Finding Your RealSuccess

By Joe Arias

"Finding Your RealSuccess" is an entrepreneurial road map that discusses the importance of finding your true passion in life. Through it, you'll learn the secrets of success, find out how to escape the rat race, and receive valuable insight to help you begin your quest for happiness and self-fulfillment. Each chapter describes J

• Language: English
• Publisher: Real Success
• Release date: Aug 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781953351029

Book preview

My Personal Message

This book is for my family, Tanya, all our RealSuccess family who help others achieve their dreams in real estate investing, but most importantly, this book is dedicated to you. Yes, you, the person reading these words at this very moment.

I am deeply honored to be read by you because it’s not about the money you spent buying this book, but it’s about the time you are investing in reading it. You can replace money with more money but you can’t replace time. Time is the most important commodity you have. 

Thank you for investing in and nurturing your financial IQ. I know you can become the best version of yourself and achieve financial freedom as a result. My commitment is that soon you won’t have to trade your time for money,  but on the contrary, you will leverage your money so you can free up your time. This is what freedom is about.

To your RealSuccess

Joe

Table of Contents

1: Introduction

2: The Movie of Your Life

3: What is Success?

4: What is Failure?

5: Why We Have Bad Habits

6: Finding Your Why

7: Changing Your Mindset

8: Thinking Like an Entrepreneur

9: Money

10: Vehicles to Make Money

11: Why Real Estate is the #1 Vehicle for Making Money

12: What Real Estate Offers

13: My Best-Kept Secrets as a Real Estate Investor

14: So, What’s the Next Step?

15: Revisiting My Promise

1

Introduction

There are a million different ways to look at life, money, personal development, and success. For decades now, businesspeople, self-help gurus, and countless others who have achieved enlightenment in these areas have attempted to pass their knowledge on to others. During that time, these men and women created a multibillion-dollar industry focused on telling others how to succeed and make money.

I, on the other hand, have a very different story to tell, and—I feel—a very unique approach to telling it.

And that’s where we’ll start this book—with my story.

It’s the story of a young immigrant who followed a long and winding road to success. It’s about a man who went from a frustrated and unsuccessful would-be investor to one who, at the time of writing this, has introduced one of the largest educational programs on real estate investments in the world.

Like all stories, however, it’s better to start at the beginning.

Although I have achieved my personal definition of success through real estate, this isn’t the only passion I’ve had in my life. In fact, long before I ever put a down payment on a flip or rental, I was a nineteen-year-old kid from Argentina going to school in St. Louis.

It was a scholarship that helped get me into college, as I could never have afforded it on my own. My mother was a painter/interior designer, and my father was an architect and an antique and fossil enthusiast.

Wanting to see me succeed in life, my father always instilled the importance of making it on my own. I would have to find my own passion, discover my own skills, and plot my own journey toward goals of my own choosing. So, after graduation, Dad gave me $2000 and told me I had to make everything else on my own.

Like any kid would do in this situation, I drove my maroon 1999 Ford Contour across the country to Los Angeles.

Two Passions

In this book, you're going to hear a lot about passions. These are the deep, driving interests that we all have—the things that move us, excite us, and get us out of bed in the morning. At this time in my story, as a twenty-something in LA, I was lucky enough to have two passions: real estate and filmmaking.

I knew I was in the right place for both, and I felt the distinct desire to take an entrepreneurial path. I also knew that, while either one of my passions had the potential to make me happy and successful, there was no way I could pursue both at the same time.

Still in my early 20s, I made a pact with myself. I gave myself ten years to live and work as an artist and see where it would take me. If I couldn't get where I wanted after that time, I would devote myself wholeheartedly to the real estate industry.

As far as filmmaking went, I undoubtedly demonstrated the talent to match my passion. I was enamored with movies by Tarantino, Coppola, and Scorsese, and couldn’t wait to express myself by bringing similar stories to life. I made a short film that was acknowledged (and nearly nominated) by The Academy Awards, and also a feature film. I also made a lot of great friends along the way.

