Nurturing Long Term Relationships - Essential Training for Multifamily Investors

Relationships are the foundation of both personal and professional success. They influence our day-to-day lives, our business endeavors, and our overall sense of well-being. Understanding the dynamics of building and nurturing relationships is crucial for anyone aiming to lead effectively. Here’s a comprehensive guide to mastering this essential skill, along with actionable steps to implement.

Why Relationships Matter

1. Quality of Life: The state of our relationships often determines our daily happiness and motivation. A bad day is frequently tied to a troubled relationship.

2. Motivation: Much of our drive comes from the desire to support and serve those we care about, be it family, friends, or our community.

3. Business Success: Your network is your net worth. A strong network can lead to significant business opportunities and growth.

Key Steps to Building and Nurturing Relationships

1. Adopt a Long-Term Perspective

- Think Decade-Long: Approach every relationship with the mindset that it should last at least ten years. This discourages short-term, transactional thinking and fosters deeper connections.

- Energy and Trust: Quality relationships require consistent nurturing and trust-building. Whether it's with family or business partners, invest time and energy to maintain these bonds.

ACTION ITEM: Reflect on your current relationships and identify those you see being important over the next decade. Allocate time weekly to nurture these connections.

2. Align with Your Vision and Values

- Compatibility: Ensure your core values and long-term vision align with those of the people in your life, especially those you interact with frequently.

- Due Diligence: Before forming new partnerships, take the time to understand the other party's values and goals.

ACTION ITEM: Write down your core values and long-term vision. Use this as a benchmark when forming new relationships or evaluating existing ones.

3. Be Authentic and Honest

- True Self: Strive to be authentic in all your interactions. Authenticity fosters deeper, more meaningful relationships.
- Deal with Disconnections: If you feel disconnected from someone, address it. Set boundaries or work on improving the relationship.

ACTION ITEM: Have an open and honest conversation with a close contact about any issues or disconnections you feel. Aim for authenticity in this dialogue.

4. Develop a Follow-Up and Nurture System

- Stay Connected: Regularly follow up with your network. Use tools like calendars or CRM systems to remind you to check in with important contacts.

- Provide Value: When you reach out, offer something of value. It could be advice, a helpful resource, or simply a kind word.

ACTION ITEM: Create a simple CRM for your personal and professional contacts. Schedule regular check-ins and think of ways to add value to each interaction.

Essential Skills for Relationship Building

1. Active Listening

- Engage Fully: When someone is speaking, give them your full attention. Listen to understand, not just to respond.

- Body Language: Pay attention to non-verbal cues. They often convey more than words.

ACTION ITEM: Practice active listening in your next conversation. Focus entirely on the speaker and respond thoughtfully.

2. Empathy

- Understand Others: Put yourself in others' shoes. Understand their feelings, thoughts, and experiences without losing sight of your own needs.

- Support: Show genuine concern and offer support where possible.

ACTION ITEM: The next time someone shares a problem, empathize with them. Reflect back what they’re feeling and offer your support.

3. Challenge Constructively

- Encourage Growth: Don’t shy away from challenging those you care about. Constructive challenges can lead to growth and improvement.

- Be Honest: If you see someone you care about engaging in harmful behavior, speak up kindly but firmly.

ACTION ITEM: Identify a friend or colleague who could benefit from a gentle challenge. Offer constructive feedback aimed at helping them grow.

Building and nurturing relationships is a dynamic process that requires a blend of long-term vision, authenticity, and active engagement. By implementing these strategies and action items, you can create a network of strong, supportive relationships that enhance both your personal and professional life. Remember, the quality of your relationships directly impacts the quality of your life. Invest in them wisely.

Don't miss this NEW training happening Thursday, July 11th at 9 AM EST.

Have you ever felt like relationships are holding you back from experiencing your big breakthrough?

Perhaps it's a spouse that doesn't seem to support your mission. Or, maybe, you consistently find yourself dealing with unscrupulous investors who've left you wondering if you are even pursuing the right path.

Relationships are the cornerstone to feeling successful and fulfilled because:

• They touch every area of your life.
• They impact your decisions.
• They influence your emotional state.
• They have the power to push you to greater heights, or sink you to lower lows (if you let them.)

