Heather Seitz’s In Search Of Entrepreneur Heroes Interview
Ralph Zuranski: Hi, I’m on the phone with Heather Seitz. She’s contributed to several industries prior to becoming a full time real estate investor and business owner back in 2002. In a short time Heather was able to buy and sell over $3M in real estate, speak nationally on a variety of platforms and align herself with successful people and partnerships across the country. She currently owns several businesses, markets multiple informational products nationally and continues a successful investing career.
Ralph Zuranski: Heather lives by the philosophy that in today’s world of multiple streams of income versus paychecks, domain names instead of company names and your first million instead of a retirement fund that goal setting, high management and leverage are more important than ever. To truly take advantage of everything that is available to you today, learning to make time work for you rather than against you is the only way to maximize your potential.
Ralph Zuranski: Heather is dedicated to bringing quality training and information to people in both the real estate industry and seminar promotion industry and is the founder of Interviews with the Experts, a weekly series bringing industry leaders from all over the globe to the living rooms of entrepreneurs each and every week. Heather is also the co-founder of the Next Level Institute, an education based marketing company that is committed to setting the standard and information product development, education and marketing and the seminar business in its entirety.
Ralph Zuranski: In 2005, the company successfully launched two divisions, one real estate and two seminar marketing and promotion. Plans to take this model across multiple platforms in the future, including, but not limited to information product development, Internet marketing and the stock market. Heather has the unique ability to take in ideas from all around her and apply marketing principles, business strategies and tactics across industries. Heather is also a big thinker and constantly looking forward to a big vision. Heather how are you doing today?
Heather Seitz: I’m great. That was a big mouthful there.
Ralph Zuranski: You’ve had some amazing accomplishments in your short lifetime. I guess I can say that because I’m so old and you’re so young.
Heather Seitz: Oh I don’t know about that.
Ralph Zuranski: Well I wanted to tell you just how much I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you today and ask you some of the heroes’ questions. The first one I wanted to ask you is, what is your perspective on goodness, ethics and moral behavior?
Heather Seitz: Well I think in today’s society it’s so important to really, I look back at what it was like in my grandparent’s era and a handshake was your bond. I think that I’m seeing more and more people now days that are kind of yearning for that and kind of living their lives by that example. Unfortunately, we’re in such a litigious society that you’ve got to back it with writing now days, but at the end of the day it comes down to just being the best person you can be and living with integrity and doing the right thing. There’s no real secret to it. There’s no magic potion.
Heather Seitz: You wake up every day and try to do the right thing and if something goes wrong you admit to it and move on and do what you can to correct it. I think that generally speaking people are good. There are not a lot of people that are just out to do harm or to do bad things. Sometimes people are pushed in the wrong directions and don’t really have the conviction to stand up and admit to things, or to stand up when other people are pushing them to go down the wrong path to stand up and say no, I disagree and I’m going to stand my ground. Generally speaking I think people want to be good and want to do the right thing.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you think it’s important to surround yourself with people that have the same ethics and moral code that you have?
Heather Seitz: Without a doubt and its funny. When I first started in business on my own, when I said this is the life that I’m going to make for myself. I remember sitting in a seminar room, it was a free event, and somebody was at the front of the room pitching a $4,000 training, which I ended up getting involved in and we’ll talk about that in a little bit. I sat there and when I was trying to figure out how I was going to make this happen, because I was just not in a good place at that point. I looked at my phone and said well gosh, there’s nobody in my phone that’s going to help me get where I want to go.
Heather Seitz: Its kind of a funny analogy, but if I were to pull that phone out, now that I look back I kind of wish I still had that same phone, but you scroll through. I just use a cell phone because everybody’s got one and that’s where we keep all of our contacts. I look at the cell phone I had back then and the cell phone I have now and its just I’m much more positive, I’m much more confident, I have more self-esteem, I’ve got clear directions and focus and energy. Every day I’m just excited to come in and do what I do.
Heather Seitz: I’ve got the most successful people surrounding me, so if you say it doesn’t really matter you’re fooling yourself and when I started and didn’t have those successful people around me it was real easy to get down. It was real easy to be negative, to quit and to give up and just to look at other people and say gosh they’re never going to get where they want to go. So I absolutely believe its critical for you to have the right people around you.
