Micro-Wins to Millions:

The Moneyball Real Estate System

Unlocking the Power of Simple, Conservative Investing Principles for Economic Independence

Introduction

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to transform your life, one small victory at a time? Can you envision the liberating sensation of waking up tomorrow, free from the overwhelming pressure of accomplishing all your big goals at once and without the constant worry of not being far enough along your desired path?

From this very moment, prepare to witness a transformative shift in how you perceive progress and success.

That’s correct, we said it. The Micro-Wins Mindset, an enduring, principle-based methodology unveiled within this book, is poised to revolutionize your approach to business, finance, and life strategy. It’s universally applicable, whether in business, real estate, investing, faith, family, academia, hobbies—the list is boundless. Every sphere of your life stands to gain.

This claim might seem audacious, even improbable, but we, Kevin Clayson and Steve Earl, have leveraged the Micro-Wins Mindset to construct a successful company. We have wielded it to assist an array of clients, from diverse backgrounds and possessing varying degrees of wealth, in building prosperous real estate portfolios. This approach is unequivocally the most effective strategy we’ve unearthed for altering the trajectory of any and all dimensions of one’s life and success.

Assume you’ve set a goal to save $10,000. Depending on your job, income, and personal spending habits, this may seem like a difficult task. Consider what seems more feasible: saving $10,000 or choosing to forgo one of your two daily venti caramel macchiatos from Starbucks and opting to eat in one extra day each week?

At the publishing of this book a venti caramel macchiato costs around $7. Cutting one per day saves you $35 a week. That’s over $1800 a year. Now, let’s look at dining out. If you usually go out twice a week, and each meal costs around $30, cutting one of those meals could save you another $30 a week, adding up to over $1500 a year. Put together, that’s a saving of more than $3300 a year, all while continuing to enjoy a caramel macchiato every day and a delicious meal once a week.

Now, imagine if, instead of just tucking this money away, you decided to invest it into a 5-year CD that pays 2% annually. At the end of five years, these modest savings and collection of tiny, seemingly insignificant choices would mature to approximately $17,385. Now, what if I told you that real estate gets a lot more fun than that? It’s the power of taking small, consistent actions and letting time, the market, and the nature of real estate do the rest.

These small, consistent wins are what we’re advocating for in this book. The sense of accomplishment you get from these smaller victories fuels your belief that you can repeat them. The thrill of regular achievements lets you savor the journey, fostering a sense of joy and fulfillment not just upon reaching the destination, but all throughout the road leading to it.

To broaden our understanding of Micro-Wins beyond financial terms, let’s explore a vivid, hands-on analogy that illustrates the cumulative power of small victories.

Picture yourself walking through one of the many Legoland parks around the globe, making your way to an area known as Miniland. This remarkable section showcases intricate Lego replicas of iconic "Star Wars" scenes and renowned cityscapes such as San Francisco and New York. Each Miniland marvel stands as a testament to the meticulous craftsmanship and countless hours of dedication by the park’s master builders.

If you haven't witnessed these marvels in person, a quick online search for Legoland Miniland followed by any of these themes will unveil the intricate masterpieces created by the park's master builders. During visits with our families, we've stood in awe before these creations, marveling at their complexity and beauty. They prompt a deep curiosity about the meticulous process behind their assembly, especially when you learn about record-breaking feats such as the Lego model of Dubai's iconic Burj Khalifa.

Crafted by 17 master builders, this Lego Burj Khalifa, constructed from over 450,000 blocks, weighs more than 1 ton and towers over 55 feet tall, encapsulating more than 5,000 hours of collective labor. Whether you're admiring a picture, watching a video tour, or standing beneath its towering form, the realization hits you: each of those 450,000 bricks, seemingly minor when isolated, collaborates to sculpt this architectural wonder. This revelation lies at the heart of the Micro-Wins philosophy, and it's an insight we hope becomes clear to you as you journey through the pages of this book.

Now, imagine you're seated before a scattered array of Lego bricks, each representing a tiny, yet pivotal action, a daily decision, or a small win. As you connect each piece, you're doing more than assembling a model; you're meticulously crafting a complex edifice, brick by brick. Some pieces might form the hidden foundation, crucial for the structure's integrity, while others contribute to its aesthetic appeal, molding its final appearance.

This building process is a poignant metaphor for personal and financial growth through Micro-Wins. Every small action lays the foundation for a larger success story, contributing to the overall stability and potential of your life's endeavors. It's a journey that transcends the mere completion of a project; it's an ongoing celebration of every little victory along the way. Like pausing during a Lego build, you can step back, admire the progress, and revel in the satisfaction of what you've constructed, eager to see what shape the next pieces will bring.

This encapsulates the essence of the Micro-Wins Mindset.

