America is entering a terrible recession. But there is no benefit to giving in to the negative atmosphere. Instead, you should view every economic decline as an important opportunity and harness your positive energy to take advantage of the situation. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to look at case studies of how others have profited from recessions and why a positive attitude is one of your best tools to succeed.
Episode 251: The Benefits of A Positive Attitude In A Depressing World Transcript
It's pretty clear from all the metrics that we have now entered what will soon to be known as the new Great Depression, in fact, I'm pretty sure that's what the label will be. So you heard it here first. So we can enter this period of economic disaster, either with fear and loathing, but that's not really the smart way to do it. The smart way to do it is to go into it with a positive attitude. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. We're gonna be talking about the benefits of having a positive attitude as we go into an economic collapse. Now, the first thing is that these cycles of boom and bust, which are eminently predictable, they have ranged through World History since the beginning, these are the moments that often create good business opportunity.
Case in point, J. Paul Getty, he was a wealthiest guy in America decades ago, he was a huge fan of recessions and depressions. In fact, if you read his biography, he pretty much thinks that the recessions and the depressions, those imminent cycles are what made him his fortune. He knew when to buy, when things were at the top, and he knew, I'm sorry, buy and that things were at the bottom, and when to sell when things were at the top. A similar person was Henry Kaiser, the guy that basically went on to dominate American steel production. He proclaim that problems were only opportunities in work clothes, he loved a good disaster, he loved recessions and depressions, he saw those as a great way for him to get ahead, a great way for him to buy things at bargain prices and then ride them through the up-part of the cycle.
And then you have Conrad Hilton, the book, The Man Who bought the Waldorf, one of my all-time favorite business book, sadly out of print, you can't really get a copy very easily. But in the book, is the adventures of Conrad Hilton from when he first starts out. And in the beginning, he loves boom cycles. He starts his entire career during a giant boom cycle called the Roaring Twenties. And of course, here comes the bust cycle and he gets completely wiped out. But he doesn't get sad from that, he learned from that. He realizes that those eminent economic cycles are really good. So instead, he decided from that moment forward, he would wait until the bust to buy things, and then he would wait until the boom to sell them and that served him very, very well. He went on to own every major hotel in the United States simply by following that very simple economic treatise. So if recessions and depressions do create buying opportunity, then how does it do that? Well, what happens is, if the economy never had these Boom and Bust cycles, it'd be very boring indeed, there'll never be anything going on in one way or the other. It'd just be like a flat line, and there wouldn't be a whole lot of buying opportunities that would break loose nor there be any great selling moments. It would just be very, very, very dull.
However, when we have this constant rise and a falling like a roller coaster, like an elevator, it tends to break up the playing field and give smart people the ability to expand during the tough times, and then to sell off during the good times. So there's something actually very positive from an economic perspective about having these continual cycles. But still, how do you get a positive attitude when you're in the middle of the cycle? How do you stay happy? How do you stay positive? Remember these few things. Number one. Sellers love enthusiastic people. We've been buying Mobile Home Parks now for 25 years. I think we would all agree that when you talk to a seller, being a glum individual is not going to make them wanna sell to you, because when you seem glum and depressing, you tend to depress the seller, and sellers are naturally attracted to those who are happy and enthusiastic. Enthusiasm is in fact, contagious. So if you sound all kinds of excited about someone's property, that makes them excited too.
And a lot of time, sellers are trying to bond with buyers and they are attracted to those that they frankly find to be like they are or wish they were. And when you're an enthusiastic person, people gravitate towards you, they think, Oh, this is a person I wanna be around. This is a person that I wanna help.
Also, in tough times, banks still have to make loans. Banks only make money by lending money, they don't make money by just hoarding money. And bankers again, love enthusiastic people, not enthusiastic crazy people, that's what causes those cycles. They don't wanna make loans to people who are too dumb to realize what the risks truly are. But if you go to the bank and you identify what those risks are, and yet despite all of these setbacks, you're enthusiastic about it, well, the bank thinks, Wow, this is a very resilient individual, this is definitely somebody I want to bank up with our loans. This is the kind of person I wanna do business with. So once again, banks love enthusiastic people. And then if you're gonna be raising money from friends and family, or however you're going to do it, investors love enthusiastic people. They like being around people who have a positive attitude, who wanna tell them, Here's how we're gonna make money, even though times are tough. Here's what the plan is. So once again, everyone just loves positivity and enthusiasm. In fact, Warren Buffet once said, Without enthusiasm, there's no energy. And with no energy, you have nothing.
