Since when is good not good enough?

In the old days it was good enough to be competent. People wanted quality, they wanted skill, they and they wanted experience. It was good enough to go to school, get a diploma and get a good job until you turn 65 and retire. Life was simple and easy.

If you were competent and qualified, you were guaranteed a place on the assembly line at the factory and you would make a very nice living.

However, the days of competency are gone.

The proliferation of the internet and social media has changed the way we see the world and competency is no longer good enough. We must not just communicate in the new economy, we must connect.

Consumers, business partners, investors, fans, clients, and customers are all bombarded with competency every day. There are millions of quality products, there are thousands of people with integrity to buy from. Honesty is no longer good enough. What our customers are looking for these days is connection.

Our customers not only want to buy from us, but they want to connect with us.

Social media has become a game-changer in the last 10 years where consumers can instantly connect with other consumers to exchange information about another person, product or service. Likewise, these same consumers are not only looking to purchase from their favourite brands, they expect to connect and interact with them online.

Communication has become a two way street where consumers are now able to communicate with their favourite brands and service providers and expect to get real time communication back. There is a global, online, real time conversation happening 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The question is, what are your customers saying about you? And how are you connecting with them?

Your customers are expecting to connect, how are you able to connect to start a conversation?

In my own business, I have chosen the following 3 channels to connect and interact:

1. Facebook: One of the world's leading social media sites, I provide relevant, valuable and original content to my fans and customers regularly through this media channel. I also look to share anything they may find valuable that comes across my feed. My business growth has exploded through Facebook and I find it be an extremely valuable tool for connecting with customers and fans.
   
   
2. YouTube: Youtube is quickly becoming one of the most powerful search engines in the world. The younger online generation is bypassing Google all together and is searching only on Youtube. I am making video and youtube a priority in my business by video taping every deal I do and putting it online. Your youtube channel is your mini television network and your fans and customers are waiting to hear from you and give feedback.
   
   
3. Linked-In: Linked-in is the online “professional” community designed for professionals to connect. I have used linked-in mostly for a branding tool and a tool to collect endorsements and testimonials. The days of a paper resumé are gone and many potential partners or employers will google you and look at your linked-in instead. In my business I use linked-in less as a connection tool and more as an online resumé or track record. Your linked in profile is very powerful, even though it may or may not have the same traffic as Facebook or other popular social media platforms.
   
   

If you are not already harnessing these three ways to connect with your audience, you must do so immediately. The world is changing, the market is changing and we must connect to stay relevant in the new connection economy.

By: Stefan Aarnio
Freedomway.ca
facebook.com/stefanaarnio
https://twitter.com/stefanaarnio
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/stefanaarnio

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“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” 
― George Bernard Shaw

So many people spend their lives trying to "find" themselves. The sad thing is, often, there is nothing to find.

In my own life, I spent much of my late teens and early twenties trying to "find" my identity. I worked at different jobs, I dressed differently, tried different hair-styles, played in different music groups, and struggled to answer the question "what do I want to do with my life"?

Sometimes I felt like I was chasing the wind. After many years of chasing, I learned that there was nothing to chase in the first place.

Everyone at some point gets to experiment with identity. We try different things, we experiment, we find things that work and things that don't. Some of the most successful people in history have shifted their identities and morphed as the world changes with them.

Some people I admire for re-inventing themselves are: Madonna (who is still relevant after 25+ years in pop music which is like 1000 years in real life), Steve Jobs (a man who re-invented himself and his company, Apple, many times) and Johnny Cash (who went from mainstream into obscurity and back into the public's eye).

These people have all gone through the highs and lows of identity by becoming relevant, obscure and then relevant again. They all created identities that were true to themselves and re-created them when necessary.

We are all human "be-ings" and not human "do-ings".

I always find it interesting that people ask on a daily basis "what do you DO for a living?" what do you "DO" with your time? What do you want to "DO" with your life?

Doing implies actions, which is important for success, but I think that being is much more important because we are human BE-ings.

If we know who we want to "BE", then we can quickly find out what we want to "DO".

For myself, I have stopped asking myself the question of "what do I want to do"? and have switched to the question of "who do I want to be?"

Since changing this one question, my success rate has sky rocketed.

I keep a list of 25 people that I admire and want to "be". Of course, I don't want to directly copy these people in every aspect, but what I will do is copy the things that I like about them. These 25 people that I want to be are "targets" for myself that I can attempt to emulate.