High performers make the mistake of thinking they can 'do-it-all alone,' and often end up alone as a result. 

Don't let this be YOUR story. 

Register for the relationship mastery class now.

TRANSCRIPTION

Let's jump in. Uh, our topic today is on relationships and more importantly, building relationships. Am I holding this? Building relationships and nurturing relationships. And what we're covering today in the training session is just a few key areas for you to think about throughout the week. Um, as, uh, as a leader, your role is actually within relationships.

How are you building relationships and how are you nurturing relationships? And it actually doesn't matter whether those are with investors, brokers, with your kids, with your family members, with your friends, with your community, uh, with business partners, collaborators, relationships are relationships.

Without relationships, no matter how much, despite what you might think, you cannot move anything forward. That's just the nature of the world we might live in. Now, we do have better and better systems in place, so we need less and less people, but the quality of the people that are around you are incredibly important, especially on the business side and on the personal side.

Hi there, this is Faisal Insan. I wanted to jump on here quickly and tell you about my free workshop that's coming up on July 11th. Uh, there's a three hour workshop that is packed with value. And let me ask you this, have you ever felt like building relationships with others around you? Uh, it feels sometimes like an uphill battle, uh, whether, uh, it is your relationship with your wife or husband, uh, where it feels like you don't have that emotional connection or intensity in your relationship that you used to have, and you don't feel like the positive, uh, feedback that you need for your relationship to thrive.

Or maybe it's with a business partner that kind of gets you to, uh, that feels like they're getting you to pull most of the weight of the business while they're not, doesn't feel like they're doing much. Or maybe it's Or it might be because you're capital raising and you are having a hard time building that connection with potential investors who would invest in your deal and you feel like it's an uphill battle there, or are you having a hard time with that capital raising process?

Now, a lot of high achievers, they think that. They can do everything on their own, but actually, as you start to live a few years in your life, you find that your whole life is around other people. This is built into our DNA as human beings. We're a social species. If we don't know how to navigate relationships, whether it be in our personal or business relationships, we don't know actually how to create a better quality of life and progress in life and business.

So if you want to accelerate your path in business and actually build a much better quality connection, With your loved ones, whether it be your wife, children, um, husband, your siblings, your community, your friends, or build powerful relationships of collaboration with your team, with your business partners, with potential investors and clients.

You definitely don't want to miss out on this session. It will be a three hour workshop. You won't just hear me talk about train and train you on it. I'm going to actually walk you through the process to help you understand the, the powerful one reasons that people you can use to influence other people and actually be influenced by them to build that authentic connection, uh, with them.

So they can trust you to move your relationship in a positive direction and to improve the quality of your relationships And that's based on a very powerful model that's proven to work across 193 different countries Not just my opinion and i'm going to walk you through the process to build that for yourself And it's a three hour workshop that you're going to be actually working on this to develop it in your own life and business And you're going to gain so much out of this make sure you sign up with the link below this training I usually hold for my paid community as a coach, but this first time I'm releasing it out to the public, you can gain a lot out of it. Make sure you sign up and put it on your calendar.

I'll see you on the other side. Take care.

And it, it, uh, your relationships determine the quality of your day to day life. Think about the days where you've had a horrible day. I would bet at least eight out of ten times it's related to a relationship in your life, if not more. Um, it affects the quality of your life, it affects your motivation that you're moving forward.

I would bet especially actually for all of you, um, that a lot of your motivation comes from your family, Friends, community, people you want to support. It's not just your own. A lot of people think, Oh, I need to be motivated. Well, who are you serving? Who are you supporting? You will notice that a lot of your motivation will come from.

Of course, some of your motivation will come from the things that you personally want to do for yourself. But a lot of it as a human being comes from that. Your ability to do business comes from your network. That's why we say your network, Uh, your network is your net worth. Why? Because you're probably one connection away to creating a lot of business.

It's like, if you've served enough people and supported them, they will happily connect you with other people in your life. And that's actually how I've been able to maintain a business Uh, a couple of businesses for the past 10 years. That's primarily through my network. It hasn't been because I have a lot of social media and reach or anything like that, actually very little, but I've been able to maintain my life in business because of that.

