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Branch podcast. This is going to be a quick one but a good one today. We’re going to be talking about Oklahoma Grassfed Beef business principles that we have learned to be true and we’ll tell some stories along the way.
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Yeah we’ll share some stuff about some lessons that we’ve learned in Oklahoma Grassfed Beef business and hopefully that’ll help you avoid them.
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So some of them can be costly and we’ve definitely learned a lot of lessons through the school of hard knocks over the years So we’ll share some principles I think we have at least three that we have in mind, but we’ll see how the conversation goes Okay, you can start it. Well, I think One of the principles I know we wanted to talk about today Was saving money for future opportunities and kind of what I mean by that is you have to be ready when opportunities present themselves and to be ready means you have to make a lot of short -term and even long -term sacrifices of saving money and I see a lot of folks that never saved their money and then an opportunity arises and they can’t take it because they’re not ready and But it’s a hard thing to do because you want to buy the new car all the time or you want to go You know buy new stuff all the time and you spend your paycheck and spend your page
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and never save and it’s hard to just sit there and watch money in a bank account grow when you’re not using it. But then if an opportunity arises and you can’t capitalize it you miss out you know and a lot of times those opportunities are big and they come quickly and if you don’t take them they’re gone.
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That’s right. The next principle we want to talk about is hiring smart and the you hire smart there’s a less likelihood you will have to fire. No one wants to fire someone and no one wants to be fired. Those are not goals so if you take the time and hire smartly you that there’s a less likelihood of having to let someone go. I’ve had many cases where I have hired someone out like necessity or out of just some desperation even when I knew I shouldn’t and some of those have kind of fizzled themselves
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because they figure out, oh, this really is not for me. But we all know that people put their best foot forward on interviews. Everyone’s gonna tell you what they want to hear because they wanna be hired. And so something, a valuable tool that I’ve found is to have people take some kind of an assessment. It does not have to be Enneagram. That’s just the one I know best. There are other assessments you could have people take. I think assessments are great because it really shows you who people are behind the scenes, the way their mind works, the way they really think. So for me, I have my, anyone I hire take the Enneagram. One time I had someone take it. I was hiring for an assistant position. She tested as an eight. Nothing wrong with eights.
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It’s just that eights don’t make great assistants. Eights like to lead. Eights like to take control. They like to dominate. Dominate.
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And you’re innate.
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And I know that.
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So when I test people and they’re an aid, I’m like, I know how aids work, um, not great for assistant roles. And in that case, I was like, she was telling me what I wanted to hear. And so I just ignored that assessment and it did not go well at all. And she just wasn’t good for the role. She was always trying to like win, overstep, dominate, and in the assistant role, you normally meet someone who’s like a helper and wants to help meet your needs and great behind the scenes. Doesn’t have to be seen, but wants to just be in there. Um, she was not that. So I ended up having to let her go and when I let her go, she was just, the aid came out. If you know what I mean, she was just so mad and you know, yelling and I’m like, okay, that is why I should not have hired her.
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Hiring is very hard in business because you get to look a person in the eye, they’re telling you and they want the job, right? So they’re begging for it, in a lot of cases, or telling you how great they’re going to be.
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you have to be able to decipher if their actual personality is gonna work. You have to listen to what they say but you also have to not listen to what they say. You know what I’m saying? And that’s that can be very difficult and believe me over the years I’ve hired a lot of people. I mean I don’t know probably close to 200 people over the years between everything and I’ve I’ve made a ton of mistakes when it comes to that and I’ve let people talk me into giving them an opportunity and I give them one and then I immediately regret it you know and I would say another like hot tip on the hiring process one method that works for me is called a group interview process and I run it every week okay and this is just this changed my business if you’re listening take some own a Oklahoma Grassfed Beef business do this every week I interview candidates I do it at Wednesdays at 5
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and I probably have 10 to 20 people in there on average a week interviewing. And I don’t read their resumes because according to Inc Magazine, like over 70 % of people lie in their resumes. And I think now that AI is out, people are lying even more, right? And so I wanna see the person, talk to the person, see how they act. I’m not gonna waste my time scanning a resume on somebody that may not even return my phone call, right? And so everybody comes in Wednesdays, I interview them, I can tell within 30 minutes who can be a good fit on my team or not potentially, right? And then I invite them in for a job shadow where they come and hang out with us for a couple hours and I get to get a really good feel of what they’re like. And then we have a one -on -one interview with them to make a hiring decision. But the power in this is like, I’m interviewing candidates on a weekly basis because
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As a business owner if you don’t have employees and your business relies on it You’re in trouble, right? So you can’t ever have a time where your business doesn’t have employees and you never know when employees gonna just leave Taking another job You know move who knows and so you just never want to get caught I got caught in that position a lot in my early years and so we just routinely interview That’s how we roll and if I find good people to hire them if I’ve got somebody on my team That’s not very good.