What I find most exciting about the list of 25 people that I want to "be", is when I write the things that I like most about them, I can find the common traits that I admire most.

For example, some of the people on my list are:

BRAD LAMB - Expert retailer, sales genius, branding genius
DONALD TRUMP - Branding genius, luxury developer, luxury brand, luxury retailer, maverick, media genius.
RICHARD BRANSON - Conceptual thinker, Venture capitalist, extremely prolific, branding genius, media genius, knows how to get press, risk taker, maverick
STEVE JOBS - Artist, Icon, Rebel, challenged the status quo, came from nothing, has ultimate career comeback, more relevant after death, maser retailer.
JOHNNY CASH - Artist, Icon, Rebel, challenged the status quo, came from nothing, ultimate career comeback, more relevant after death.

My list of people I want to be includes: Real estate entrepreneurs, retailers, developers, inventors, musicians, artists, military generals, chefs, movie and fictional characters.

What is more important than the specific people on the list, are the traits that I associate with each one.

For example, most of the people on my list are: Artists, Iconic, rebellious, mavericks, prolific, branding geniuses, luxury, media stars and retailers.

If most of the people on my list have those traits, and I want to "be" them, then those are the traits that I must focus on and strive for in my own life and business.

After finding 25 people for your list and taking an inventory of the traits that you admire in each person, you can quickly find out what kind of identity you must create for yourself.

What I find interesting about the "list" is that there are many successful people that I can think of that didn't make the cut. These are people I study and admire, but they are not people that I would want to "be". 

For example: Robert Kiyosaki is someone I admire and have studied in great detail, but I do not wish to be Kiyosaki. He is a great teacher, but I don't want to be a teacher.

The more specific and detailed you become with this list, the more you will find your identity.

We can see ourselves only when we see our reflection in the mirror. The list of 25 people is our way of creating a mirror to see into ourselves. This mirror allows us to see what we are on the inside.

Once we can see who we want to become, we can begin the process of reverse engineering our identity so that we can become the person we were destined to be.

Thanks for reading,
Stefan Aarnio
Freedomway.ca
facebook.com/stefanaarnio
https://twitter.com/stefanaarnio
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/stefanaarnio

P.S: Please share this article if you found it helpful

By Stefan Aarnio
Freedomway.ca
facebook.com/stefanaarnio

A wise man once said "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade."

Today was an exciting day in my life. Less than a month ago, I was nominated for Joint Venture Partner of the year in the Top Investor Awards by Canadian Real Estate Wealth Magazine. Competing in my category were 5 other very competent investors, all of which I admire greatly.

I had a fair amount of time to think about the strategic possibilities of my nomination and ran through all of the possible scenarios that such recognition would bring.

My competitors were all very successful investors, and depending on the metrics used to determine a "winner", any one of us could have won the award.

Three ways to determine a winner would be:

1) The winner could be determined by dollar volume, in which I would certainly NOT be the winner.

2) The winner could be determined by profits, in which I would certainly NOT be the winner.

3) Or the winner could be determined by story, in which I would have a chance to win.

I had to prepare myself for two scenarios:

1. A scenario in which I win
2. And a scenario in which I do not win

It is truly an honour to be nominated alongside such successful investors and the nomination alone is worth a tremendous amount of value to me.

I thought about the two scenarios above for a long time and determined that I would rather lose to a champion than win over an inferior competitor.

In my head, I created a no-lose scenario.

I would either win the award and run with the temporary boost to my brand/marketing or lose and still run with the temporary boost to my brand/marketing.

The only way to create a no lose scenario is by learning to create profit from failure.

I have failed in my life more times than I have succeeded.

They say that the formula for failure is to try to please everyone.

The formula for success is to take your current rate of failure an double it.

I have doubled my rate of failure many times over and continue to  increase my quota. I am not afraid of failing because when life gives me lemons... I have learned how to squeeze out a delicious glass of lemonade.

I have made lemonade so many times in my investing career that I could open up a lemonade stand.

Although, I have had many chances to wrestle with failure, many people have not had the luxury of having so many experiences to study and learn from failure.

The school system conditions us to avoid failure at all costs. In school, we treat failure like the same way we treat death: if you fail, you don't get good grades, you can't get into a good university, you can't get a good job and you will starve to death on the street because you have no money.

In many ways, we are learned to treat failure like death.

In reality, failure is the essence of life.

