Josh Cantwell: So, hey, there. Welcome back to Accelerated Investor. I’m your host, Josh Cantwell, and I am so excited to be with you. Today, we are wrapping up The Nine Traits of Elite Entrepreneurs and Eight and Nine-Figure Investors. These are the traits that I have witnessed in myself and other entrepreneurs, leaders, thought leaders who are just building amazing businesses, and what I would consider an elite entrepreneur, an eight or nine-figure investor. We’ve already covered the nine. So, today we’re going to be talking about the bonus trait. The bonus trait is to become super niche. The bonus trait is to understand what’s your superpower.

[EPISODE]

Josh Cantwell: So, let’s talk about it. What does it mean to be super niche? Well, let’s first talk about the definition of niche. So, Google tells us that the definition of niche is, one, a comfortable or suitable position in life or employment. Number two, which is the one I like better, a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service. Being niche denotes a product, service, or interest that appeals to a small, specialized section of the population. And the verb of niche means to place something in a niche, right? To be niche. So, what does it mean to be niched in kind of simple terms? Well, it basically means that you’re in a place or a position that you are specifically or particularly appropriate or good at one thing. You’re very specific, you’re different from others. Okay? And so, when I look at nine-figure investors and I look at the nine traits of elite entrepreneurs when I look at elite entrepreneurs that I know, guys like Justin Donald, guys like Ryan Moran, guys like Kevin O’Leary, guys like Jack Canfield, all people that I’ve had on the show, I start to think about, “Well, what did they do well? Okay. What did I do well?”

And what I noticed in all of them is that they were super niche. If you look at how Kevin O’Leary made his money, Kevin O’Leary made his money in software. Okay. Justin Donald, he’s known as a lifestyle investor. Ryan Moran got his notoriety from his book, 12 Months to a Million. Jack Canfield got his notoriety from the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. And all of these very successful entrepreneurs, all have this one thing in common is that they were super niche about what they were teaching. I’ll give you another example. I was friends with Ryan Moran when Ryan was 20 years old. Ryan now is probably 32, 33 years old. And back when Ryan was 20 or 22, 23, he was an affiliate marketer. Not really a specific niche but he was a good affiliate marketer, was good at writing email copy. Ryan Moran’s business blew up when he wrote the book 12 Months to a Million, and he specifically laid out a process for entrepreneurs to sell physical products on Amazon. And he laid out a specific formula that said, “You need to sell X number of your product per day, X number of product per week, X number of product per month, and then you have an upsell that sells X number of units per day, per week, per month, X number of margin that you needed to have, let’s say, 35% or 50% margin. And if you did that for 12 months, you’d be a millionaire. Twelve months to a million.”

Justin Donald, my friend, Justin, that runs the Lifestyle Investor Podcast and the Lifestyle Investor book, Justin started out as a mobile home investor. Justin created financial independence and passive cash flow from mobile homes. And then he started branching out from mobile homes into other types of limited partnership investments. It could be apartment buildings, could be an e-commerce play, could be a life insurance play, could be some sort of cannabis opportunity, crypto, whatever. But Justin created the Lifestyle Investor brand an image because he became super niche about finding passive lifestyle investments that would support his passive income, that would allow him and his daughter to go do amazing things and still make passive income. When I think about real estate, when I think about what we’ve done right, when I think about what I’ve done right with multifamily investments, we’ve done 19 apartment syndications, we’ve bought 4,350 units. Today, we own a little over 3,000 units that we own or operate in the Houston market, the Atlanta market, and the Ohio markets. And I think about what I’ve done right. And I think about all the things that I could have done differently.

And I think the one thing that I got right is that I went super niche, this bonus trait, super niche, and I realized that my superpower was in raising money. I realized that I have a comfort level of working with investors. I have a comfort level of talking to people about money that a lot of other people don’t have. I have a comfort level in talking to people about their financial goals, their financial objectives, how much money they make, what their net worth is, what mistakes they’ve made managing money, where do they want to go with their money, how do they manage their money now and what the goal is for that. And so, when it comes to financial conversations, I’m as comfortable as anybody having those conversations. I’m also very comfortable selling financial services, including limited partnerships in real estate, mutual funds, IRAs, life insurance, estate planning, things like that. I’ve been very comfortable doing that since I was 21 years old. I’m now 46 years old. And so, for 25 years, I’ve been very comfortable talking to people about capital and deploying their capital and helping them achieve their financial goals, making investments and passive investments, mobile homes, being private lenders for residential real estate, investing in our private equity fund.

And so, this to me has been the superpower. It’s the super niche trait that I possess that is what makes us different is my ability, regardless of the market, whether the market’s up, whether the market’s down, whether we’re an inflationary market, whether we’re in a hawkish Federal Reserve market where they’re raising interest rates. I am unbelievably comfortable talking to passive investors about investing. And the other part of that is that I spend an inordinate amount of time to get to know my private investors really well. Okay. I talked to those private investors. I am on the phone with them. I’m text messaging them, emailing them, creating really deep private relationships with those people that’s allowed us to build a $300 million portfolio. Okay. When you look at what Ryan Moran did and teaching people how to sell physical products on Amazon, that’s a super niche thing. When you talk about Chicken Soup for the Soul, Chicken Soup for the Soul was a conglomerate. It was an aggregation of feel-good stories, right? It was chicken soup. It was soup for your soul. It was feel-good stories. And you look at how much success Jack Canfield had with that.