Ralph Zuranski: Was that one of the lowest points in your life when you looked in your phone and you found people that weren’t very positive?
Heather Seitz: You know that whole experience was pretty low. When I started, I started initially as a real estate investor and I’m still very active in that market. I wanted it so badly and I had, had a boyfriend at the time and we’d spent the holidays over in Spain and had come back and were not in a good spot. I had all my credit cards maxed out, $200 in the bank and we were living at his sister’s house.
Ralph Zuranski: Wow.
Heather Seitz: Yeah. Then sure enough we were going to come back, get everything together and we were going to go head off to Europe and live our life in Spain. In less than two weeks we broke up and I had another two weeks to get out of the house.
Ralph Zuranski: Oh no.
Heather Seitz: Penniless, I mean it was pretty tough plus I thought this was the person that I was going to spend my life with. Needless to say there were days that I didn’t want to get out of bed. During this time I had that training that I told you I went to, the free training that sold me into a $4,000 training. Well now to sweeten the pot I’d now committed to another person that I would pay them back the $4,000 by the end of that month. I kind of looked at myself in the mirror one day and was like what are you doing?
Heather Seitz: There are a few key moments in my life that I can look back at where as they say the rubber meets the road and you just say you know what, it’s a decision and you can’t really tell somebody and no goal-setting book or anything is going to do it. When something faces you and you’ve got the option to roll over or to get up and fight its what you do in those moments and those are the decisions that shape your life and I chose just that.
Heather Seitz: I said well I’m going to fight this and I’m going to prove to everybody that says I can’t do it, wrong and I’m going to get my confidence back and I’m going to move forward and that’s what I did.
Ralph Zuranski: Wow that’s quite a decision to make. I think it was probably important at that time to have a dream or a vision that sets the course of your life. What was that?
Heather Seitz: Believe it or not its funny, because I always thought oh I want to do this and I want to make that and I want to start this company. I’ve got all these goals and on the outside they may look materialistic, which they’re not, I really enjoy the teaching part of it. I want to help people be successful, but traditional goal setting is often about what’s your financial goal in (X) amount of time.
Heather Seitz: My real goal and the whole reason I got into any of this is because I think that there’s a crisis and I think that it has to do with both parents working. If you just look at what’s happening to children in society and the family unit and all of that. My grandparents and my mom raised me, but my grandparents were the model that I had to look at. It was for better or for worse and the children were what you had to provide certain values and certain ethics and morals for.
Heather Seitz: Seeing a lot of this deteriorate and seeing what was going on in schools and the divorce rate and all of that, at a young age, I mean early 20’s I said all I really want out of life is to have a good family and to be able to be home with my children. Now that doesn’t mean that I want to be broke and home with my kids and scraping to make ends meet. I want to be successful.
Heather Seitz: I want to be able to teach my children how to be entrepreneurial or how to be successful and not just financially, but in life. Just the simple things like having dinner at night with the family, everybody sitting around the table without the television and having the freedom to take time to be with my family and to do things that you need to do as a family, to keep a strong marriage and to raise strong and healthy children. So believe it or not that’s the big motivation that keeps me going is that when I settle down and have children I want to be home and I want to be the mom to raise them.
Ralph Zuranski: That’s really a great goal. How important is it to have a positive view of the setbacks, misfortunes and mistakes that everybody goes through? I know you’ve been through a few that are kind of a frightening experience of Spain and the love of your life. How important is it to have a positive view?
Heather Seitz: Well you’ve got to just look at the big picture. You’ve always got to look at the goal. It’s funny that you say that, because I was just actually writing something about this, especially in a couple of my primary businesses, the real estate and the seminar. Take real estate for example, there is so much that goes on with each and every transaction, if you allow yourself to get caught up or hung up in the little details you won’t make it past your first or second transaction.
Heather Seitz: Its just keeping the big picture in mind and even when it gets frustrating you just kind of say okay, lets put things into perspective. I could be doing this versus this; it’s not as bad as it seems right now.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you think that it takes a lot of courage to pursue new ideas?
