Goal Digger, Inc. is the name of my company, and the umbrella under which The Landlord System resides.  I thought long and hard about my company name and it’s logo, what it represents, and I have a secret confession. 

Goal Digger logo 

It is my desire that “goal digger” becomes a household term.  I want to hear this term mentioned in prime time dramas, on CNN, and at happy hour gatherings.  Maybe one day it will become so recognized as to make it into Webster’s dictionary.  With the help of the blogosphere, this is entirely possible!

Let me explain what a goal digger is.

Goal Digger (noun) gōl’ díg’ · er: A person who knows what they want and knows they will get it. 

How do they know they will get it?  The reason they know they will get it is because they know what they want. It’s cyclical logic (see that in the logo?). The hardest part is defining what you want, but once you can clearly do that, making it happen is the easier part. Many of us don’t know what we want and that’s why we go through life not getting.

The concept of being a goal digger applies to all areas of life, but let’s see how it applies to real estate investing, for example.

Most of the information on the real estate investing circuit today focuses on the “how-to” aspect of real estate investing.  This largely misses the point and many people don’t achieve the promised results because the how-to is a small part of the equation.  The much larger parts, and the parts that are missing from the get rich quick hype, are the parts that are critical to your success: the “what” and the “why.”

Before you dive deep into any particular real estate investing strategy, you must first be very clear about a couple of things:

What do you want?
Why do you want it?

The answers to these questions get to the core of how you will be successful.  On the surface, many people believe what they want is money.  But is money really what you want?  Money is an enabler.  It enables something else to happen for you.  It buys you material possessions, an image, it allows you to free up your time because you can hire people to do things for you, you can quit your job and free up time that way, it allows you to help others.  Money is simply the vehicle to something else.  Money for the sake of money means very little. 

Wanting money in and of itself is like wanting a broom.  The broom does nothing by itself.  There’s kinetic energy tied up into it, it has the potential to do something, but you must direct it.  The broom itself has no goal until you define what it is, and so it is with money.  You must define what it is that you want, you must direct the money, you must attach a goal to it.  Without this definition, it’s just too easy to wander aimlessly and give up.

Next, you need to define why you want what you want.  What is the reason?  To get the real answer here, it helps to play the role of a small child for a few minutes.  We’ve all seen kids who ask why to everything.  If your answer to the question of “what” was free time, for example, you must ask why.  Why do you want free time?  You might say it’s because you want to travel.  Ask yourself why you want to travel.  You might say because you want to experience other cultures.  Again, ask yourself why.  Maybe it’s because you want to find people that you can help.  Why?  Maybe because you feel grateful for what you have and you want to share.  Why? Because you grew up poor and you know how it feels.  And the conversation with yourself goes on and on.  Once you get to the root of why you want what you want, you will uncover an unstoppable motivation to achieve your goals.  When you stay laser-focused on your motives, you gain a clarity and a drive that will take you much farther than a superficial desire for money ever will.

One thing that threatens our path to success is the wants and motives of other people.  Sometimes others try to influence us to want what they want either for us or for themselves.  Parents are famous for doing this.  Parents sometimes impose their unfulfilled dreams on their children.  They want us to do something they wanted to do but never did, such as go to college or become a doctor.  Or, they try to steer us down paths that they’ve chosen and enjoy, such as a certain sport or hobby.  Peer pressure also sometimes draws us into worlds that are not our own.  We try to fit in, we pretend to like certain things, hoping that someday we actually will like these things.  If you don’t, you don’t!  We must guard ourselves against these influences.  We must be sure that our answers to the questions of “what” and “why” are truly our answers.  We need to strip away what everyone else thinks and says, and for just a moment, it’s ok for it to be all about you!

Being able to answer the what and the why for yourself is what makes you a goal digger.  At this point, achieving the goal is a matter of choosing a “how-to” that works for you.  Now you need to go through the tactical, mechanical steps of working toward an end. 

Imagine a person digging a large tunnel with a small shovel.  This person can go outside of the tunnel, walk around, and clearly see the goal sitting at the other end of the future tunnel.  There’s no doubt it is there, and there’s no doubt that with enough digging, they will reach the goal.  The digging is tiresome, and seems silly at times, but the reward for perseverance is too great to give up.  Now imagine that person was just told to start digging a tunnel.  They were simply given the “how-to” instructions.  How long would they keep digging without awareness of the goal? 

This is what keeps people from succeeding in real estate investing.  Diving into tactics without clear motives will become tiresome, and you may give up before reaching success.  Identify your goal, then the reason behind it, then the strategy for achieving it.  Be a goal digger and insure your success!

Let me know what you think, and please start using goal digger in your every day conversations.  It could change a generation or two, or even the planet!