So why else is relationship important? Relationship is important because well, our, your lives will be pretty, uh, dull without relationship. Um, I'm not saying you should have a lot of relationships. Everybody's different in there. Some people need a lot of people around them. Some people need less. Some people need a couple of friends.

Some people need 10 friends, but have a network of people that you can call on, whether it be friends, family, relatives, business partners, life partners, whoever, whatever your orientation of life is. So relationships are incredibly important. So how do you build it and nurture it? And there are some common themes, it doesn't matter personal or business, that you can take with you from here and actually apply it.

And I want to kind of dispel some of the myths around it. And the first one is around long term versus short term. And this is very important. So should you think, how should you approach your relationship? So a lot of times, especially in the investing in business world, where you might go to network, like you go to a networking event and you go there and you're taught to just network and find people who will support you and find people that you can support, find out their, their, their strong points, uh, their superpowers.

Like this is kind of the advice that's given. Um, I, I think it's a little bit narrow, narrow minded and there's value in that kind of advice, but I look at relationships as a long term process. Why? Because think about every relationship that you have in your life, from your kids to family members to friends, they all require quite a bit of energy and nurturing, and actually if you have good quality relationships, they require a lot of trust building, nurturing, connecting, even your own kids, like.

If I don't spend a little bit of time with them, after a while I can see them disconnecting a little bit from me. Like, it doesn't mean that they don't love me, it's just that they feel disconnected. They don't know how to operate. If I'm disconnected a little bit from a family member or from a friend, I know that there's a bit of a difference.

That doesn't mean they don't love me or trust me or I don't love them or trust them, but, but because the nurturing has not been in place, it affects the quality of the relationship and it affects how we interact. So, um, that nurturing process, even in business is the same thing, and we'll talk about it at the end when the two of the important points will be at the end of this training around how can you align with the right relationships and how can you create a system around the nurturing and that system is going to be the most important part.

I'll go into that in a bit, but a lot of, for example, investors will jump into a partnership with somebody without doing enough due diligence, without understanding whether They align with them or not, and I'll talk a little bit about why that's important and how you can think about alignment and how you can think about working together.

And, uh, I'll, I'll speak to even my own clients, like I met Gezu, I met Eunice. If I didn't think that these would be long term relationships, I probably wouldn't have even offered my, actually, I wouldn't have even offered my programs. I wouldn't have them in my network anyway. Um, because I saw it as a long term part of my network.

It is a business relationship, but I still see value in them as human being. And I see value in our relationship. There's a transaction in there. Um, and so a lot of people, when they jump into relationships for a short term profit in gain, that's where things break down because they haven't done enough due diligence to see how long would this relationship be good for me?

And am I just doing this for this one thing? And then I'm going to move forward. The flaw in that thinking is that yeah, you just spent a lot of time and energy and thinking and emotions on somebody who you might not even see later in about six months or one year. Of course, none of us can predict how long we will be in a relationship with somebody, but at least my initial frame is that if I am not going to be in this, in a relationship with somebody for at least a decade, I don't even entertain the idea.

If I see that we are not aligned thing, I'll, I'll recommend them to somebody else or. Some other services, resources, or whatever on the business end and move forward. Same thing with my personal life, like especially friends, uh, and people in my circle is like, if I see that we're not aligned, I'll just not spend so much time in that and energy in that space.

Now, family is a little bit different for a lot of people, so it might be that you need to decide who are going to be the people who are positive and supportive and connected with you and nurture those a little bit more. And the people that you don't feel aligned with, maybe that can be reduced. The exposure to them can be reduced.

A lot of times we can't disconnect from family. Sometimes we can, I've made those decisions. They're one of the hardest ones, but think long term and don't just think about the effects of that relationship on you. Think about the effects of that on your kids, on your family, because whatever affects you, it affects everybody else on your business partners, on other people in your network.

Um, I recently ran into a friend of a friend. And actually, as soon as I ran into that friend of a friend, I didn't know him. I knew exactly where his negative qualities came from. A lot of the negative qualities, it was a direct influence from that friend. And I'm actually, I'm gonna say that to him directly, like, he might not have even noticed how he picked up his thoughts.