Heather Seitz: I think that depends on where you are in your life. I think that initially it probably does, because there’s this fear of what am I going to do? What if I fail? More importantly than what if I fail, what if I succeed? I think that a lot of people are even more fearful of success then they are at failure because they’re used to not getting what they hope or dream for. What happens if they actually achieve it? What happens if they reach that goal? They’ve got nothing else to dream for, which is crazy, because every time you accomplish something or achieve a goal you kind of stretch yourself a little bit further.
Heather Seitz: When you’re first starting it can be very, very scary and it does take some courage. Its kind of blind faced and its kind of saying I’m going to go out on this and see what I can make happen and there’s an element to courage. Once you do it, its like a muscle that you exercise, I mean now I have no problem I love to come up with new ideas and test them and start them up and see where they take me and realize not everything is going to be a home run. But part of the challenge and part of the fun is the actual experience and what you learn along the way.
Ralph Zuranski: So in exercising your dream and muscles, as in anything, to make muscles grow there’s a certain amount of pain. Do you think that’s the same with building your dream muscles, going through a certain amount of discomfort to pursue your dream?
Heather Seitz: Certainly. It’s funny, because I was recently working on a project that was a larger project than I’ve ever done before. I said my goodness this is just like the first time I ever bought a property or did my first deal. It was just like starting over, because it was so big compared to what I’m doing now. In the scheme of things it’s not that big, but it was a big step from where I am now and you’ve got to be uncomfortable to push yourself. You’ve got to have a little bit of uncertainty.
Heather Seitz: You’ve got to realize that if everyone had all the answers there wouldn’t be anywhere to go. There wouldn’t be anything to fight for. There wouldn’t be anything to learn. So if you’re not uncomfortable and if you’re not struggling from time to time then you’re really not moving forward. One of my best friends, we were having a drink when he came back into town, it bothered me at first when he said it to me and it wasn’t until probably a couple months ago. He said this to me years ago; he says you know Heather you’re never going to be satisfied with being comfortable.
Heather Seitz: I thought gosh you’re a jerk what is that supposed to mean? I took it, and this was back while I was learning to be positive, I took that as a negative. I took that as he was putting me down and saying you just can’t be content with anything. When I thought about this statement and it stuck with me for years and I thought about it recently and I said to myself, you know what that was really a good thing, because even back then I took it as a negative. It meant I’m not content with just being average or just what I’ve got and that’s different than saying I’m not happy with what I’ve got.
Heather Seitz: There’s always more that you can do. There are more people that you can help. There is a bigger impact that you can make. So once you just become satisfied with what you have and don’t confuse that with being happy with what you have and wanting what you have, but you’ve always got to have a next picture to go to and a bigger dream to step up to.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you believe that its important to constantly change your dreams as your life experience achieves the goals that you set?
Heather Seitz: Yes. I’m not the same person that I was five years ago, so my dreams are going to change. The people that I’m involved with are going to change. Things happen in your life and in your business daily, weekly monthly all the time and there are opportunities that you’re presented with that you didn’t even know existed a couple weeks or a month or years ago.
Heather Seitz: So the key is to be open to things and to be open to change and to be open to expanding your vision and not so much changing it, because then you’re kind of just jumping on every bandwagon that comes through the door. This week I want to be this person. This week I want to be that person, but if you’ve got that core desire or that core thing that’s keeping you focused and everything is funneling to that. Like when I said that whole big picture is so that I can have this life with a family, well if everything leads to that then yes keep growing and changing and shifting.
Heather Seitz: Here’s an example. I was sitting in a hotel room about a year ago and I was speaking at real estate events. I was told that I was going to have some challenges to overcome, because I’m not super young but in the real estate world I’m fairly young compared to a lot of people that have been in the business for many, many years. I had people say I’ve been rehabbing houses longer than you’ve been alive what are you going to teach me kind of thing.
Heather Seitz: I had to get over that, but I was sitting in this hotel room and I just started to cry. I said what are you doing? I was miserable. I love to travel for fun, but this vision of what its like to travel for business and be on the road and away from your business and away from your family three to five days a week wasn’t the picture I had painted. I thought to myself its going to take you three to four years to be able to have the credibility to command what you want to do in front of these audiences.