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I have a process in place of working on replacing them and it works great Yeah, something else I was thinking for hiring is it’s a great thing to do is look at people’s social media To find out like who they really are behind the scenes Obviously social media can be highlight reels. So I’m not saying necessarily they need to be like polish I’m just saying like
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You can look at their profile picture and tell a lot You can look at just scroll their page and see what they’re posting about what they care about what their values are Because gosh if you’re not doing that you’re missing out that tells you a lot And that’s why so many you know, they’re trying to teach like, you know college seniors high school seniors Be careful what you post only post what you want people to really see if somebody’s Messing up a storm or posting bad jokes and it’s like do you really want that person to work for you?
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Right and I’ve had several candidates where we’ve interviewed him in the group interview a Couple days later. We brought him in for a job shadow and we’re kind of like man with I can pretty good But we’re not a hundred percent there We’ll go check their social media and then it’s like
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Oh man, I’m glad we checked it. Yeah. And that might be the deciding factor of not a good fit, right? And for most, you would think it’d be a highlight reel, but sometimes you see it on there and you’re like, oh my gosh, why would anybody do that?
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Yeah, it can tell you a lot. And that’s just another tip for you. If you’re a Oklahoma Grassfed Beef business owner, be careful with your social media. Make sure it’s what you want your clients to see. Because before people think about hiring you, they may follow you for a while. And honestly, I get hired a lot of times because of social media, that people do follow me. They’re a follower first.
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a lot of times they’ll be like I followed you for years so they already kind of trust me they know what I post and they they connect with me so social media can be a powerful tool if you use it correctly. Can be and anyway hot tip for me and you the audio recorder just stopped so we’ve got to make sure we’re talking loud talk loud because we’re gonna have to use the camera we ran out of storage space on the computer yeah and we click clear and anyway it wasn’t working but we’re in a hurry this morning so it’s like hey we got a roll and I had a feeling that was gonna happen and it happened so we’ll talk a little bit louder so you can hear us on so the microphones are no longer working they’re not working so we can hear ourselves we are talking to the camera there’s another lesson in Oklahoma Grassfed Beef business right here we can talk about that is overcoming adversity right we talk about that a lot of eating adversity for breakfast is one of the things that I like
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In business, things are not gonna go as planned and they’re not gonna go perfect. And you’ve got to be able to just roll with the punches, right? And sometimes it’s like you just gotta make it happen. Right? We got a displace, we couldn’t figure it out. We got, you got a meeting coming up. We just, we needed to record a show.
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I can’t let it bother you. I think that’s one of our biggest assets is that we are really good at just rolling with things. Not necessarily making sure everything’s perfect, but getting it done. I have kind of a funny story and this is about your grandma. She doesn’t listen to the podcast, so I’m gonna tell this.
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Yeah.
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Although she would agree. We were cooking a family dinner a few years ago and at before this point, your grandma and your aunt always made this special family dinner.
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A few years ago, they kind of took themselves out of the equation. So me and your cousin, your cousin’s wife, we decided we’re going to take over this family tradition. We’re going to keep this thing going. So we get together, it’s a very long recipe to make this special dish. Your grandma passed it down, well, we’re making it. Your first year, your grandma watched us because she’s like, I don’t really know if I should trust these girls yet, like let them go on their own, you know? We forgot the onions. Do you remember that?
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I remember.
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And we’re making it and we’re like, oh no, we forgot the onions, which I don’t even like onions. So that’s cool. But I do understand they add a lot of flavor and your grandma was like, just beyond, beside herself because she’s like, you can’t make this without onions. And I’m like, I got onion flakes.
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in the cabinet.
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We’ll make it work. In the shaker? In the shaker bottle.
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And she was just like, I can’t believe this. We can’t do that. I mean, just be inside yourself because it totally messed up this special dish for her. And she’s like, we can’t make it now. And I was like, grandma, we got all these people coming over and we’re just gonna improvise and we’re gonna make it work. And we did. I don’t think anybody ever noticed. No one would have been like, there’s no onions in this. But to her, it just like stopped her in her tracks. And if we wouldn’t have been there, she would have just not made it. I don’t know what she would have done. But she just couldn’t get past that we didn’t have one ingredient that was on the ingredient list. But for us, we’re like, we’ve got everything else. We’ll improvise. It’s still gonna turn out great. Nobody knew. So just, that is an important life lesson, I think.
