when you have, you know, a couple of weeks to decide and you don't always have to move forward. In real estate, you take an option when you leap in order to look, that you control as a buyer. You're not going to do it falsely, but if you want to back out, you can, based on your subjective opinion. So in the real estate world, it's always makes sense to be bold. It always makes sense to go for it. And you would be amazed if you did find issues during your inspection, how the seller often will work with you.

Just like when with my career, I had so many people come out of the woodwork, helping me, inspiring me, motivating me to go for it. When you dive in with the right intention of trying to be of service to others, trying to improve real estate, improve your life, improve the lives of those around you, amazing things happen. So lastly, when I say the first thing is when I'm buying a home, buying an investment property is not something I would wait on. Even if you have a whole portfolio of other things like stocks, bonds, mutual funds, things like that, you're going to live somewhere anyway. And I would encourage you, invite you to really look at the benefits of owning real estate and not to mention all of the things we've talked about, the ways you grow, the way it transforms you by owning it and leaning into that messy middle, and doing difficult things. You start growing your confidence grows. Then you might want to buy another property. And every American can own 10 homes, which is a housing literacy moment. Not everybody knows that.

So hopefully you find some value in this and no matter where you are, what station in life you are, I encourage you to leap in order to look. Go grab hold of your life. Dig in deeply, ask yourself when, ask for help, ask great questions. And I think you'll find that the world is going to support you and amazing things happen. And as always, I'll tell you, my name is Matt Guarino. I'm the host of this podcast and the author of Powerful Homes and the founder of the Powerful Homes foundation and my number is (303) 885-1644. I'd love that if you subscribe to this podcast or get any questions or feedback, you can text me or give me a call. If you have questions about this whole idea, leaping in order to look, love to talk to you about it. So see you next time on the podcast.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Housing Literacy Podcast. Don't forget to like comment and hit that subscribe button and stay connected with Matt Guarino by visiting www.powerfulhomes.org 

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