We learn our greatest lessons when we fail and often, we use these experiences to craft our identities, our character, our philosophies and our stories that make us into champions that can press forward against all odds.

My thinking has changed dramatically over the years when it comes to failure.

I used to get upset when I failed. However, I no longer get upset. When I fail in my current endeavours, I identify and correct my mistake as fast as possible. I then ask myself, "how can I prevent this in the future?". Failing is no longer a negative emotion for me, in fact, I get excited to fail now because it means that I will get an opportunity to learn a lesson. Lessons make me smarter and increase my chances of winning in the future.

FAILURE MANAGEMENT 101

Imagine you are an olympic athlete for an obscure sport like Javelin in which you take a running start to throw a single spear as far as possible.

You train for 10 years, put in 10,000 hours plus of training, forgo sex, good food, alcohol, sleep, professional career opportunities, children, money and lifestyle for a chance at winning the olympics.

The day of the olympics comes and you get one chance, one throw and in that moment you will become one of two things:

1. A winner, a medalist and you will become immortalized in the olympic hall of fame
2. A nobody, you do not qualify, you miss the distance required by inches and your javelin efforts vaporize into thin air

On monday morning, when you get back to your home, what do you do when you sit down at the kitchen table and ponder your next move?

Had you achieved success, you would have got a sponsorship, a great career opportunity, recognition, and fame, etc.

However, you failed... What next?

How do you make lemonade out of the lemons?

How can you create success from the experience?

I have been in situations like this many times. Life is a performance based sport, you often only get one chance to make something happen and if you don't, how do you deal with it?

It's not what happens to you in life that matters, it's how you deal with it.

Today when I was waiting for the speaker at the podium to announce the winner of the Joint Venture Partner of the Year award I had fully prepared myself for failure.

I desired success, understood that it was possible, but the final decision was out of my hands - I did not worry.

In hindsight, I was 95% prepared for failure and only 5% prepared for success.

I was shocked to learn that I had won the award and did not have a speech ready. I winged a few words at the podium, thanked everyone I could think of and proceeded with my "success plan" that I had to quickly engineer.

I was so convinced that my competition would win the award that I had given up the idea of success. To avoid disappointment, I had created a plan to deal with failure and had a solid plan to create an asset out of failing to win.

I have become so good at losing and dealing with situations that go wrong that I had forgot to plan for situations that go right.

Getting good at losing, however, is one of the major pillars of success. It helps us take risks and allow us to win - even when we lose.

Life becomes very easy when you can find ways to win from failure, especially when we learn to monetize these situations.

When I think about the Joint Venture award that I won, I am convinced that my story is what captured the judge's imaginations.

I did not have the biggest deal, the biggest profit, the highest dollar volumes or the sexiest deal.

However, I had a great "rags to riches" story that explains my investment career. My story for 2012 begins with failure and ends with success.

Most people give up when they fail, I have learned to push through failures until I can turn them into successes.

In your own life, learn to spot the "good" in the "bad" and package it into a marketable asset that you can use to your advantage.

Failure is a necessary ingredient to success and many people do not understand that success comes in cycles and is more like a wheel than a destination.

Picture the ferris wheel at the local fair. When you are at the top of the wheel (success), the only way to get back to the top (success) is to go through the bottom (failure).

Life is much like a ferris wheel: to get the top, we must rotate through the cycles at the bottom.

By: Stefan Aarnio
Freedomway.ca
http://www.facebook.com/stefanaarnio

"Pressure makes diamonds" - General George S. Patton.

What do you do when you are under pressure?

Do you crack? Do you fold? Do you avoid and hide from the world?

Or do you stand up, get stronger, and push harder to persist?

Pressure makes diamonds... but it can also crush people.

Years ago, when I attended my first Real Estate seminar, the speaker asked "And what about stress...? After you have made your money, do you think the stress goes away?"

Almost every hand in the room went up and the room was silent.

After a long pause, the speaker continued "Stress never goes away, and you must learn to manage it. Just because you have more money, does not mean that your stress levels change."

Throughout my life, I have constantly placed myself in high pressure situations. I played music at a professional level, I was a national leader in direct sales and I'm currently playing the highest risk/reward game in the world: entrepreneurship.

Somehow, I have always been attracted to high pressure situations because I am naturally a competitive person and have always wanted to compete and work with the best.

For me, the pressure has always been necessary for me to push to the next level: pressure makes diamonds.