Heather Seitz: That’s just a fact, I mean you can overcome the obstacles and so on and so forth, but there are some things that only time is going to really affect. I can’t say oh, well I’ve been investing in real estate for 20 years. At that time I was 29, so there are just things that you can’t change and only times going to affect that. So I thought in three to five years that’s when I’m going to want to settle down rather and have this family. Why on earth would I keep working towards this and then be forced to make a decision in a couple of years down the line.
Heather Seitz: Why even put that decision in front of me and some people might say you’re taking away an opportunity, but its not really an opportunity if the whole purpose for being here and doing what I’m doing is to be able to be home with a family. Why would I ever want to choose traveling for business over family or vice versa? So basically that day I came home and said I’m going to be much more selective and I’m not going to be on the road two and three weeks a month. I pretty much walked away from that.
Heather Seitz: So yes keep dreaming and keep allowing things to change, but also keep recognizing why you’re doing this and make sure that what you’re doing is in line with what your core dream is. Does that make sense?
Ralph Zuranski: Sure it does. It absolutely does and I think probably the biggest problem that most people have is just overcoming their doubts and fears. We have those dreams that we want to attain and then sometimes events that we have no control over actually happen in our lives and then the doubts and fears show up and try to destroy our dreams. How did you overcome your doubts and fears?
Heather: Heather Seitz: had to move out of that property. I ended up finding, I mean it’s a gorgeous home and I love it. It’s a cute little home, but the problem was because I had to use my mom’s credit to help me acquire it there was like this fear of God over me that if I was late on my mortgage payment that she’d come down and kill me.
Ralph Zuranski: Wow.
Heather Seitz: So I didn’t really have an option, but to get up and plug away every day whether or not things looked like they were going up or down, I couldn’t back pedal. I couldn’t say okay well let me try something new now, it was okay just be consistent and be persistent and everything will work itself out. Then the other thing was that I had to learn to let go of my control issues.
Heather Seitz: I’m still very much a perfectionist and like to be in control, but I had to get over that, okay let me think, how am I going to make an extra $125 because I have to pay this and I’d overwhelm myself with all of it, but sure enough each and every month it worked out. I wasn’t living a great life, I was just scraping to get by, but the bills that had to get paid were paid. That’s all that really mattered at that time it was just pay it and get what you have to get done, done.
Heather Seitz: Make sure that those things are met and just keep plugging along and everything is going to work out, its going to grow, its going to grow gradually you’re going to learn more, you’re going to experience more, you’re going to be exposed to more and that’s what it was. Finally I stopped worrying about it and just said okay something is going to happen each and every month, because I’m doing the right thing.
Heather Seitz: This goes back to your initial question about morals, ethics and integrity and that kind of way of life. If you’re living your life that way you’re going to be taken care of and it’s all going to work out for you.
Ralph Zuranski: Well was it your mom that gave you the will power to change things in your life, I guess sort of fear that you were going to miss the mortgage payment? Was there anybody else that gave you will power to change things in your life?
Heather Seitz: You know my grandparents were a huge factor when I was growing up. My mom had me very young and it was really an interesting mix and I wouldn’t change it. So she basically raised me as a single mom, but with my grandparents. Since she had me young I kind of had this wild, free spirit, yet I also had a very conservative, very respectful, I mean my grandparents went to church six nights a week. They raised five children and were just very conservative.
Heather Seitz: They were also entrepreneurs and business owners though. So I got both sides of the equation as far as personality and between all of them, I mean they were all very entrepreneurial. My mom had a real job for a handful of years, but there was always something on the side. She was always doing a network marketing business or a side job or something like that. My grandparents were always on their own and always working on this next project and this next adventure.
Heather Seitz: So this kind of idea of going to corporate America or just getting a job like that just wasn’t ever in the cards. It wasn’t anything that even computed to me, so it was kind of like, you have to make it work and that’s pretty much what I knew growing up despite the fact that college was not an option and things like that. It was like, you’re going to college and there is no let me think about it thing, but more than that for the discipline and so forth. At the end of it all I was surrounded by people that dreamed and had vision and just expected things to happen.
Ralph Zuranski: Are there any other heroes in your life other than your grandparents and your mom?