I'm like, it sounds like either you guys built the thought process together, or it directly comes from that person. And, and, I'm not gonna tell him to not be friends. I'm like, are you paying attention to how this affects you, your family, and everybody else? And, and I, and I didn't want to be around this friend of his, uh, and doesn't mean that that friend is not a good person or anything.

It just means that I saw the negative effects very clearly and I was like, no, uh, this, like it was, it was, I just, I automatically moved back because the person was incredibly negative, uh, very self defeating thoughts, very negative approach to people, network and all sorts of stuff. I'm like, no, that's not the kind of person I want to be around.

But this friend of mine who I connect with, he's actually somebody very positive, but sometimes some negative aspects of him come out. And I never, I could never point out until I met this other friend. Of his but now it's my role I'll talk about why that's important in the next few topics why it's my role to challenge him But i'll talk about that in a little bit this there's this other thing transactional versus real So a lot of people think that there is such a thing as non transactional relationship, but in reality actually every relationship is transactional It's a just a matter of What kind of transaction is it?

So, for example, even with my wife, there is a transaction there. The transaction is that we both, yes, of course, we have a connection, we have love, we have deep appreciation, respect for each other, but there is a transaction of us building our life together. Now, that transaction is very long term, and for us, it's, if we can, the rest of our life.

We want to grow old together. That's our value system around it, but it's still a transaction that we support each other, learn from each other. And the transaction is not necessarily money or monetary, but the transaction might be respect or the transaction might be care for each other. The transaction might be how we treat the people in our life.

The transaction might be as how we support each other, learn from each other and share experiences, positive or negative with each other. That's still a transaction, but a very long term transaction. So there is, I don't think there is such a thing as transactional versus real. Cause a lot of people have that in their mind, but what kind of transaction is it?

And what transactions are valuable, which goes back to the last one, which is long term versus short term. So if you have a long term relationship, you, usually the transactions are much more valuable. So, like I said, my frame is at least 10 years, I see myself in a relationship with this person, whether it be business or personal.

Then I pursue it further. Then I nurture it further. Um, and for me, even if there is a transaction, even with you guys, we're in a business relationship, but I look at you as human beings that I can learn from. It's not just you're giving me money and I'm giving you services. I also look at you. And this is why I frame it at around a 10 year thing, because you affect my thinking the way you think you affect my emotions.

Your network affects my network. Cause I'm going to be getting referrals and connections from you. You will be getting connections or referrals from you. What kind of people are, am I connected with? So each one of you is handpicked for that reason. And I mean that very intentionally. Now I want you to get in that state, who are the people that are coming into your network?

Whether you're selling a product or service, or you're networking with them, or you're building partnership with them, business partnerships with them. I learned that the hard way with my business partner. Partnerships that it took a while, even though I was intentional. There are things that I didn't understand, but after two, three years of being in partnership with them.

I've just begun to realize, holy shit, the business partners that we have stayed together were very much aligned in a lot of ways. We understand each other, we support each other, we're authentic around each other. So many things that I'm talking about are aligned in this there. So I needed to do a lot more work than I did before with three other business partners that it didn't work out with.

There was a lack of alignment. Nothing wrong with them, but it was just a lack of alignment. And I'll leave that, this part with, remember that there's this phrase that says, Uh, Uh, I'm not, you're not everybody's cup of tea and neither am I. So just because you don't get along with somebody or you're not aligned with them, doesn't mean there's something wrong with you or them.

It's just that they are in a different sphere. There are 8 billion people on earth. You will not get it. And it's almost a hundred percent certain that there will be a set of people or a group of people or individuals who will not get along with, and that's okay. Whether that be in business or in your personal life.

So decide who these people are going to be. What's your, what kind of people do you want to be around? And I encourage you to actually sit down and work through it. And this is where the rest of it will come in. And this piece is authenticity. Authenticity always connects to honesty. A lot of times we can't even be authentic.

It's hard to even be authentic with the people closest to us. Like, how do you feel when you're around your spouse? How do you feel when you're around your siblings? How do you feel when you're around your parents? How do you feel when you're around your kids? What is the quality of these relationships?