The Micro-Wins Mindset champions the accumulation of minor victories, each one standing on the shoulders of the previous one, ultimately culminating in the grand achievement of your loftiest goals. It mitigates feelings of overwhelm while significantly enhancing your odds of realizing any goal you aspire to attain.

We are writing this book because we believe deeply that we have a game-changing strategy that has the potential to reshape financial futures. This isn’t just about earning a little extra on the side, or about making smart investments for the sake of it. This is about fundamentally altering your financial trajectory and enabling you to create a wealth legacy that you can pass down to future generations.

Despite our success and the profound impact, we’ve had on the lives of our clients, at the writing of this book, we recognize that we are still relatively unknown. When you take into account the vast volume of investment transactions that occur nationwide, the thousands of transactions that have culminated in more than 1 billion dollars of successful real estate we’ve facilitated for our clients is like a drop in the ocean.

But here’s the thing: we are not content to remain a well-kept secret. We want to emerge from the shadows, not out of a desire for fame or recognition, but because we know that the more people who discover this mindset and approach, will mean more lives that can fundamentally change. We’d like to make the case to you that you are that next success story. Imagine how it will feel ten years from now when you look back at this moment, and this sentence, and you realize this exact moment is where your journey to economic independence began.

We want to empower individuals who believe that real estate investing is beyond their reach, who think it’s an impossible dream, or that it requires a hefty bank account to begin with. Through the principles and strategies outlined in this book, we aim to dispel those misconceptions. We believe that anyone can achieve wealth through real estate investment, but the first step toward this wealth is to start. Our goal is to provide you with the knowledge, tools, and confidence to take that all-important first step, and we feel that this book is the first step.

We are fueled by a passion to bring about meaningful change. We want to shift the needle, to redefine what success looks like and to show you how you can Micro-Win your way to a brighter financial future. Let us take you on this transformative journey. Together, we can redefine your present and revolutionize your future.

The Genesis of Our Journey

This really all began in the year 2008, with the inception of our real estate investing company, Done For You Real Estate (DFY). This was a time when self-styled “gurus”—TV personalities and authors—would establish enterprises that outwardly claimed to empower people to reclaim their financial futures. These so-called experts would employ platitudes and evocative slogans, such as “swing for the fences” and “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” to persuade hardworking individuals to relinquish their hard-earned money in exchange for the allure of unimaginable wealth. Naturally, this “wealth” always lay beyond the paywall of whichever high-priced educational course or coaching program they peddled at the back of the room.

The most disturbing aspect? These “gurus” were acutely aware that their paying, adoring fans stood little chance of achieving any level of success in real estate. At the height of the real estate investment seminar era, fewer than 5% of individuals investing in coaching, mentoring, and educational programs ever completed even a single real estate transaction. An even smaller percentage of them ever made a single positive dollar in real estate.

When we started our company, we were determined to challenge this status quo. We decided to undertake a “radical and innovative endeavor” (note the sarcasm) actually assisting people to invest in real estate, not merely educating them on the subject, knowing they will likely never act on the knowledge. We realized we could shoulder the majority of the burdensome work for people while enabling them to retain 100% ownership, profits, tax benefits, and appreciation from their real estate. We could do 95% of the work, while they could keep 100% of the financial benefit of owning their real estate.

Our team of licensed professionals sought out properties that aligned with our clients’ unique investment objectives, fixed up the properties with rent-ready rehabs, secured the required financing, and arranged insurance. Moreover, our teams found tenants and managed the property on behalf of our clients for the entire duration of their investment. Our clients also benefited from our dedicated team of coaches, who provided hands-on support and guidance throughout the entire process of acquiring an investment property, and beyond.

Our business model offered ordinary people a genuine opportunity to amass substantial wealth without depending on Wall Street or traditional stock-market-based investments. We believe we innovated a method to bring real estate investing into the mainstream. We sometimes like to say that we have been able to “mainstream real estate investing for main street.” This approach has been so successful that we continue to employ it today. Having facilitated over 6000 home transactions (at the time of writing this book), amounting to more than a billion dollars in powerful yet conservative real estate transactions, we’ve managed to differentiate ourselves from the deceivers and sidestep the fickleness of real estate trends and fads that have defined the industry for decades.

As we’ve observed the economic tides rise and fall, weathered economic and real estate crashes, and witnessed markets devastated by a global pandemic, we felt a growing impetus to share our story. Specifically, we aim to illustrate how the Micro-Wins Mindset, along with its underlying principles, has allowed us—and more crucially, our clients—to prosper despite the volatility of economies, markets, jobs, and real estate conditions.

This book is your guide to liberating yourself from the shackles of the “traditional” financial system, which exploits your dreams and finances while offering you the hollow promise that “one day” you could attain financial freedom. Our objective is to equip you with the principles of the Micro-Wins Mindset. This way, irrespective of what the future holds, you and your loved ones can enjoy a new level of success and happiness that remains unaffected by factors beyond your control. It’s time you’re permanently fixed in the driver’s seat of your financial future.

