I have worked with a lot of people helping them get in and/or grow their self-storage business.
Here is what I have learned: knowing what to do and having a good strategy is important, but it really only accounts for about 20% of your success.
Your mindset, your relationship to money and success, how you relate to other people, and what you put your attention on means the difference between success and failure.
I can work with two different people, the same type of property, exact same strategy, in the same market and they would both be doing exactly the same thing. However, one will be successful in their self-storage business and one will fail.
Why?
Their mindset, beliefs, and how they relate to success.
Let me share some of the books I have read in the past few years that have made a difference and helped keep me focused on what is important. Each of these books has changed my mindset or how I did business.
I will share the Amazon write up of each book along with how the book made a difference for me. It is hard for me to rank them in order of impact on me, so I will list them alphabetically.
Also, I will be giving these books away to one winner from a random drawing.
To be in the drawing please do two things.
(1) make sure you are on my email list at CreatingWealthThroughSelfStorage.com. If you are not sure, click here, enter your first name and email, I will send you a FREE eBook “The Ten Most Made Mistakes In Buying Self Storage”. That will put you on the email list. Once on the list, I send out a weekly email with free training as well as periodic industry updates.
(2) Also, make sure you subscribe to my YouTube Channel here
If you send me an email at mark@helmproperties.com, I will verify that you are on the email list and subscribed. Then, on December 31, 2018, at 6 PM, I will conduct a drawing using Facebook live. The winner will be posted on the Facebook page and I will also send out an email.
I will then mail the books to the winners home.
Even if you don’t win or get in the drawing, these books can make a difference for you. I also have a surprise later on in this Episode.
I hope you enjoy!
Book One:
The 10 x Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure by Grant Cardone.
Extreme success, by definition, lies beyond the realm of normal action. If you want to achieve extreme success, you can’t operate like everybody else and settle for mediocrity. You need to remove luck and chance from your business equation and lock in massive success. The 10X Rule shows you how! Success is your duty, obligation, and responsibility, and this audiobook gives you step-by-step guidance on how to achieve phenomenal success for yourself!
With The 10X Rule, you’ll learn to establish the amount of effort needed to guarantee success and ensure that you can continue operating at this level throughout your life. Most people desire success and have great ideas but they come up short on the amount of action required to get their lives to the exceptional levels they deserve. Four degrees of action exist, and in order to achieve your dreams, you must learn to operate at the fourth degree of action: Massive Action. The 10X Rule will dissolve fear, increase your belief in yourself, eliminate procrastination, and provide you with an overwhelming sense of purpose. The 10X Rule compels you to separate yourself from everyone else in the market and you do that by doing what others refuse to do. Stop thinking in terms of basic needs, and start aiming for abundance in all areas of your life. The 10X Rule guides you toward the frame of mind that all successful people share. Aim ten times higher than you are right now and if you come up short, you’ll still find yourself further along than if you had maintained your life’s current status quo. The 10X Rule teaches you how to:
- Reach goals that you previously thought were impossible
- Correctly set goals and guarantee their achievement
- Create unprecedented levels of happiness and satisfaction in every area of your life
- Use fear as fuel to move you into action
- Get everything you want and never have to settle
- Dominate your competition and become a role model for success
This book freed me up from always thinking I am doing something wrong. There are a lot of spaces and a lot of work required to grow a business. Often there are times I get this nagging feeling, like a background conversation, that I must be doing things all wrong because it seems hard. This book helped me realize if it isn’t hard, it’s probably not worth going for.
It also gave me the tools to transform “hard” activities into “fulfilling” actives. I now have the experience that the “work” is the fulfillment of my vision.
Also, Grant Cardone is an interesting character. I enjoyed his rather strong personality and positions. I didn’t always agree with his political views, but really enjoyed getting into his mind.
Book Two
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown.
Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin? Do you simultaneously feel overworked and underutilized? Are you often busy but not productive? Do you feel like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas? If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is the Way of the Essentialist. The Way of the Essentialist isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done. It is not a time management strategy or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter.
By forcing us to apply more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy – instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us. Essentialism is not one more thing – it’s a whole new way of doing everything. It’s about doing less, but better, in every area of our lives. Essentialism is a movement whose time has come.
This may seem counter-intuitive given the large goals we create for ourselves. However, this book supports me in focusing on what is the one thing at any given moment, day, or week that will forward my vision.
I feel empowered and focused each time I re-read or review this book. It really is not about doing less but more about doing the critical activities that make the difference. The experience for me proved anything is possible because I have given myself permission to have control over my activities.
Book Three:
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap And Others Don’t by Jim Collins.
Built to Last, the defining management study of the ’90s, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning.
But what about companies that are not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? Are there those that convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? If so, what are the distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?
Over five years, Jim Collins and his research team have analyzed the histories of 28 companies, discovering why some companies make the leap and others don’t. The findings include:
- Level 5 Leadership: A surprising style, required for greatness
- The Hedgehog Concept: Finding your three circles, to transcend the curse of competence
- A Culture of Discipline: The alchemy of great results
- Technology Accelerators: How good-to-great companies think differently about technology
- The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Why those who do frequent restructuring fail to make the leap
What I loved about this book is how it helped me focus on creating a culture in my self-storage business, and how to focus on what matters for growth. Anyone can start a company, but few survive past five years. The ones that grow to the point that they make an impact in the world, have to create structures to support that growth.