And it's actually one of the hardest things to be honest and authentic about. If I feel disconnected, I need to deal with that. If I feel like I cannot be my true self or to some degree that I want to be my true self, I need to deal with that. Either I'm building a closer relationship or I'm deciding what the boundaries are.

And especially with the people in your life, your life partner for example, If, if you guys have some kind of disconnection or lack of alignment, that needs to be dealt with very quickly because almost every decision you're making affects each other the most. And then the rest is the outer people from that inner circle.

How are you aligned with them? How are they affecting you? So that your authentic self, if it's not showing up, then it's, it affects you. So it's same thing with investors and collaborators. When you meet an investor, do you really want them to invest with you? Because of the way that they, they are the way they think, even though they have the money, I, I, you need to think about that same thing with my clients.

There are clients that have said no to, even though they were willing to pay me 30, 000 upfront. Why? Because I see that creating problems in our, I see problems way ahead when it comes to those things, because I don't just think of the money piece. I think of. Okay, how does this relationship gonna go? Who are the people I'm going to connect with?

If my answer is that I don't really want people like that in my network, then I probably don't even want to move forward. Same thing with investors that you connect with, business partners who will claim a lot of things, be like, oh, I'm like this, but if you're not, There's a misalignment. I would explore that further to see if that's going to show up later on five years later, six years later.

Now there are a few skills. Uh, I'll talk about the skill sets in a bit, but, uh, let's talk about vision and values. I've talked about this quite a bit, but this is where alignments and lack of alignment comes in. If you are going to be partnered, especially with people that are closest to you, like your life partner, business partners, people, you have a lot, you're going to be around a lot.

Uh, like an executive assistant. I want to understand their value system. I want to understand their vision for life or for business. I want to understand how they think of other people around them. I want to understand how they treat other people, not just in business settings, but I want to see them in their personal life a little bit.

It sounds very uncomfortable when you get to. Like I, like I made an effort to get to know my partners in their own setting around their family, around their friends. Why? Because I really needed to know how they are with each other. I really needed to know how this business partner treats other people. I, I spent time with them personally and the more I spent time with them, the more I got to know, oh, okay, do I want to continue this relationship forward?

Same thing with investors or clients or whoever, or collaborators. There, there are collaborations that I've said no to when I watched the way they, they're nothing wrong with them. But I knew that if they operated like that, I would get frustrated. And I wouldn't want to be around them. And finally, the last piece of this minus the skill sets that I'll talk about is follow up and nurture.

A lot of us actually are not very good at this process, especially if you're somebody who is very motivated and you have a lot going on. If you get connected to an investor or even a family member or friend, you're going to lose track of that relationship. So what's your system? Are you going to remind yourself on your calendar?

Are you going to build a CRM around it? I've actually started building a CRM for my family and friends. I'm going to be continuing that forward because I lack in that area. When I get busy with work and other stuff outside of my family, I, I, I've dropped the ball on a few relationships. And then later on, I realized I'm like, no, that's not fair.

What if I set up the same reminder system that I do with my clients? What's the difference? I'm building relationships on both sides. It sounds weird to have a CRM for your family and friends, but I don't care. It's something that reminds me to do this. Something that, uh, that, and if it happens naturally, great.

But if I miss it, then at least something is reminding me because I have lots going on. I think people appreciate when you follow up. This is why even in business, they say the money is in the follow up. Why? Because people get appreciate when you follow up and support them and nurture them and moving them forward.

So what's your system? Don't just rely on your memory. I guarantee you, you will drop the ball on almost everything because not for general for anybody, but you're trying to run multiple, multiple businesses or a business and a job, family, taking care of yourself. So many things happening that you will drop the ball on your relationships at some point.

So what's going to remind you or who's going to remind you or both. And that might be a very important step to think about. Would that be your calendar system? Would that be your CRM system? Would that be something else? And what value are you going to send to them? Even if you don't see them enough. Is that value to just give them a call?

Is that value to send them something of value? Is that value to meet them at some point or create some kind of collaboration? What is the value of bringing in their network? And ultimately, if you can think of value to the people closest to you and farther out from you, you will build a really strong network of people.

And like I said, going back to the original that you might just need one person, one connection in your network that will blow up your business, that will improve the quality of your life in a way that you Might've not thought of one friend that could really change the way you look at life. One life partner that would completely change the way you look at the future.