Of course, even in LA, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to earn a living in film, let alone reach the level of success I craved. As much as I loved telling stories (and still do), I realized I would have to be incredibly lucky to make it as a director. Fortunately for me, I still had another passion to pursue. When the ten years were up, I completely devoted myself to learning about how to make money in real estate, and it's been my life’s focus ever since.

Being an artist is a wonderful thing, but being able to have control over my career, my income, and my direction in life proved much more important to me. Also, with time, I was able to incorporate my own artistic flair into the work I did, turning house flipping into a creative outlet on par with my filmmaking.

I share this part of my story for two reasons. One, I want you to understand that you can change your career at any given time, and that with hard work and effort, you can become successful at anything you wish. Two, my interest in films gave me a unique way of looking at the journey we're all on. As you’ll see in the next chapter, that point of view will eventually make up a big part of the theme of this book.

One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

– Jeff Bezos

The Why vs. the How

If I could condense the contents of this book into its two most driving questions, they would be why and how. Entrepreneurship is ultimately a journey. Most people don’t just wake up and say, I want to be an entrepreneur. Even if you do have that sort of instantaneous revelation, more often than not, there is no clear path to becoming successful.  This is where the why and how questions come into play. Why do you want to be an entrepreneur and how do you go about achieving this goal.

Starting with the Why

Many entrepreneurs will use the old phrase, You have to learn to walk before you can run, to describe their personal journey to success. What I’m saying is, you have to properly prepare your mind, body, and soul for walking if you ever want to run properly, let alone run all the way to success.

Leaving the metaphor behind for a minute, I need you to understand that a huge number of first-time entrepreneurs fall flat on their faces. If they have enough resources at their disposal, they might recover and learn from those mistakes. If they blow their entire budget, however, many of them will panic and return to the employee’s life. There’s no shame in failure, of course, but there are often clear reasons why they failed.

The first half of this book is dedicated to discussing those reasons. It is the why portion—preparing yourself to walk. In these first few chapters, I will share with you my years of expertise in the steps to becoming an entrepreneur. This support will help you to minimize your chance of failure and maximize your chances of success.

In these chapters, I hope you see how you can change the mindset that society has instilled in all of us—a mindset that encourages us to bypass entrepreneurship and, instead, become another member of the rat race. Sure, the race may be fine for some people, but for those whose hearts burn with a desire for entrepreneurial success, the nine-to-five world will never be enough.

If you’re reading this book, chances are you have more than a little bit of that fire inside of you already.

I’ll outline the steps you can take to change your way of thinking about opportunity, success, and failure. I’ll also share my experience with the rat race and its consequences. We will discuss the difference between the blame mentality and accepting responsibility for your choices, and I’ll identify the habits we all have that simply are not congruent with the entrepreneurial lifestyle.

Moving On to the How

The how is the reward section of this book. It’s the passing on of years’ worth of real estate experience, including all the successes and failures of my career and the careers of my partners and colleagues. This is the information that you can start putting to work immediately to become more successful as an entrepreneur.

In Chapter 13 of this section, My Best-Kept Secrets as a Real Estate Investor, you will find information that embodies my goals for writing this book. In this chapter, as the title states, I will share with you my hard-earned tips for success. If you only fully absorb one chapter in this book, let it be this one—but that being said, the reward will not be nearly as meaningful or useful to you if you skip everything that comes before it. I encourage you to think of the why chapters as the foundation building up to the reward.

Like anything we do that is goal-focused, the reward is made all the sweeter when we dedicate ourselves to preparing for it. In this book, the how information and the why information are designed to empower you with more than just knowledge. They are designed to help you change your life for the better. They are the yin and yang of entrepreneurship success: powerful on their own, but unstoppable when combined.

Although my journey has been in real estate, we won’t be discussing the specifics of real estate in the first chapters, and there's a reason why. This is because without a foundation of entrepreneurial and leadership skills, a successful real estate business is not possible. It’s important to appreciate this content and learn to take a step back so that you can see the whole picture.

At the end of the day, an entrepreneur is not just what you do; it is who you are. The shift in mentality, the understanding of self, and the refocusing of priorities must all come before the how. I assure you that once you start learning how to think and live like an entrepreneur, learning how to succeed as one will be that much easier.