As business owners, it is important to have our attention on the things that make a difference for growth and this book can support that- at least it did for me.
Book Four:
This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See by Seth Godin.
A game-changing approach to marketing, sales, and advertising, by best-selling author and renowned business thinker Seth Godin.
Seth Godin has taught and inspired millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, leaders, and fans from all walks of life, via his blog, online courses, lectures, and best-selling books. He is the inventor of countless ideas and phrases that have made their way into the mainstream business language, from Permission Marketing to Purple Cow to Tribes to The Dip.
Now, for the first time, Godin offers the core of his marketing wisdom in one compact, accessible, and timeless package. This Is Marketing shows you how to do work you’re proud of, whether you’re a tech start-up founder, a small-business owner, or an executive at a large corporation.
Great marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problem; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems. Their tactics rely on empathy, connection, and emotional labor instead of attention-stealing ads and spammy email funnels. When done right, marketing seeks to make a change in the world.
No matter what your product or service, this audiobook will teach you how to reframe how it’s presented to the world in order to meaningfully connect with the people who want it. Seth employs his signature blend of insight, observation, and memorable examples to teach you:
- How to build trust and permission with your target market.
- The art of positioning – deciding not only who it’s for, but who it’s not for.
- Why the best way to achieve your marketing goals is to help others become who they want to be.
- Why the old approaches to advertising and branding no longer work.
- The surprising role of tension in any decision to buy (or not).
- How marketing is at its core about the stories we tell ourselves about our social status.
You can do work that matters for people who care. This book shows you the way.
The world of marketing is very different now than it used to be. In the old days, the ’90s and before, marketing and advertising were basically the same things.
Not anymore.
For anyone who wants to be in charge of the marketing for their company, or who wants to understand the new marketing world we live in, this book is for you.
Now, I have a clear understanding of everything involved in marketing our self-storage facilities, our brand, and how to relate to the different advertising outlets.
And yes, I do now get the difference between advertising and marketing.
Book Five:
The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life’s Perfection by Michael Singer
From the author of the New York Times number-one bestseller, The Untethered Soul comes the astonishing true-life story about what happens when you just let go.
A thriving spiritual community on over 600 acres of pristine forest and meadows in Florida, a cutting-edge software package that transformed the medical-practice management industry, a billion-dollar public company whose achievements are archived in the Smithsonian Institution, a book that became a New York Times bestseller and an Oprah favorite, and a massive raid by the FBI that would lead to unfounded accusations by the US government – how could all of this spring from a man who had decided to live alone in the middle of the woods, let go of himself, and embrace a life of solitude? But this man had made a radical decision – one that would unwittingly lead him to both the pinnacle of success and the brink of disaster.
Michael A. Singer, the author of The Untethered Soul, tells the extraordinary story of what happened when, after a deep spiritual awakening, he decided to let go of his personal preferences and simply let life call the shots. As Singer takes you on this great experiment and journey into life’s perfection, the events that transpire will both challenge your deepest assumptions about life and inspire you to look at your own life in a radically different way.
One of the most interesting books I have ever read. A true life, a self-told story about how Michael Singer, the creator of a publicly traded company, used his spiritual foundation to be able to go through one of the worst experiences any business owner can ever go through and come out experiencing himself as whole and complete.
Very inspiring. I love being able to connect my spiritual side with the practicality required to start, grow and run a business. This book demonstrates what is possible for human beings to accomplish.
Bonus:
Now all of these books and more have really had an impact on me in the past few years. However, there are a few foundational books, that I believe if you haven’t read, are must-reads for anyone crazy enough to be creating their own business.
These books are the books I read over and over, some at least once a year.
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
The book I read in my early 20’s that changed the trajectory of my life. This was the first book I read that opened my eyes to the fact I can create any life I choose, and how to use the power of the mind to achieve it.
It was written in the 1920’s I think. The writing style is quite different than what we would see today, but for me, that adds to the magic of the book. I am inspired every time I read it.
I read this book almost every year and love to see the progress I have made since the last time I read it.
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
This is a very practical how-to book that created the foundation for my approach to business, people, and life. I happened to read it early in my professional career, and it has been a guiding light, a compass pointing true north for me ever since.
If you haven’t read it, do so and get the whole world of effectiveness coming from a principled center. Your life will never bee the same.
The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles.
This powerful book is written from a very unique spiritual frame of reference. It was written before Think and Grow Rich, and I have got to think it was read by Napoleon Hill.
Originally published in 1910, the author died shortly after in 1911.
Wallace Wattles was a New Thought Minister (the New Thought movement is a uniquely American Spiritual movement from the late 1800s that helped create Science of Mind, Christian Science, and Unity Churches) and uses the metaphysical spiritual laws as a reference point for teaching the reader how to create financial wealth.
It is a step-by-step guide.
Not for everyone and it may bump up against some more fundamental/traditional Christian beliefs, but it is right in line with my spiritual practices. I read this book almost continually.
If you are interested, here is a link to a free online copy.
Conclusion
I told you early on in this episode that there was a bonus, and here it is, a free copy of the book, The Science Of Getting Rich.
I hope you enjoyed a slight departure from the normal type of material. My coaching is to always be expanding your mind by reading or listening to the audiobooks. Again, knowing what to do is about 20% of what it takes to be successful, 80% is having powerful beliefs and a powerful mindset that supports what you are up to in life.
Read on.