The Power of Principles

The pursuit and acquisition of knowledge is undoubtedly valuable, yet such knowledge may not always endure, nor remain perpetually relevant; it can eventually become obsolete.

Principles, on the other hand, are far more concrete.

In Benjamin Hardy’s book 10x is Easier Than 2x, he defines a principle as “a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief, or behavior, or chain of reasoning.”

The book you’re reading right now, this book, contains knowledge but is squarely fixed on principles.[KC7]

Consider the medical practices of the past. Just a couple centuries ago, leech therapy was prevalent, even lauded among some physicians. The prevalent belief was that to expel an illness, it was necessary to drain it out of the body. This “knowledge” at the time inadvertently resulted in more harm than good for the patients it was intended to heal.

The principle underlying this practice—curing patients and eradicating their ailments—was praiseworthy. This principle is still respected and upheld in today’s medical world. However, our understanding of how to implement this principle has dramatically improved. The urgent care nearby doesn’t tend to rely on leeches for treatment (and if it does, you may want to find a new urgent care).

In the realm of real estate investing, a similar shift can be seen. For many years, investors abided by the 1% Rule. This rule suggested that an investment property should only be considered if the monthly rent was equal to or exceeded 1% of the purchase price. Consequently, if a $100,000 property didn’t fetch a monthly rent of at least $1000, it was deemed a poor investment. This piece of advice was sound for a period, but as property values saw an average annual increase of 12% between 2012 and 2022, and rent increases plateaued at a 5% annual increase during the same period, the 1% Rule became unreasonable to expect and impractical to rely on.

The principle at the heart of the 1% Rule— “invest in properties based on sound financial metrics rather than emotion”—holds merit. But the rule itself, as a piece of learned knowledge, has lost its relevance in the face of shifting markets and economies.

Are you tired of chasing trends and knowledge that don’t stand the test of time? What if instead you could build your life, and your financial future, on solid, enduring principles?

Although this book imparts substantial knowledge—some of which may eventually become outdated despite our best efforts to include timeless information—the ensuing 12 principles are steadfast. They will form the bedrock for what we hope will be your new belief system: the Micro-Wins Mindset.

By embracing the Micro-Wins Mindset, and these time-tested principles, you can make incremental progress toward greater joy and satisfaction in your personal life. You can gradually build a successful and robust business. You can incrementally amass a real estate portfolio that cultivates generational wealth for you and your loved ones.

Through this principle-based approach, you can gradually accumulate your way to millions, one Micro-Win at a time.

Navigating this Book

While this book aims to guide you toward success in all aspects of life, its core essence is a real estate investment manual, set to reveal duplicable, proven steps toward your journey to economic independence. Therefore, each chapter is composed of two parts. Part One will explain one of the timeless principles we espouse through anecdotes, business stories, and analogies. The second part of each chapter illustrates precisely how we have harnessed that same principle in real estate investing—hence, the text on the cover of the book, Micro-Wins to Millions – A Moneyball Approach to Real Estate – Unlocking the Power of Simple, Conservative Investing Principles for Economic Independence.

Your Road to Economic Independence

The Micro-Wins Mindset, and its associated principles, aim to recalibrate your outlook in all of life’s facets, including the vital area of income replacement.

We approach real estate with the perspective of gradually replacing income over time.

Perspective is invaluable. It’s the lens through which we perceive our surroundings. In real estate investing, possessing a clear perspective—or leveraging another’s—on what constitutes a good deal is crucial.

Our perspective is shaped by our experience with thousands of clients from all walks of life and thousands upon thousands of successful single-family rental (SFR) investments that have significantly benefited them since we first introduced this method in 2008. These are not singular, fortuitous million-dollar deals, but thousands of successful transactions—countless Micro-Wins amounting to millions.

If you’re intrigued by how the Micro-Wins Mindset can transform your relationships, real estate investments, career, and finances, this book is for you. If you are searching for joy, peace, and fulfillment, or aspire to make a positive impact in the world, then this book is designed for you.

Before we begin, allow me a word of caution—applying the Micro-Wins Mindset to every aspect of your life won’t always be smooth sailing. Initially, it may be challenging. We’re urging you to recalibrate a life-long perspective on happiness, success, business, investing, retirement, and long-term financial planning. By encouraging you to make conservative strides and celebrate minor victories, the Micro-Wins Mindset contradicts conventional teachings. Obstacles will arise, and hardships are part and parcel of the journey. However, we firmly believe that by using this book’s principles to navigate your decisions, you will eventually reach your desired destination.

Our earnest desire is for you to experience spectacular success, whether that involves incorporating real estate income into your financial plan, replacing your active income with passive income streams, or applying these methodologies to fields outside of real estate.

Ready to embark on this journey? We’re thrilled to travel on this transformative journey alongside you. Onward to the next blog post!