Heather Seitz: You know the definition of a hero; it’s hard to say is there any one hero or are there a handful of heroes, because I really think and not to sound cliché. Everybody in their own right is a hero to somebody. I look at my neighbors and I just adore their daughters and you see the way they look at their parents and its like, just what they’ve been able to do and obstacles that they’ve been able to overcome.
Heather Seitz: They were both foreigners from Europe, came over here and have made their lives very successful and I think that everybody is a hero to somebody and in their own way. I’m very fortunate, because pretty much all the people that I surround myself with, I look up to and they’ve just done phenomenal things so it would be hard to pinpoint one or two people. I’m really, really fortunate in that everybody’s out with the same goals and the same level of integrity and just trying to help other people and just good hearts.
Ralph Zuranski: That’s great. Why are heroes so important in the lives of young people?
Heather Seitz: That also goes back to what I was saying a bit ago about, I feel we have this crisis here with the education, morals and with everything involving children. Who’s raising the kids now, you know, in many cases its under paid teachers that are restricted because of all the lawsuits and its really tough. Then if you’ve got parents who haven’t made the best decisions then there are really no role models for kids.
Heather Seitz: So they need to have people that they can look up to. They need to have people that they can say, I identify with that person or I want to be like that person then that person needs to be able to reciprocate back and provide. One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do, we have a homeless shelter here for women and children and to be able to set up a program and probably independent of that, because sometimes there is so much red tape and politics that go along with institutional type charities.
Heather Seitz: To be able to set up something where you bring the moms and the kids in and have a seminar for the moms and say look, here’s the thing, you don’t have to be a victim here and everybody has their challenges and here are some of the skills to overcome this. At the same time have the kids in another room and teach the kids to dream. Teach the kids that there are things out there that there are opportunities for them and they’re not going to be stuck with anything. Teach them that they’ve got so much to look forward to.
Heather Seitz: The things that I saw as a child were crazy I mean my brother’s dad was not a very good person. He was involved in drugs and things like that and by statistics I could have absolutely been on the streets and used that as an excuse. So I don’t take a lot of excuses from people, because you absolutely have the power to change that. I think that kids need to have those role models that are there to show them hey, you’re not stuck with this you can do something with your life.
Ralph Zuranski: Who do you think are the heroes today that are not getting the recognition that they deserve?
Heather Seitz: I’m sure that many of your people have said this, but I think that teachers are huge, because they’re out there every day. I’ve taught some pre-school in a past life and just some of the things they have to handle because parents aren’t parenting properly or are not giving the kids the love and affection that they need. We know that there’s a crisis with the education system, but I really do think that teachers need to be more recognized without a doubt.
Heather Seitz: Then as far as other people, you know you look at one of my partners with Next Level, Robin. I think that his dedication and commitment, if you talk about people that aren’t recognized enough. He is absolutely dedicated to the Boys and Girls Club and is out there doing so much, giving so much time and money and effort to help them. The people that are doing that that nobody ever even knows exist. I think that they need to be recognized.
Ralph Zuranski: I’m going to recognize Robin he’s one of the heroes interviews that we have coming up. How would being recognized as the new net hero change your life?
Heather Seitz: I don’t even consider myself as an Internet hero. I think that just being able to, the more recognized you are and the more people that know you, of course there is more scrutiny. There are just as many people that want to say lets help, there are other people that have that jealousy that don’t have that positive outlook that don’t have the right mindset that are just out there to kind of find things that are wrong with people.
Heather Seitz: Just the fact that you’re recognized gives you the power to be able to go out and make changes. It gives you the ability to help people. The one thing that I have learned is that you’ve really got to build a thick skin. I thought I had to have a thick skin in the real estate business, but in the information-marketing world and the Internet world you’ve really got to grow a thick skin, because there are a lot of people that are jealous when you achieve what they want to achieve.
Ralph Zuranski: Oh that’s so true isn’t it?
Heather Seitz: Oh yeah.
Ralph Zuranski: I know that you’re doing a lot and helping out with the shelters to make the world a better place. Do you have any good solutions to the problems facing society today, especially racism and child and spousal abuse and violence among young people?