You look at Daymond John, who I had speak at one of my live events. And Daymond John made all this money with FUBU. It was with fashion. Look at the Trump Organization. They made all of their main money in real estate and then they branched off into numerous other niches, steaks and cologne, and clothes, some of with varying success but they made their money in real estate development. So, my question really is for you, my listening audience. And my question right now for you is what’s your superpower? What’s your niche? What’s the thing that you do on a daily or a weekly basis inside your business that actually gives you energy, that gives you passion, that gives you energy and excitement to go do more of it? When I talk to investors about raising money and deploying money, I’m really fired up for that. When I get off the phone with a private investor that’s going to invest another $250,000 or $0.5 million with us. Our conversation last night with the guy that’s got $1.5 million. He’s got $1.2 million with us already and he’s got $1.5 million more. I get geeked up about that and helping that guy achieve his financial goals. And in the process, it helps me achieve my goals.

Now, in order to be super niche, here’s the one thing that you have to remember. You have to be able to surround yourself with people that can fill the holes, that can fill the gaps of everything that you’re not good at. So, my business partner, Glenn, that helps me sometimes with raising money, but primarily he’s optimizing our construction. We have over $8 million capital improvement budget right now. We’ve got our CFO, Roberdo. We’ve got our Director of Finance, Stephanie. We’ve got our VP of Construction, Dave. We’ve got Dave’s Director of Construction, Brian Pfaffenberger. And then we’ve got dozens of contractors from roofing guys to window guys to painting guys to landscape contractors, seal and striping driveways, turning units, carpenters that all work under Dave. Well, without Glenn managing that swim lane, I couldn’t be super niche in my swim lane. And so, Glenn, being super niche in his swim lane has allowed me to be super niche in mine. Then you take a look at our other partner, Tyler. In Tyler’s swim lane is acquisitions and asset management. So, what does that allow Tyler to do? It allows Tyler to focus on finding deals and managing the property managers, at answering questions around leasing, evictions, make-readies, there’s plumbing issues, electrical issues, what our lease pricing should be, what our renewals are.

And so, without Tyler being super niche in asset management, in acquisitions, and without Glenn being super niche in construction, I couldn’t be super niche in raising capital and marketing, which is what I love to do. It allows me to work from anywhere in the world. It allows me to work from home if I want or work on the beach if I want. It allows me to socialize and network with unbelievably successful accredited investors and some non-accredited as well. But that’s ultimately what it comes down to. It’s building that team of partners, whether it’s a general partnership in a real estate syndication or some other partnership and some other niche where you have enough partners and there’s a big enough opportunity, there’s big enough deal flow, there’s big enough equity, there’s big enough profits for everybody that you can allow the entrepreneurs, the owners, the CEO, COO, the Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, allowing them to really dial in their superpower and be super niche.

So, my question for you is what are you doing to really understand how to find and how to sell your niche? If you’re saying, “Look, I do flips and I do flips in five different markets and I invest in multifamily and I do some private lending,” that’s not super niche. That’s not one of the traits of elite entrepreneurs. You can look at Kevin O’Leary and say, “Well, Kevin owns 35 different companies.” Yes, but Kevin O’Leary made his money when he sold a software company for billions of dollars then he started O’Leary Funds, a mutual fund company, and now he basically invests in other entrepreneurs. He writes checks and he invests in those businesses. But the operator that runs the business is essentially the general partner that runs the day-to-day business and Kevin’s essentially a limited partner. He could be a general partner but he essentially invests in and buys equity in that business. So, he’s not running 35 companies. He’s essentially running one company right now, which is O’Leary Funds and he’s really good at running that one company.

And so, ultimately, I feel like this is after you’ve done all of the other traits. Remember, trait number one is invest for cash flow now. Trait number two is you’re 100% responsible for your own life. Trait number three is that elite entrepreneurs have super time management skills. Trait number four is to refuse or avoid the screen-sucking OCD loop. Elite entrepreneurs use technology as a weapon. That’s number five. Number six is they set goals using the ACER exercise. They have absolute clarity of where they want to go. Absolute clarity of the end result. Number seven, they scale the one-to-many concept similar to the way I’m speaking to you on this podcast. Number eight, they realize that service trumps price. And number nine, they realize that the business of business is people. Nothing gets done without people working the systems. Those are the nine traits of a leader entrepreneur. And of course, the bonus trait is to be super niche. The bonus trait is to maximize your superpower. You see, most people that are super successful have one or two things that they’ve done right, one or two things they did right. And otherwise, they’re insecure, they’re bad at a lot of other things. You know, they’re not good at lots and lots of things.

It’s not like the people that are titans of industry that are super successful, it’s not like they’re good at everything. Okay. They’re not. They’re not great at everything. They’re good at one or two things and you think that they’re superhuman because they’re worth $100 million or they’re worth $1 billion. They’re not superhuman because they’re worth $1 billion. They’re superhuman because they focused on their superpower.

[CLOSING]

Josh Cantwell: So, I hope you’ve enjoyed this special sort of subset inside of the Accelerated Investor Podcast called The Nine Traits of Elite Entrepreneurs and Eight-Figure Investors. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a rating review. Share this all over social media and don’t forget to subscribe. And of course, if I can help you in any way, if I can help you get to the next level, it’s probably through our mastermind group called Forever Passive Income, and you can apply to be a member of the Forever Passive Income Mastermind Group. You can apply at JoshCantwellCoaching.com. Thanks so much for being here today and we’ll see you next time.