At the beginning of this year, I told my sister that I would walk ten thousand steps or more every day this year.
I absolutely am walking consistently.
But…
spoiler alert:
I am not going to make the goal of 365 out of 365 days of 10K steps or more.
But I am still feeling good!
And I’m super excited to say that today I am on a 91-day streak.
We have had 94 days this year and I have walked at least 10,000 steps, for 91 of those days. 💃🏾
If you watch my IG stories you have seen my views from my walk like this one ⤵️
What is one thing you have been doing in the last three months that you are excited about?
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that every single day I jump up and am excited to walk. In the words of Maury Povich… that would be a lie.
Sometimes I wake up and I’m feeling lazy. I’m not into it. I want to bum around the house and not go out at all.
But recently, I realized something rather surprising…
When I don’t feel like walking, I tell myself I will just go out and do a quick 5 or 10 minute walk and then come back and get along with my day.
But what I am finding is once I start walking…
without even thinking about it, I start doing my regular route.
By the time I look up, I’m halfway through and I end up doing the usual full 40-minute walk.
Last year I read Atomic Habits. The author talked about this habit hack…
He said, if you don’t feel like doing something, just do it for a minute.
If you don’t want to read, for example, commit to reading one page.
And you will find that you end up reading more once you get started.
When I read that bit in the book, I honestly thought it was BS.🥲
But I am starting to see with my walks that… GASP… this thing is actually REAL! 😁
The walks help me to clear my mind. I start my day with action. I breathe in some fresh air. It helps me to start my day in a positive light.
The biggest benefit though is I do it automatically now. All I have to do is step outside and start the walk.
With that one habit in place, it sets me up to stack on additional habits that make my day better.
This building habits topic relates to a question asked during my most recent (and first) workshop, 10 Minutes to Profit.
The question was – how do you find deals on a multi-family house if you live in an expensive city?
My response was :
you don’t find a deal. You create a deal
You create deals when you are able to identify an opportunity. And the opportunity is going to be to cash flow, equity, or both.
The workshop focused on one aspect of identifying opportunities through cash flow.
One of my parting messages at the end of the workshop was this – in order to identify cash flow opportunities you have to practice.
You essentially create a habit so that your brain starts to do this automatically for you. My brain automatically moves my body towards my long route when my intention when I leave the house is a quick and easy walk.
What is that practice that will lead to identifying cash flow opportunities? Looking at property listings every single day and doing the math to see if the property will generate profit.
Anytime I see a house for sale during my walk I get back and I analyze it.
I have repeated this habit so many times. Now when I see the price, specs and location of the house, I already know if it’s a deal without taking out my spreadsheet.
My brain identifies the patterns for me so I can evaluate them on autopilot. But that wouldn’t happen if I hadn’t practiced evaluating properties.
Here are two more habits you can add to your routine to get better at creating house hacking deals:
➡️ Learn how to increase equity and cash flow.
Start listening to one real estate investing podcast.
Even if you are NOT an investor, you can apply the investor principles you learn to buying your own house.
There are SO many ways to create equity or cash flow.
Listening to different perspectives will open up your eyes to the possibilities.
I learned A LOT over the years just from listening to Bigger Pockets. You can also check out Latinos in Real Estate Investing and Get your FILL . Someone you know may be a guest on these last two podcasts soon!😜
Start by listening to one episode a week. Go back to the very beginning of the podcast.
You can also mix in some non-investor inspiration from single women on Mortgages and Mimosas! LIVE episodes will be back next month!
➡️ Narrow your search area
Looking at properties across a whole city is not going to cut it.
Something that might be a deal in one neighborhood might be a rip off in another.
In some cases, you may need to narrow it down to a specific part of the neighborhood.
One thing I hear ALL the time is there are no deals in my area. But when I ask for more details, they aren’t looking at houses every day and they are looking at too wide of an area.
It’s like when you say there is nothing to eat, yet your fridge is full.
There is plenty to eat! The issue is there are too many options so your brain can’t make a decision!
When you reduce what you have to process, you can start to see patterns in those areas. This will help you to start creating deals for yourself.
Which of these three habits would be most helpful to you if you were to start it?
DM me on Instagram and let’s chat about it!
