Dale on the Daily

Finding Your Focus: The Hedgehog Concept

• Dale Kerns • Season 1 • Episode 3

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The "hedgehog concept" is essential for real estate wholesalers to avoid the endless loop of strategy-hopping and achieve consistent success.

• Focus on mastering one strategy before moving to others
• Trying multiple strategies simultaneously (cash deals, creative finance, buying properties) leads to minimal results
• The problem isn't your market - it's lack of sufficient time and effort on one approach
• Beginners often underestimate the volume of consistent action required for success
• Strategy-hopping wastes time, money, and prevents skill development
• Joint venture with specialists for areas outside your primary focus
• The hedgehog concept (from Jim Collins' "Good to Great") provides clarity and eliminates analysis paralysis
• Define a specific, detailed focus (example: "nationwide virtual wholesaling of cash deals")
• Master your chosen concept completely before expanding to other strategies

Let me know what you think in the comments and what your hedgehog concept is. Like the video, subscribe to the channel and we'll see you on the next video.


Speaker 1:

So you're a new wholesaler. You're going to start wholesaling houses, buying them for cash and reselling them to an end buyer. You do that for a few weeks a month. You don't have any success. So now you think, all right, I'm going to try. Instead of buying them for cash, I'm going to start buying them with creative finance. You try that for a couple weeks, you try that for two months no success. And now then I'll just start buying houses myself. That's not working.

Speaker 1:

Buying houses yourself, that turns out that doesn't work. You don't have any money, you're not sure how to purchase them yourself, how to manage them, and then this is just an endless loop of trying the next thing, trying the next thing. Instead, what you have to do is just focus on one thing. You need to get a hedgehog concept, and that's what today's video is about Focusing on one thing, having success with that, and then you can try the other things later down the road.

Speaker 1:

I was in a Facebook group recently and I saw a comment that said I want to learn creative finance. I think it's an opportunity in my market and I am by no means an expert wholesaler, but I have been there and this person probably hasn't done a deal, and if they are doing deals, they're not doing them consistently. Now they think that they need a new strategy because whatever they were doing in their market doesn't work. And that is not the case. It's not that things don't work, it's not that your market is any different from another market. It's just that you're not focusing on one thing long enough to give that thing the opportunity to be successful. And we've all been down that road. I was there, this was me, and I'm sure it's a lot of you as well. I was always attracted to the shiny object syndrome trying the next best thing but only doing it for a short amount of time and not really giving it the chance to be successful and have success with one thing before I'm trying another. I just thought that I needed to try the other and try the other and try the other, because I wasn't having any success with one strategy. I didn't get the results right away, so then I had to move on. Okay, I'm not having success with this, I need to try the next big thing.

Speaker 1:

The real issue is that you're not focused on one thing, you're not giving that one thing enough time to see any results. You try it a couple weeks, maybe a month, and then you move on. The other issue is that you're not putting enough effort into that one thing. You might think you are, but in reality you're not. So you cold call 100 people, you send 100 emails, you send 100 mailers and you think, oh, this is it, I should be having success. And in reality it doesn't work that way. You need to be putting in consistent action every single day, for whatever time. You think you should double it or triple it, or how many calls you think you're making or need to make, double it or triple it. Put that extra time in to really give that thing success.

Speaker 1:

Now, over time, I've shifted away from this and, looking back, all I was doing at that time was wasting my own time, wasting money, wasting the effort that I was even putting into that thing, and I was just staying stagnant. I wasn't moving forward. I was really just staying busy and not actually moving forward in that portion of what I wanted to do in wholesaling. So why is this a problem? Obviously, you never master one thing. You always become okay at maybe a handful of things. An example of that would be trying to do the acquisitions, do the dispo, do the TC. Once you get a deal under contract, you switch and focus all your energy on disposition. So now you're not focusing on the acquisition, trying to get houses for cash and creative finance, seller finance, subject to whatever it might be. Then you're always going to be thinking in those multiple of concepts rather than just one, and focusing on that and having success. So you really can never master one thing. You are so worried about working on multiple things that you don't focus on that one thing and be good at that one thing. This is a problem for a lot of beginners because you're probably going at it alone, and myself included. So one thing that I did to help with that is JV with people to do the disposition for me or do the acquisition for me and do the TC for me. So instead of trying to do it all myself, I get other people that met in communities and online and things like that doing the business and have them do it for me, and things like that doing the business and have them do it for me, and that allows me to focus on just the acquisition. Have someone else dispo it, do that a handful of times and then I could focus on someone, help me on the acquisition and do the disposition so that I can learn that and that's helped in the long run and also you can learn that strategy of those different aspects of each part of the business.