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Very few times is everything gonna go perfectly. Very few times is everything gonna go like you want it to. But you have to improvise, you have to make it work.
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You do, and the people who can overcome the most adversity you know, usually come out ahead. You know what I mean? And this is a good time for me to segue in and not be in a snowflake, which we had an episode about that. But another example is every time it snows, people wanna stay home and not work. They’re looking for any excuse they can not to work.
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Not to mention all the made up holidays we have now that they wanna stay home and work. Are we off for Groundhog Day? Are we off for this? Are we off for that? It’s like, man, by the time you do that, there’s a whole month worth of work that you could be off.
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for these nonsense holidays.
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Well the problem is school is off for so much now.
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Even more.
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So for working parents like gosh it would be very hard because it feels like school’s out all the time. And so they’re like well school’s out are we out? So that’s a challenge.
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Well then the kids graduate and they come in the workforce and they think the workforce needs to abide by the same they don’t know no different so they come in the workforce expecting to be off for all things. Every time it snows we get snow days like no like the business goes on like you gotta you know I mean what are we talking about? But I’m telling you it’s it’s a real thing. If you hire 19, 20, 21 year olds that’s what they’re thinking. You know we’ve had times where the power goes out at the office.
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and we work on laptops right they’re on docking stations and everything well your laptop’s got a battery right and so we’ll lose power and we might be in the middle of a sales call trying to help a customer and but the call kind of continues and we’ve got battery power on the laptop but there’s no lights it just goes dark in the office but dude we continue on right make that sale help that customer don’t you know worry about the lights coming back on you know but most people will take that opportunity to just quit go home call it a day and I’m telling you those things stack up and how you approach life your results all that stuff matters you got to be able to handle adversity because being in Oklahoma Grassfed Beef business is adversity all the time yes especially owning your own business being self -employed
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just full of adversity. And I think people who have done it well or have been successful in it probably make it look a lot easier than it is. So that can be a problem. But if you see behind the scenes of like really what it’s like, it’s never easy. I will say it’s rewarding a lot of times. And I always joke that I gave up working 8 to 5 for someone else so that I can work 24 -7 for myself.
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Yes.
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There’s a lot of truth to that. I would not want to work 8 to 5. That just doesn’t fit my personality well. But because of that, I choose to work for myself all the time.
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All the time.
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So I was walking the other night with some friends and two of us are self -employed and then two are in the nursing field and they were talking about
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five tens and four eights and I’m like what are you guys talking about? They’re like oh our work schedules. I’m like man I haven’t thought about it’s so long and they’re like yeah but you work 24 -7 and I’m like yes that is true.
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And it looks different people don’t understand because they might see you at home with the kids or I might not be at the office still five you know and stuff like that but they don’t see the evenings sometimes at a baseball game you know communicating with customers with things going on in between innings or you know then you get home at nine o ‘clock and you’re continuing stuff like that they don’t see none of that because it just goes along with daily life but you know even back on the adversity thing we just had you know one of our tenants straight up lied to us steal from us and abandon a property.
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That made me really sad too because we chose to trust her because she said all the right things we even checked references they said all the right things.
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Single mom.
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going through a hard time. This goes back to like they’re saying earlier in the principle, if somebody shows you who they are, it’s best to listen.
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We actually, we’ll tell the story in a minute too about the wrestler that hurt Bowen at state.
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Oh, that goes along the same line. So what I’m trying to say there, when somebody shows you who they are, it’s best to listen. It’s meaning like, don’t just listen to what they’re saying. Watch what they’re doing, because most people will say one thing and do another. This girl was a single mom, the sob story, right? We wanted to help her out and the background, the credit check wasn’t good. And normally I would have declined and I should have.
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But we checked some references of where she lived before, prior landlords, they gave us blessings, said she was great, and I was like, okay.
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We were a little bit desperate, we were ready to get somebody in the house, but we should have not.
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Anyway, she moved in and she’s always paid late, right? Then she lost her job she had. And then it was like, but I’m going to pay, I promise you, by the end of April I’m going to be 100 % caught up. Then it was like, I’m going to have you paid by Friday. She was over a month late on her rent. Friday came nothing. The next week I said, can I expect the payment by Friday? She’s like, yes. And I was like, I need to be paid in full. She’s like, understood, it’ll be there.