Of course, being under pressure is extremely uncomfortable and it can take it's toll on your sleep, your comfort and over all quality of life. But looking back on my life so far, the greatest, most exciting, relevant moments have been the ones of greatest pressure and greatest importance.

In contrast, my most unhappy, joyless, depressing moments have been the moments of absolutely no pressure.

We all remember the days of high school where we would have an exam in 3 weeks...

3 weeks would go by and we would neglect to study.

30 hours before exam, we would still neglect studying...

8 hours before the test starts we are up all night trying to learn Calculus while trying not to over dose on caffeine.

Somehow pressure can bring out the best in people.

Pressure brings clarity, decision and action to people who normally have confusion, indecision and passivity.

Pressure shows us who we really are and can bring out the hero OR the wimp inside of us.

Pressure lets us know what we are made of and lets us know how far we can be pushed so that we can see where our limits truly are.

One of my favourite things about pressure is that it brings out our natural instincts.

Instinct is not a common topic of conversation in our modern world because we think of feral cats, wild dogs or rabid beasts as having instincts - not civilized people!

Civilized people do not have instincts...

Or do they?

Kathy Kolbe is a theorist and educator who developed a test called the Kolbe index.

The Kolbe index is a series of short questions that measure your instincts show you what your strengths are when under pressure.

For myself, this information has been unbelievably helpful. It also explains why I am happiest under pressure.

The reason why I am happiest under pressure is because I am forced to become my natural self. 

Pressure brings out my natural instincts and allows me to pursue the "best version of myself".

My Kolbe index tells me that under pressure I "improvise". People with instincts similar to mine make great salespeople, public speakers, on camera people, radio hosts, interviewers, storm chasers, video game designers and non-conventional educators.

All of the above "careers" are high pressure, performance based career paths that require little or no formal training to achieve success.

This would explain why I am least happy in low-pressure situations and most happy in high-pressure situations. 

Pressure forces me to become who I naturally need to become.

Pressure is what turns coal into diamonds and it also turns a raw undeveloped average person into a refined success.

I would encourage you to take your Kolbe index and find out what your instincts are and find out how you work under pressure.

Find out what your natural skill sets are, where you are happiest and then focus your whole life and business around that skill set.

For myself, I need to "improvise" all day long to feel full-filled and happy. I have re-organized my entire business around myself being able to "improvise" while key team members around me handle all of the other tasks.

By pursuing this strategy, I have seen greater success, experienced more fun, and felt more excitement. All of this can be had from selecting the tasks and roles that excite my instincts.

Please take a moment to invest in yourself, learn about your instincts and harness your talents. You're worth it.

Thanks for reading,
Stefan Aarnio
Freedomway.ca
http://www.facebook.com/stefanaarnio

P.S. Please share this article if you found it helpful

By Stefan Aarnio
Freedomway.ca

Remember: Please share this article if you found it educational.

Speed is a virtue that has been coveted throughout the ages.

In the jungle, animals with speed would dominate the terrain over bigger slower animals. In evolution, animals that developed to be large with heavy armour always died out to animals that were lighter, faster and with sharp teeth and claws.

In warfare, throughout the ages, the faster more mobile armies were always able to wipe out  slower, heavily armoured forces. Whether we are referring to Atilla the Hun with his mounted archers vs the slow, heavily armoured  Roman Legion; or Hitler in WW2 with his Blitzkrieg forces that dominated the sedentary french and polish troops. 

Speed is a virtue in all arenas and is a key to victory.

Today in technology, companies that can embrace change and implement with great speed are the ones that survive. In the past, a company like Apple was able to innovate with products like the iPod, take the market by surprise and implement new ideas before any competitors could react. Apple would take over and dominate a market long before a competitor could think of stepping in.

Think of iPods... Small children call all music players iPods. A little girl will point to an analogue record player and say "look daddy, that's a big iPod!" - that is the power of speed.

In real estate investing, or investing in general, speed (in my opinion) is the difference between a novice, intermediate and advanced investor.

I was having dinner with a friend of mine tonight and we were talking about our goals for the upcoming year 2013. Every real estate investor, regardless of skill level, always wants to add more transactions and doors to their portfolio.

I mentioned to my friend that I was setting the goal of doing 100 transactions this year. This was way out of my friend's context and he couldn't comprehend that kind of volume or speed. He asked me how many transactions I have completed in 2012: "12-16 by the end of the year" was my estimate. He was impressed with my ambition and wanted to know how I was going to have an 800% increase in my business.