Speaker 1:

The other thing is you know you won't have the amount of success that you want to have if you are trying to focus on multiple strategies, you're trying to wholesale, you're trying to buy rentals, you're trying to buy business, you're trying to do whatever. If you're trying to do all those different things but haven't honed in the one thing, you're never going to have the amount of success that you want in any of those, because you're always getting pulled in different directions. If you are going solo which a lot of people are in the beginning and you're trying to handle all these different aspects, you're only going to put minimal effort in all the different areas. You're never going to have effort in one thing, all 100% of your effort in one thing, to have success in that. This leads to being discouraged. If you try something for a couple months, you don't have any success, you get discouraged and this is where probably a lot of people would give up or quit and be like this doesn't work, then I need to do something totally different or you get down on yourself. So, you know, maybe you don't even put any more effort. You keep trying to do it and keep trying to do it, but never put any more effort into it, because you would never really feel like you're getting that success that you want. You know, the biggest problem is you're wasting time, you're wasting money and you're wasting the skills, the ability to learn the skills that you need in all those different areas, because you're not putting a lot of the effort in to one place.

Speaker 1:

You get a hedgehog concept. You focus on one thing. Now, this concept was originated by Jim Collins in a book Good to Great. I would recommend anybody to read it. It helps you focus in on that one thing, have that hedgehog concept. So it's something that originated through him, in my opinion made famous by one of my mentors, rj Bates. He talks about this all the time and he has geared his business around this one thing. And he too, if you watch any of his videos, had done all the other stuff and put himself and his business and his employees in a bad spot until he reshifted to the hedgehog concept of his just wholesaling business by focusing on that one thing and being very specific about it, you can direct all your energy, your time and money into that one thing to create success. It helps know what you want and how to plan to get that success that you want, or whatever goals that you have. It keeps you focused and eliminates the analysis paralysis which we've all fallen into the shiny object syndrome. By having that one hedgehog concept and that one streamlined focus, you can eliminate that. So your goals and your direction that you need to go in actually can become more clear because you only have one thing you're focusing on and you just full throttle right to that.

Speaker 1:

My concept is being a nationwide virtual wholesaler and all I'm focusing on is virtual wholesaling, specifically even just virtual wholesaling houses that are cash. So I've even streamlined it a step further to just attract the sellers and the properties when I'm going after leads that are cash basis, based on the condition, the motivation that you might see in purchasing leads and gearing towards that, so that I can focus all on that and then worry about creative finance and things like that from an acquisition standpoint later on. So having your concept specific and as detailed as you can just helps your direction even further. And I'm not trying to buy houses. I'm not trying to build a rental portfolio. I don't want to get pulled in the different directions of shiny object analysis, paralysis and all that. So I focus my concept on just nationwide virtual wholesaling, specifically cash houses. If there are opportunities that come with the other strategies, then I can either JV them out and farm them to somebody else to take them down or can work with it myself.

Speaker 1:

But for now I'd rather just have to be hyper focused on that one concept. Once I master that aspect of it and have the success I want, then I can move on to the other things and go into other directions. Until then I'm just focusing on one thing, my hedgehog concept staying focused on nationwide virtual wholesaling and keeping it streamlined, hyper-focused and putting all my energy and effort into that one thing, all my energy and effort into that one thing. What you need if you're just beginning out, starting out, I would get a hedgehog concept. Find out exactly what it is that you want to do and stay focused on that one thing. Thanks for watching the video today. Let me know what you think in the comments and what your hedgehog concept is, and give me some love. Like the video, subscribe to the channel and we'll see you on the next video.