Jeff Howell: Risk and Relationships Mindset!

Hey, everybody. How’s it going? This is Jeff coming at you with another mindset Monday. And today I want to go over a few thoughts on risk and relationships. So first of all, on risk. When I got into the lead gen business model at the end of 2018, I wanted to really go and challenge myself at a really high level and it was a new business model to me. I had some experience in web design and some other aspects of what we do and lead gen, but I had never really deepened the skill set too much. So I came out swinging. I started 25 websites, I got 25 jobs out of the gate and started developing these properties to to rent out and not knowing really anything about what I was doing and just taking the risk of going out and starting that forced me to adapt and improvise and innovate along the way. But my biggest downfall in that whole scenario was that I didn’t do very good due diligence and there were a lot of things that were happening at that time in my primary business that I was in, in the remodeling space that was given that I thought would give me a lot more opportunities in developing and selling these sites. But as the sort of tides turned, I found myself upside down and spending a lot of money on all kinds of different aspects of the business. As far as the development cost, the phone numbers and all of these different things.

And so I found that I was doing a lot of things not very well. So instead of just doing three or five sites and really developing those at a deep level and getting those sold, I was doing 25 of them and I wasn’t doing anything very well. So I took a big risk in that scenario to get myself out there, to get myself into the business model and get myself moving and and challenging myself. I had to continuously step up. So alongside of that, at that time, I got the opportunity to tune in with a group of people who were holding masterminds, mastermind weekends and, and all of this. And so even being at, you know, in the space of of really not making much money on the legions themselves and spending a lot of money on development costs I had this this additional opportunity but also risk in going to these mastermind weekends and building relationships with people. So what I did was even though I didn’t have much money, I spent, I scraped it up and spent the money to go and do these weekends. And over time, I built relationships with people who were attending those masterminds at a at a deeper level. And as I found myself transitioning through the model, more opportunities came up from the relationships that I had built along the way. So it ended up that my real investment at that time was was more into the relationships that I was building in in, in conjunction or in addition to my investment into the business model.

So this was a huge risk on both parts, number one, into the business model, number two, into the relationships. But you know that my experience had told me that along the way that relationships were more valuable than any kind of asset you would have. And I had a mentor who taught me many years ago. He said, look at look at wealthy people. You know, wealthy people value relationships more than things. Yeah, they might have nice things. They might have a nice car, nice house, property or whatever. But when it comes down to it, they value relationships even more. And where sort of average middle-income earners or lower they value things they want to go and and buy the the newest iPhone or whatever it is and they’re not really invested investing their time and resources into relationships. So I’ve ever since I learned that I’ve been really focused on building relationships over time. And so those are the things that that have really positioned me very well for opportunities in my career and in the Legion model itself as far as working with people, doing sales for people, getting opportunities to purchase assets that are already built and producing that maybe are not a right fit for the person who owns them, you know, doing deals with manufacturers and doing deals at higher levels of lead gen instead of just working on, you know, just lower lead cost assets that are producing, you know, whatever number of leads per month.

So this is a mindset that I’m in and it came up recently where. Patrick and I decided to go back to traffic and conversions this year and do a sponsorship and invited some of the members from the group to come along. And so it’s like I remember myself back then three years ago when these opportunities came up, and it was a big step for me to say, look at my bank account and say, Wow, this is going to cost X number of dollars. Like how am I going to make this happen? But also knowing in the back of my mind that that’s where the real value is. Like, that’s where I really should be investing my resources and is into the opportunity to get in the same room with people so that I can build real relationships with them because that way they can see who I am as a person. They can see my skill set, they can see the value that I can bring, they can feel that, they can see that and they can see that I have integrity. They can see that they trust me. And another mentor of mine taught me that relationships move at the speed of trust so you can deepen the relationship only to the level or degree of trust that you have. Well, how do you get to trust people if you’re not sitting at the same table with them? How do you how do you trust people that you’ve never met? How do you trust people that if you know you can do it over time, you can have trust, you can build trust sort of in a digital space or, you know, over phone calls and whatnot.

But your ability to do that is multiplied exponentially by getting in the same room. So I in this business model in particular, because all these things came together about the time I got into the business model has really informed me throughout the entire time that since I’ve started is like, get in the get in the room with people, get in the room with people you respect, to get in the room with people you who are role models, get in the room with people who you want to learn from, who have accomplished things that you want to accomplish, and that will give you the the ability to create and deepen these relationships over time and to be able to build trust that is going to lead to opportunities. So that’s my mindset. Monday for today is just like, you know, really understanding that not not just taking risk for the sake of risk, but calculated risk when you understand the the opportunity and the potential outcomes. So taking calculated risks and then also building relationships and understanding that real opportunities and real value comes out of taking, you know, building these relationships where if you build a relationship with one, you can only go so far in your own right.

And I used to be a lone wolf. I used to think I could do it on my own. But over time, I’ve learned that, you know, one plus one equals three and two plus two equals six and so on. Three plus three equals nine. And the more people’s genius and abilities that you can put into the mix together, the further you’re going to get faster. And so I’ve really focused on identifying the people that I know I can trust in that I want to deepen relationships with that are my kind of people that I’m aligned with 100% deepening those relationships, creating opportunities and take advantage of taking advantage of opportunities together over time has really led me to create a massive amount of opportunity and happiness. And what I’m doing in my in my in my life and my career. And I only see great things happening from here. So that leads to a lot of satisfaction. And, you know, my real desire to continue in the model and to continue to expand and learn and grow and build more relationships. So that’s my mindset Monday for the day. I hope you enjoyed it. I like would like to see your comments in the comment section, if you have any. And with that in mind, I’ll see you in the next one. Take care of peace.