My Promise

Even though I am a real estate expert now, I haven’t always had experience in the industry. In fact, when we last left off with my story, a young man from Argentina, I had just done precisely what I am advising you not to do: jumped headfirst into real estate without taking time to look around.

By this time, I had been in real estate for twelve months and hadn’t made a dime. To pay the bills, I worked as a wedding photographer, taking whatever gigs I could when I could. Sure, I had the passion and the drive to succeed in real estate, but I lacked so many things that I needed to undertake my journey.

I didn’t know where to start, how to finance a deal, or even how to find one. I lacked the knowledge of how to protect myself from dishonest people in the business. I also didn’t know how to find a partner or where to look for a mentor. There were no manuals, no checklists, and no systems in place that allowed me to make up for my inexperience.

This all led up to a life-defining moment. I’m sure you know the kind, because you never, ever forget them.

I was sitting down at my small desk, all by myself. I remember the light coming through the window and shining on my left shoulder. I remember feeling absolutely overwhelmed by all the moving parts at work in my life, by not having a contact in the business, and by not knowing anything about what I was so sure I wanted to do with my life.

So, I made a promise.

I said to myself, If I ever crack this business, I am going to take everything I learn—the coaching, the systems, the legal documents, everything—and put it into a program to help educate entrepreneurs. At that moment, even as a kid with nothing, I couldn’t wait to create a system that could help other people in their journey to financial freedom. That system later was called the Elite Education.

As you continue to read this book, you’ll learn more about my journey as well. There are plenty of stories to tell, after all, and they will provide you with insights into who I am and why I’m here trying to help you. You’ll also learn how to apply my stories and my experience to your own journey so that you can maximize your chance for success. This is because, unlike most books of this type, my book has a promise attached to it.

My promise is that by the time you finish this book, you will have discovered your true passion in life. Once you find this passion, I promise I will show you how to harness it, nurture it, and then elevate it so that you can pursue your quest for real success.

Furthermore, if you have already found your passion, my promise is that you will find a whole new level of passion around your work and your life.

This quest will not be easy. It will require growth, change, and dedication along the way. Together, however, I promise that we can overcome any barriers in your life to help you escape the work-a-day world and become a successful real estate entrepreneur.

You can be a Hero, and we can discover how.

In fact, after you complete this book, feel free to send me an email and let me know if I was able to keep my promise to you. You can reach me at [e-mail]. 

Wishing you success,

Joe

2

The Movie of Your Life

Before I start sharing about my life, my successes and failures, I want to take a moment and thank you once again for embarking on this journey with me. I probably won’t be able to meet every single person reading this book, so I put together a small video so that you could at least hear the thank you directly from me. If you have a moment go and visit this link:

Or

www.ourrealsuccess.com/findingyourrealsuccess

With that said, I would like to start discussing life and different ways of perceiving it. We all have our own philosophies that we apply to our lives. This is our way of explaining our place in the world and fitting ourselves into the grand scheme of things. It's no secret that most of us tend to feel a little overwhelmed by the world and its millions and millions of moving parts. Having a personal philosophy helps us create some semblance of order so we can approach our days with more purpose and confidence.

In short, your philosophy is a way of thinking you develop to help you take concepts that are very complicated and shrink them down to a manageable size. Now, this philosophy doesn’t have to be some grandiose, monumental approach to the functioning of the universe; it just has to be something that makes sense to you.

As a filmmaker, what makes sense to me is to view our lives as movies.

While this might not be the most sophisticated philosophy out there, it is one that I feel most people can easily relate to. After all, who among us can say we are immune to tales about one person overcoming all adversity to end up sitting on the throne, riding off with the princess, or discovering their inner power?

We love movies. We love them because they're stories, and stories have been a part of human culture for as long as we've been around. What I'm asking you to do as you read this book is to take a step outside yourself and try to see your life as its own story, with you as the Hero. If you can manage that, you’ll soon discover how to turn this Hero into a superhero that can catapult you toward success.

Why We Love Stories

Though it’s mostly my background in film that makes me so keen on viewing people’s lives as movies, there is actually some pretty serious science to back all of this up. As I said