So even Warren Buffet is fully in the boat, that you've got to be positive, enthusiastic to get ahead. So how do you get enthusiastic? How do you get positive? Everything is very depressing. Turn on the news, the market is collapsing. Single-family homes are now starting to fall, inflation has gotten crazy.
Ukrainian war. There's really nothing good to talk about. So how can you do it? Well, first off, you have to have confidence in your mission, whatever that mission is. So if your mission is to buy a mobile home park, then if you feel good about it, if you feel smart, like this is the right thing to invest in affordable housing at the time when people need low cost places to live, then you can do those with your head held high that you've got a very good plan, and I personally can't come up with a better plan than owning a mobile home park going into a horrible stagflation recession. So I think that plan is a very sound plan, nothing to be ashamed of. Number two, you gotta have confidence in your own abilities. Now, that may throw some people who might say, Well, gosh, how do I have any confidence in my abilities? I haven't owned a mobile home park before. Maybe I only own one.
Well, nevertheless, are you confident in them? If you're not, you shouldn't be buying anything. But if you have confidence that you know how to do things, you will truly devote yourself passionately to the mission. You understand times are tough and nevertheless, you're going to fight and be resilient and persistent in that, then there's every reason to believe that you can have confidence in your own abilities. And if you can't, if you say No, I don't think I'm any good. Well, then don't buy anything. This is probably not the right thing to be getting into. But if you say to yourself, You know what? I'm just as good as anybody else, I'll work harder than anybody else. I'll kill myself to get to my goal, then there's every reason you should have confidence in what you have going on. Also, you have to understand the time urgency. Because you see, you only live once, and we don't all get to choose what that period is. So our forefathers might have been in terrible moments in world history, might have been born during, I don't know, black plague or possibly some other natural disaster event or terrible time, but they made the best of it because that's...
What the cards they were dealt. So right now at this moment, you can't help the fact that you are being launched through probably a lot of really stupid government decisions into a stagflation, recession catastrophe. But you start to be enthusiastic 'cause this is the only life you got. You can't say, Well, I'll check out of this life and I'll revisit it a decade from now. That's simply not going to work. So you've got to be passionate, you gotta be enthusiastic 'cause you don't have any more time, you're running out of time. So you need to be enthusiastic that I am going to make the best of my time. Finally, you need to just simply understand that life is a never-ending tapestry of events. And often, you just have to jump into it and make the best of what you got, because often through your actions and a bit of luck, that's how everything will ultimately result. So be positive in what you do. Just say, You know what? I am going to be doing my best, I'm gonna work my hardest, I feel confident in myself to do this. And as a result, I am going to press forward.
Now, you know, this lesson really struck me back in the 1980s, '87, '88. That was the time of what was called the Texas S&L Crash, a horrified moment in world history. But sadly, the first true recession that I had failed into as a business person. I had my little billboard company back then, building it up, had a lot of debt. And suddenly, in one year during the S&L crash, my revenues fell by 50% in one year. It looked very depressing indeed. And almost every business in Texas went into foreclosure. It was just a complete catastrophe. But I made a decision at that time, in fact I did so after reading Conrad Hilton book, I just say, Well, if things are gonna be terrible, and if I'll get stuck in this, I'm gonna try and make the best of it. So that's what I did. When everyone else was pulling in their horns and very, very depressed, I was out aggressively, still building and buying billboards. Often buying them from banks and foreclosure, buying them from other owners who just couldn't make them operate, or couldn't run the ad space on it. I was just a busy bee after gathering everything I humanly can, realizing that maybe this recession depression, instead of being a negative force in my life, could be a positive...
At the end of the movie, I doubled the size of my billboard operation during that great Texas savings and loan crash. In fact, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. The bottom line to it is, don't go into this great new depression being depressed, be positive, think positive. There's great things that can come of this if you only apply yourself in the right way.
This is Frank Rolfe, Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.