Heather Seitz: Well, I think unfortunately it all comes down to education and there’s no magic pill. It’s just that we’ve got to start educating and we’ve got to start educating at an early age. One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do and I didn’t realize that 12 acres wasn’t that much when I first had the idea, but my mom has 12 acres of land up in Maine. One of the things that I wanted to do is kind of have this international summer camp where kids came for two, three or four weeks from all over the world and started to teach them at such an early age.
Heather Seitz: Say you have a friend at summer camp that was Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or what have you. Not that religion is the only thing, but that you had people from all walks of life, from all cultures, from all ethnic and financial backgrounds. So then when its time to go to war and its 20 years later they’re thinking back to well wait a minute, I had so and so in summer camp there’s nothing wrong with them they just think differently and they live different, but I don’t want to go fight them.
Heather Seitz: I think that the real solution is to provide the education and to really, just like we’ve talked here about building a dream and having this conviction and having it so ingrained that that’s how you live your life. The same thing needs to happen with the kids. They’ve got to learn and learn it through and through that people are people and I really think that’s the only way we can make a significant long-term change.
Ralph Zuranski: Well what do you think about the In Search of Heroes Program and its impact on youth, parents and business people?
Heather Seitz: I think that its phenomenal, because it gives people, there are a lot of different people that have a lot of different experiences and I know a number of them personally and they’re good friends of mine. They’ve all got things to contribute. Just one piece of advice or just a word from one person can make a huge impact I and stick with you. I just mentioned briefly about this comment that my friend had told me years ago. That one statement stuck with me for years, so you’ve got some just absolutely incredible people from all walks of life, different backgrounds, different goals and I think that its just a phenomenal program because its bringing all these different things to people all over.
Ralph Zuranski: Yeah. It is amazing, some of the answers that the heroes that I’ve interviewed had and just some of the nuggets of gold that they’ve presented to the world are incredible. I know that I’ve been changed just by the brilliance of some of those lean gems that they’ve presented in the heroes interviews and you had no idea that they were just going to pop right out of their mouths.
Ralph Zuranski: I know that they were very grateful to not to have to be asked questions about Internet marketing or a product conversion. They just really enjoyed the opportunity to just have a say about things that are really important just like you.
Heather Seitz: Knowing the people that you’ve interviewed I can absolutely imagine some of the things that came out of people’s mouths and just how much fun and how interesting that can be.
Ralph Zuranski: It was interesting. It was incredibly interesting. Heather one of the things what parents can do that will help their children realize that they to can be heroes and make a positive impact on the lives of others?
Heather Seitz: Well first off shut the TV off. I know that sounds kind of silly, but when I grew up I got to watch a little bit of TV, but I went outside and played with the neighbors, I did my homework, I had a healthy dinner and then maybe I could watch an hour of television. It was also much more regulated as to what I would watch. I’d definitely say shut the television off.
Heather Seitz: We see this world of seminars and this world of information overload and teleconferences and all these things. Start involving your children in some of that. Start bringing them around these positive people. If the kids are three, four, five, ten and fifteen years old and they’re around positive like-minded people that have a direction and a purpose then that’s what they’re going to absorb and those are the values and morals that these kids are going to absorb.
Heather Seitz: So you’ve got to take them and its uncomfortable and I’m sure its difficult for a lot of people, especially initially, but take these kids out of their comfort zone of PlayStation and X-box and take them to events where they can become better people or let them listen to things that are going to really help them. Put tapes and CD’s in the car for them to listen to when you’re driving instead of whatever’s on the radio that day.
Ralph Zuranski: Boy, that’s great advice; I guess you really had a tremendous benefit from being raised by entrepreneurs with your mom and grandparents. They instilled that in you at an early age and its funny, after doing so many interviews most of the heroes that I’ve recognized, believe it’s the entrepreneurs that are the true heroes of any society.
Heather Seitz: Absolutely.
Ralph Zuranski: Well I really appreciate your time today Heather. Thank you so much and I just really appreciate your perspective and how valuable that information is.
Heather Seitz: Well thank you its been an honor to be among such company that you have put together with this program.
Ralph Zuranski: Well thanks again Heather, have a great day.
Heather Seitz: You too take care.
Ralph Zuranski: Thanks.