The answer is speed, some experts would say "velocity of money".

The general classifications for Real estate investors can be defined as follows:

1. Novice investors do less than 5-6 transactions per year
2. Intermediate investors do 1 transaction per month or 12+ transactions per year.
3. Advanced investors do 100+ transactions per year

The only difference between these three investors is speed. 

NOTE: There is likely little difference in the quality of transactions between skill levels. There are many astute and careful, slow, novice investors who can earn the same or better returns then an experienced advanced investor. However, the difference between the novice and advanced is that the advanced investor does more deals, executes them faster and utilizes opportunities to compound results. 

The advanced investor is a cheetah in the jungle and the novice is the turtle.

There is nothing wrong with being the turtle, however, the cheetah will be dominant in the market and will have access to the best opportunities and more capital due to visibility.

A problem I have had in my past businesses has been velocity. In the past, I gravitated towards slow "residual" type businesses.

1. One of my first businesses was a self-employed guitar practice where I traded my time for money. This was extremely slow because, although I had lots of clients and low over head, it was very difficult to compound or grow this business. The residual "cash-flow only business model" made it very hard to grow because there was never an injection of cash or credit. Every month I would take 22-25 little cheques into the bank and cash them. There was never a big cheque that could instigate growth.
2. Another business I started in my early twenties was my Debt buying business. Debt buying is a very simple concept. Debt buyers buy charged off, non performing credit cards (or other debt products) for pennies on the dollar and outsource them to collection agencies for residual income. However, this business is also a residual, cash flow business and it was very hard to grow this business without taking on large debt and long term risk as well.
3. My third business was my buy-and-hold Joint Venture real estate portfolio. This business was great because I could Joint Venture with many money partners and have growth every month, but the growth and speed was linear, and again, I was seduced by the cash flow of the business and was not looking at the speed of the business. A deal would take me 1 whole month to find, get under contract, find a JV partner, deal with the financing, deal with the legal, take over the property, fix the problems on acquisition, show the suite to tenants, lease up and then repeat. I became trapped in my own labour and the velocity of this strategy kept me small. I was a turtle.

All of these businesses are functional: However, the businesses above are slow, cannot grow on their own cash, cannot expand easily, cannot gain any market share and have a disproportionate amount of risk and liability when compared to the upside.

The debt buying business and the buy-and-hold JV's also are big and clunky because they rely on debt financing and bureaucratic approval from banks etc. to grow.

These models are the slow and heavily armoured roman legions that were destroyed by the fast moving mounted cavalry of Atilla the Hun. The Huns were fast, mobile, light, hit the battle field by surprise and cherry picked the best opportunities on the field.

My new strategy does not focus on buy and hold, instead it focuses on three FAST strategies:
 

1. Wholesaling
2. Lease options
3. Buy-fix-sell

Because my goal is to have 100 TRANSACTIONS and not hold 100 DOORS at the end of the year, I must focus on fast strategies. Speed is key and I don't want to get weighed down in a slow, long renovation or a long term buy and hold (although these are good models).

Three of the fastest Real Estate strategies (in my opinion) are wholesaling, lease options and buy-fix-sell.

However, to see the effects of choosing fast strategies, lets see the following strategies in terms of TIME so that we can compare them to the slower strategies I used to use.

1. Wholesaling has a time frame of less than 30 days, usually 7-14. It is a fast, no debt, "no buy" strategy that creates fast cash and fast transactions.
2. Lease options have a time frame of less than 30 days to fill or set up. They are fast, can have no debt, are a "no buy" strategy that creates fast cash and fast transactions.
3. Buy-fix-sell has a time frame of less than 90 days (I have completed some buy-fix-sells in 30 days, but that isn't every deal). These deals are fast, carry debt (sometimes hard money), require capital for acquisition but create more profits with slightly more work.

Every single strategy I am using can be executed within a 30 day time frame. Time is the real currency in the market, not money. Money can be manipulated and recreated after it is lost... Time is lost forever when wasted and it is the REAL limiting factor in any business.

Since I have chosen 3 fast, "light on debt and cash" strategies, I am confident that with the right team and systems, I can achieve my goal of 100 transactions and earn the rights to the title of "advanced investor".

If you are interested in working together on a deal for a share of the profits, please contact me on the freedomway.ca contact page and we will see if we have a fit.

In the meantime,

Thanks for reading,
Stefan Aarnio
Freedomway.ca

P.S. Please share this article if you found it educational.