Roadmap to Financial Independence Part 1- Get Your Mindset Ready
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” -Chinese Proverb
Along the Information SuperHighway there are a multitude of avenues someone could take to learn more about gaining wealth and retiring faster than we’d ever hoped for.
So why isn’t most of middle America retiring early and living on the beach after reading an article about it? Easy. Most people who dream about early retirement, talk to their co-workers about early retirement and read articles about early retirement never take a single action step toward that goal. Honestly, it may not even be a goal they allow themselves to believe and set for their futures. So many folks repress those ideals and decide instead to believe, “That’s just a daydream. I could never retire faster than what they tell me.”
Some of the biggest hurdles of getting started down the path to true Financial Independence is believing that it’s true for you and creating the plan to get there.
If you continue reading, you will start to understand that, at EZ FI University, we are all about having a clear vision and roadmap on how to arrive at a financially free reality, taking action based on what we know now and learning more along the way to improve our positions. Students are able to focus on actions, strategies, and structures in real estate investing as they work their way to their vision of Financial Independence (FI).
Best of all, they are not alone in this effort. A community of students, called Doers, are also traveling down their own roads, but with the same ultimate goal in mind -
Make Money While You Sleep and Retire Faster than You Dreamed.
We want to share our roadmap that we use to guide our students to gain confidence and take action down the road toward financial independence faster. It’s a simple reason and a simple goal. One simple step at a time.
This article is divided into two parts. Part I will contain strategies for mindset shifting and goal setting. Part II will get into the tactical, mathematical details in real estate investing for FI based on our personal experience. We want to leave time for our reader to implement mindset improvements before getting into the details of saving up money and structuring a deal. Otherwise, it will become just another article that a reader consumes, says to themselves, “That’s nice but I probably can’t do that” and goes on with suffering in silence, wishing things were different. So let’s get ready to work.
Step 1: Your Compelling Reason Why
We’ve all heard the process of thinking about your reason why you want to achieve a goal. There is so much truth to this practice because it sets your mind on the foundational reasons for wanting something, like retirement, so intensely.
Pause right here and think about why you want FI. If the thought of retiring isn’t exciting to you and doesn’t get your mind going with possibilities and strategies, perhaps your why is not strong enough. You have to dig a bit deeper to find that one WHY that you cannot do without. You want your WHY to be so strong, so compelling, that you don’t think twice about getting up hours earlier than usual, on the daily, to learn and work on your early FI.
We are speaking to the countless individuals who feel stuck or trapped by their full-time, W2 job who want to depend on themselves for steady income instead of their employer. We are speaking to the people who know that it will take dedication (to your vision), massive action (in line with your goals) and improving from failure (because there will be opportunities like this along the way) to get what they want. Ultimately, we believe everyone wants one thing: freedom.
We have the roadmap to get you there. But you’re the driver of your own car. This is not Uber or Lyft. So buckle in, place your hands on the wheel and throw on those shades. You are about to decide whether or not you want to travel down this road. With this, you also need to realize that this journey is not easy. You need strong motivation, your compelling WHY, to keep you grinding towards that goal, day in and day out.
Here is your first actionable item. Today, dig deep on your WHY and share your compelling WHY with us on our FREE Facebook Group, put your goal and your reasons why you’re doing this out there! You’re declaring your dream. Once it is out there, your accountability is out there. You cannot take it back now. Let’s go!
Step 2: Create Millionaire Habits and a Mindset To Succeed
Just having a strong WHY is not enough to help you get through the journey. After all, we are trying to shorten 40 years to 5-10 years to financial independence. You have to also create millionaire habits that will reinforce these beliefs and keep you going. We want to share with you a few habits that we help our students establish to keep them motivated on a daily basis to work towards their early FI.
Think about your mind as a plant. You need to be watered everyday to feel refreshed and motivated. To do so, you need a set of daily habits performed first thing in the morning to anchor your day to keep you productive. At EZ FI University, we strongly believe in the 6-steps habits described in The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, which are
Silence: This is to use meditation to clear our mind so we can focus more on things that are important.
Affirmations: This is to positively reinforce our goals and beliefs aloud. So we start to believe in ourselves and the outcome of our efforts.
Visualization: Use our vision boards to visualize what success looks like to feel motivated and focused.
Exercise: This gets our blood flowing to start the day fresh.
Reading: This is the time to catch up on readings that we always meant to do. Even though we are busy throughout the day, we have invested in ourselves in this first hour of the day.
Scribing: Writing down things we are grateful for, what we did well and what can be improved can help us grow and find happiness.