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Okay, the next Friday came, nothing, right? We’re, I think she owes us almost $3 ,000, right?
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But here’s the thing, she left the property.
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They can’t take it. Yeah, so we go serve a notice to a evict, right? We should have done it, like, immediately, not giving her grace, but hindsight’s 20 -20. But we go serve the notice and it’s like, looks like she’s gone. We come back a few days later and, I mean, the notice is still on the door. She had already left by the time we did that, put the notice on the door, never told us, won’t write us back, left the house full of trash, old mattresses, we had a dumpster, like I’m talking a rolloff dumpster, we had a lot of it full worth of crap that she left, an old couch in the barn, just the place is a filthy mess, just.
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Just balanced on us won’t respond. Don’t say anything owes us $3 ,000 You know, we can take her to court and try to get all that back But for us in our sanity and time, it’s not worth it We’ll lick the wounds go on find somebody else that goes back to saving your money for the other opportunities You have to save it for stuff like that, too As a landlord is definitely not easy not fun I remember telling her I talked to her on the phone like two months ago And I said if you want out of this lease tell me when we will let you out.
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It’s no worries You lost your job. We understand she said no, no, no, we’re gonna make I’m gonna make the payment So it was just like we were listening to what she was saying, but we weren’t doing what we knew Probably she was a pain, you know, it was like
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And then she just treats us like that, literally lies, tells us she’s going to pay, then doesn’t, then skips town, we have no idea where she is, left our house a wreck, didn’t even tell us she was gone, so we’re missing days, we could have already been in there and getting somebody else going.
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Yeah, so do the work up front and make the smart call. So I wanted to share a couple things. First, the story about Bowen at State. So he was at the State Tournament this year, he wrestled against a kid that he’s wrestled several times this year, a really good wrestler. We were a couple rounds in, in the State Tournament, and this kid throws in a legal move on Bowen and hurts him.
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Yeah, deliberately trying to hurt him. I actually did it, I think two or three times, and the last time you did it…
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No, he threw Bowen into a table, and this kid is a good wrestler, I mean, he’s beat Bowen every time, Bowen’s a good wrestler, this kid is like, he’s good.
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So he’s not, he’s not doing stuff by accident, there’s a table at the edge of the mat where they have the scoreboard, the scorekeepers and stuff, and when you’re wrestling, you get close to the table, the ref stops it and brings you back to center, you don’t throw somebody into the table, I mean, he threw Bowen into the table, hurt his side, and then when they started going again, he picked Bowen up, and you’re not allowed to elevate somebody off the ground and uncontrollably slam them to the mat, you have to return them to the mat under control, and he basically slammed Bowen uncontrollably and hurt him.
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Well, the point of the story is that yes, but Bowen got hurt he laid there for a while you were down there It kind of came to the point where the ref was like look you can make this kid forfeit What or you can take the loss basically right and Bowen was losing by a lot, right? Like I don’t know 12 points There was like literally a second left or two seconds left in the match But he gave you the choice to make the call Disqualified the kid and me as a mom I was ticked and I was like I would have disqualified him I’m sorry, but I would have I was kind of mad at you because you didn’t yeah But you didn’t you chose not to you chose to let the kid get the win but the point of the story is
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Bowen told us afterward. He’s like man that kid’s so nice to me off the mat and we’re like, uh -huh But you see who he really is Yeah, he behind you know when it comes down to it like he will cheat to win over and over He does behind the scenes sneaky stuff and we’re like now, you know So even though he tries to be nice to you off the mat.
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That’s not that’s not that’s not true This was like the third or fourth time we had wrestled in this season So the other tournaments the kid would beat Bowen But then he would they would he would come talk to Bowen and act like he was his friendly You know and act like he was his friend and then it came time for this tournament and the way he I mean wrestled So dirty I mean digging his chin like in the back of Bowen’s neck and stuff And it’s like okay Bowen this is an important lesson but what’s really funny is that kid this next match got beat Yeah, so well I didn’t want to take a victory like if you had been a close match and like
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That would have mad but I think it was a better wrestler have taken it and and he was winning by a mile But it would have been a false But he needed to learn a lesson no false said well, I made him sweat it out If you remember right it took a long time. Yeah, I didn’t make a decision for several minutes But he was crying he was a big swallow.