One mentor, one coach. It doesn't take a lot. And I want to finally end this with some skill sets. So a lot of people, when they get in relationships, they forget that you need skill sets to be in relationships. And some of those skill sets as a primary foundation, one is listening. And listening is actually a very active skill set.

Most people think that this is more passive. You're sitting there actually takes a lot of mental bandwidth. If you're really listening to people, um, which means that you're listening to really understand what they're trying to say. And are you. And bridging the gaps of what you understand, what you perceive versus what they're actually saying.

And not just listening to the words, but looking at their body language, their emotions, that they're, you're fully with them. And that is a hard thing to do in the world right now. So how are you listening to the people around you? Are you looking at your life partner when they're talking? Are you paying attention to the words, their tonality?

It's a hard thing to do. It's hard for me. A lot of times are you when you're with a friend or you kind of have distracted with your, when you're with an investor, you're trying to say, well, how can they invest 50, 000 with me or versus what are they going through? Would this actually help them when you're with a broker?

How can you add value to them? What are they actually saying? If you're listening, you're actually actively paying attention and you're processing and you're letting them know that you're hearing certain things. Empathy is an incredibly important skill as a, as a leader, which means that, um, uh, what is empathy?

So. Uh, I like Dr. Brené Brown's explanation around this like sympathy might be is like if somebody falls into the well into a well You go by there and you look at them. You're like, oh, that's too bad you fell um, i'll i'll Maybe i'll call somebody if you sympathize with them empathy is you go by the well and be like, oh, are you okay?

Is everything good? Um, i'm gonna sit with you here until we get some help Or i'll make sure I get the help and i'll come back and check on you and I see that are you okay? Is everything good? Uh, what are you going through is like I understand what that you might be in a struggle right now Like you're really connecting with the struggle.

They might be going through or whatever Challenge or whatever life circumstance they're going through You're with them and they feel like you're with you without you having to drop yourself in the well So as soon as you drop yourself in the well, somebody else would have to empathize with you, too So that's a metaphorical thing.

A lot of people Think that empathy is about sacrificing yourself. It's not actually Making sure that you're there for them while taking care of yourself. Think of it as a father or as a leader in your life. If you don't take care of yourself, you won't be able to take care of your family. But if you can empathize to a certain degree, figure out what they're going through, what their struggles are, what they're trying to do, whether it be your kids, uh, wife or whoever, or your business partners, a lot of times people don't connect the human things in their businesses, they will work with a team member and they will push them and challenge them, but they forget that these are human beings that are going through real problems.

And they might not be. It doesn't mean that you fix all those problems, but do they feel supported and heard and understood by you? Because when people feel that, they will go above and beyond. Because they look at you as a source of support for them, and they want it. There's this reciprocity that comes in naturally.

And finally, Challenge. This is the part that a lot of people miss. They will be empathetic. They'll listen, but they won't know how to challenge. I talked about the story of my friend whose friend I met. My challenge might be is, hey, is this person really serving you? I know that you've been training for a while, but I can see that these are the things that are coming out of it.

It's up to you what you want to do, but this is what I noticed. And I noticed every time you're You're on the negative spectrum and you're hopeless or you're thinking Like nothing is going to come out of something It's related to a thought process that I saw the same exact either you've given them or he's given you or you're both But knowing you I don't think you're like that so i'm kind of challenging him not by telling him to be or not, but challenging him same thing with a with a Like a team member who wasn't doing very well with sales and I was like, okay Here's the system that i've created.

What would help you for your sales to improve? What support do you need? It's a question, but there's also a challenge embedded into it that we need to make this work What do you need or a business partner who's not pulling their weight? How can you challenge him or a life partner who is not understanding your path?

What would that look like? Let's figure out our stuff if we're not connecting if we're not moving forward Really facing it that challenge is probably one of the most important pieces of your skill set to be a leader If you cannot challenge you could be empathetic, but you will suffer and other people around you suffer It's not just about you meeting your needs But more than likely if this person is not not operating well as a business partner or a life partner It's affecting your kids your other business partners or your business or customers.

Somebody's being affected here