By sticking with this formula and engaging an accountability partner, we will start feeling like we can keep going on this less travelled road. I have seen my students changing their mindset when they combine the knowledge, peer support and good daily habits as quickly as 1 month.
We recommend numerous resources to our students in EZ FI U. Here are a few of those resources for you to start your learning.
Checkout our podcasts, that we interview real people who have reached early Financial Independence and their journey.
10,000 Roads to Financial Independence with Elisa Zhang
Step 3: Set Your Goals And Breaking It Down (Millionaire Mindset)
Set a SMART goal for your Financial Independence by following these guidelines for each letter in the acronym.
Specific
You want to make sure your goals are specific so that you can later on measure. Instead of setting goals like “Call brokers and talk to them about current available inventory.”, you want to set goals like “Contact 3 brokers each week.”Measurable
Attach dates, sizes, and dollar amounts to your goal. If you want to purchase an asset that is no smaller than 24 units, include this in your goal statement. If you want to generate $5,000/month in passive income by a specific date, include this as well. Goals need to have measurable results so you can measure and be held accountable.Achievable
You want your goal to be achievable so that you stay motivated. Imagine not being able to hit your goals, the negative thoughts will overtime kill your motivation. So dividing up your goal to achievable milestones and getting rewarded when you achieve a milestone will help you stay positive and motivated. So instead of setting the goal to own 5000 units in 1 year, you may want to shoot for something more realistic by your standard such as close 2 100+ unit properties by the end of the year. You do want to keep your goal slightly a stretch so it also challenges you. I do have to say that along this line, thinking 10x goals may be a good exercise to help you break through your limiting beliefs. However, most of your goal should be kept within reach with some effort.Relevant
The goal has to be relevant towards your ultimate WHY. So it has to be relevant. For example, after you have identified that apartment syndication is your path to FI, you don’t want to have a goal to own a carpet washing company. That is not relevant. Keeping it focused and relevant will help you achieve your end results faster.Time Sensitive
Include dates that the goal will be reached or completed, amounts of money, amounts of names on a list, number of units in an asset, amount of money raised in capital for acquisition, etc. This also ties into the specificity of your goal. For example, “I will own 2 100+ units community by the end of year 2021”
To set a SMART goal for your year puts you ahead of your peers. You will then break down these goals into quarterly goals and weekly tasks. For example, to reach 500 quality investors in your database to raise money in a year, you need to have 10 calls each week with leads. That is about two calls each workday. That is measurable and accountable. You can now check this off on a daily basis to see if you are on track. Keep up this routine and keep taking massive actions and at the end of the year, you will have 500 quality investors waiting for you to send them opportunities to invest in. That is powerful! It all starts with one.
Step 4: Education, Education, Education
Start with reading tons of books and listening to different podcasts. The key to these is to make sure to implement them instead of just reading. From the books and podcasts, you will identify people that you want to connect with and strategies you want to implement. Then you will follow up these leads to implement what you learned. One cannot retain knowledge unless they actually used it.
Increase your personal involvement in the world where you wish to invest. Meet people who do what you have a goal of doing. This is part of your education. The relationships you form will take your learning to a deeper, more connected level of understanding. It’s like being an intern in an industry versus reading a book about an industry. The lens changes and things look different from the inside.
From all your networking and book learning, you will find a right mentor for you. Finding a mentor who can provide insurmountable value and guidance from their failures and successes is a must. When you benefit from these relationships, be sure to ask yourself, “What value am I providing in exchange?” This is especially important in mentor/mentee relationships. In general, a mentee will benefit from the education and connections of their mentor. Make sure to go out of your way to provide value to your mentor that goes beyond a Thank You card. Time is the most valuable resource for high networth people. Always think about what value you will be able to bring them in terms of time-saving resources and strategic expansion for them to get noticed by them.
Communities of people exist everywhere these days. You can find a group of individuals with goals that match your own, online and in-person. We encourage you to enter into these types of groups with the same leading question in mind, “How can I provide value?” instead of fixating on, “How can I be the one who gains value?” When you think of yourself as a person who adds value to any group or relationship you are connected with, you will start acting in a way that serves others and the connection will grow stronger because of you.
If accountability partners sound like something you would benefit from, make a clear plan and set dates to meet. Commit to those dates as if they are the most important thing on your calendar that day. You will show up on time. You will commit to focusing on helping your partner instead of always focusing on your partner helping you. You will enjoy each other’s company and have a lot of fun seeing each other succeed. And, when you have a failure, you double down on working through it and learning as much as possible from it as a stepping stone to your success. We are either succeeding or learning.
Check out part 2 of this article to learn about the steps to take to reach your financial independence.