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I met it came over Yeah, but I remember that kid one, you know, Bowen was really upset. He was still kind of hurt But I was so proud of him because He was hurt and he could have been like medical forfeit. I’m done, you know It’s not fun to get hurt like that and people everybody’s watching you But you know what he took a breath and he had to go back out there really quick Like I think he might have had a couple matches. Yeah, and they were like are you can you go again? He’s like I can go and he got back out there. I remember your dad was like there’s no way He’s getting back out there. I said
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I know my son. He is going back out there. He’s not going out like that. He doesn’t have anything broken. He just was hurt, you know, but he went back out there. A couple of matches later got the win and pretty easily. And this really showed how strong he was. And so I was very proud of him.
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It was good. Yeah. And he got to learn the lesson of people will be nice to your face, but watch how they actually act. And that kid’s friend, even though he tries to be that way. It’s important lesson to learn in life. What time are we at?
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We got just a couple of minutes left, a couple of minutes left.
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So what’s another principle?
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Well, I just wanted to say too, I think that also works not just in business, but in life.
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For me, I’ve had several instances where I thought somebody was my friend But when it came time that I really needed them to be my friend They proved that they were not my friend ever to begin with. Yeah, you know, and so and that is incredibly hurtful I had one a few years ago when my business dissolved with my business partner And I had some friends who I really thought were my friends like they weren’t just like Employees that work for me they were like we hung out on the you know all the time And I thought they would have my back and when they chose to go to the other side And just totally turned their backs on me like so hurtful but from that I learned like
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Okay, they showed me who they were. So I now know and gosh, I used to think I wanted like a big circle and I thought I needed that. But now I know just if I have a few solid friends that I know are gonna be there for me, that’s really all I need. You can keep your circle small and be happy with that.
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And I would say this, this doesn’t mean you have to go through life like looking for somebody who’s gonna screw you over or whatever. It’s just, you do have to be aware. You don’t wanna have your wall up all the time.
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You can’t just not trust anybody and you’re gonna get hurt in life too.
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You are, it’s just the way it is. And you might even hurt somebody else, you know? I’m sure we all do that and we just don’t even know sometimes. But the importance is, is like, you’ve gotta be able to handle it and move on. Handle it and move on.
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The lady that bailed on us and owes us money in that rent house, trashed it, made us all that stuff. I could sit there and be mad about it and all that stuff, it does no good.
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You can just say lesson learned, now we know, won’t do that again and honestly I think so many times you just have to be like God I trust you and I can’t let this defeat me, make me stagnant, close my heart off from people completely because that’s not what God wants from us. We have to live with open hearts and we unfortunately live in a fallen world so we have to learn the lessons, keep moving forward.
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We do, so don’t let it just overwhelm you and ruin your week or month or be like I don’t want to be a landlord because you know people like you just got, I mean we have several tenants and they’re great.
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But you are going to get some bad ones every once in a while or you’re gonna have some bad employees there once in a while That doesn’t mean you don’t need to be in Oklahoma Grassfed Beef business. You’ve got to be able to push through the hard times To have the good times.
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So yeah in the real estate market right now. Things are really hard It is not a great market right now But because of that so many realtors have gotten out of it because it’s not easy right now No business is hard, but we’ve been talking about like well When the time like Warren Buffett said I think when the tide comes out you find out who’s been swimming naked That’s kind of where we are right now The tides out and it’s like who’s for real and who’s just been kind of playing along and if you’ve been playing along You’re out of the business because you can’t survive right now But I think if you just continue to work hard keep your head up push forward You’re gonna come out on the other side
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But it’s also going to weed out the ones who can’t do that.
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Yeah, you’ve got to be able to have enough money to weather the bad storms in the economy and in business when it happens so that you can stay afloat and then capitalize when it gets good. Business is always cyclical. There’s always ups and downs, ups and downs. Last year we didn’t get to buy any share of sale properties. I think the year before we bought four or six, something like that, but last year zero. There just wasn’t any opportunities. Well, then this year we had to buy two within a month, really. And it’s like, well, that’s not a, I mean, that’s not ideal because, you know, we buy them with cash and fix them up with cash and then pull our cash back out usually with a bank loan. And it’s like, well, you got two. So you got a lot of cash tied up and you got to get one remodeled and get it finished and get the other one remodeled. And it’s sitting there while you’re working on this other one. And you know, it’s not ideal to have all that going on at once. And we’re
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That’s when the opportunity arose, right? And so we’re ready for it. You got to be able to act on it, right? I can’t tell you how powerful that that is.
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Well, hopefully these business principles are super helpful Hopefully you can learn from our stories some of our mistakes and hopefully it helps you thrive in your life in your business Yes, take these principles to heart and learn from our mistakes. See you next time.
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Yes