Everyone makes mistakes right? How about a mistake that loses you $200 hundred million? Today we are breaking down Mistakes Millionaires Make.
Remember, with each episode, we will provide a helpful Deep-Dive infographic where we break down the entire book on to 1 page! Check out, and download, this week’s infographic below!
Harry Clark’s, Mistakes Millionaires Make, gives you insight into the stories of millionaires you don’t often hear. Behind the tales of glitz, glam, fame, and money… are the failures. It hurts the most when you fall from the tippy top. And Clark hopes to help prevent that from happening to you with this book. He interviews 30 entrepreneurs who ultimately achieved or maintained success, but not without the pitfalls of that journey to becoming a millionaire, and the catastrophic effects those losses had on them, their families, and countless others.
Here are our top 10 takeaways:
- Diversify
- Earning It VS Keeping It
- Know Yourself
- Asset Protection
- Leverage: A Double Edge Sword
- Keep It Simple
- Don’t Do Business With The Government
- Cash Reserves
- Bad Luck Is Omnipresent
- You’re Half Wrong
Tweetable Quotes:
“Bad luck. It’s omnipresent. And if you stay in the game long enough, you’re going to be exposed to some pretty, pretty bad luck.”  – Anthony Vicino
“That’s the innate nature of investors, to look at what the risk is, but a lot of business owners don’t, they don’t look at the downside.”  – Dan Krueger
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** Transcripts
Mistakes Millionaires Make
[00:00:00] Anthony: Hello and welcome to multi-family. Investing made simple to podcast. That’s all about taking the complexity out of real estate investing so that you can take action today. I’m your host, Anthony. Viscito joined as always by Dan the
[00:00:14] Dan: book work. Hello, how’s it doing? How’s it doing? It’s doing okay. It’s a dreary day.
It’s kind of rainy. It’s a great day for a nap. It’s a Sunday is really
[00:00:27] Anthony: look at it out there. It’s been raining a lot. The last couple of days in Minnesota. It’s unfortunate, but we shall persevere. This is a good day, actually, to curl up on the couch with a book. and you know, what book in particular would be really good to set on the
[00:00:44] Dan: couch and made simple
[00:00:45] Anthony: well obvi, but the topic of today’s episode, actually, I think this book is a nice light read.
It’s not very big. It’s not heavy by any means. You could probably get through it in a afternoon. It is. [00:01:00] Mistakes
[00:01:00] Dan: millionaires make leave off of mine. I
[00:01:03] Anthony: do too, while I’m reading it. And then I put the sleeve back on the shelves.
[00:01:07] Dan: It’s just a red square, like don’t care, the little red book.
[00:01:12] Anthony: So if you guys are on YouTube, make sure that you go, uh, you go to YouTube and you watch multi-family investing made simple and you can see us holding up the.
That way riveting stuff, but this is, this is one of my favorite, uh, new segments that we’re introducing on the podcast where every week we’re diving into 10 takeaways, five from me, five from Dan of a book that’s been meaningful or impactful to us or our business or life in general. And we’re going to bring that to you so that you don’t have to read them.
[00:01:44] Dan: Give you all the highlights for about two hours. You’re welcome. Welcome.
[00:01:47] Anthony: You’re welcome. And if after this, you want to go, you don’t remember what we said, cause you kind of like blacked out. For some reason. I get that. Um, you can download what we’re calling the sophisticated investor notes. [00:02:00] Reid is taken all these takeaways.
He’s putting them in a beautiful little infographics so that you can go through and read all of our takeaways and have a summary of what this book we’ve previously done. The Almanac of Novell, Robert Kahn. We’ve done traction. Um, what other one did we do? There was another one in there. Uh, I can’t really.
I don’t know bode well, but, um, anyway. Yeah,
[00:02:22] Dan: we did do another one. I can’t remember either attraction. I should just dump this over. We’re both under the weather today, so we’re just gonna throw it out there. It’s not. Highest quality episode might get weird bar low. I like it. I’m just saying we, I took DayQuil.
This could get weird. We could go off the rails at any
[00:02:40] Anthony: moment. It’s always getting weird. Yeah. But, um, all that’s to say, if you want those sophisticated investor nuts, you can email me, Anthony. I had Victus Invictus, multifamily.com, and I will send you the folder that has all of them available. You can go read through them and.
Hopefully glean some wisdom from these books that have been so impactful for us. Not that folder. [00:03:00] No, you can not. Um, it’s only for the list. I’m just kidding, Dan, you can have it, but you have to email me and you have to be very nice in the email and say, okay, I left a review for the podcast. And if you do that, then I shall send you the notes.
[00:03:13] Dan: That’s one step I could probably do that. Have you left a review for the podcast? I’m sure.
[00:03:18] Anthony: No, no. I’m not talking to you, Dan. I’m talking to the listeners. Now I’m talking directly to you so that you’re going to have you have. Um, you’re listening to us, but I’m not sure you’ve left a review. So, uh, just go ahead and push pause, go to iTunes, drop a review, and then come back over here and let’s get into the book review.
[00:03:34] Dan: We’ll wait. And
[00:03:38] Anthony: go, thank you. We’re back. So thank you for leaving a review. Now let’s get to the meat and potatoes. Dan, do you want to kick us off with your number one takeaway? These are in no particular order as always
[00:03:48] Dan: mistakes millionaires make first off. I just want to say I liked this book, uh, because it’s almost like the, uh, uh, where there is zero.
This is a skinny book. It’s just [00:04:00] nothing but just good, good quality info. So, um, it’s efficient, it’s an efficient read. You get a lot of actionable stuff out of it. Um, and the other thing I like about this book, these aren’t my takeaways. These are just why I think it’s a great book. Um, it focuses on the downside.
We as investors do this, I think just that’s what. Innate nature as investors is to look at what the risk is, but a lot of business owners don’t, they don’t look at the downside. They don’t look at the risks that they’re exposed to. And this book is all about looking at the risk, which I can appreciate as a risk averse guy.
So the first takeaway I got out of this was, uh, one of the, we’ve talked about a lot, um, maybe a little bit on the podcast, but not a ton, but a lot personally, which is diversifying. Out of your business, especially if you have some sort of big capital liquidity events, um, you do not want to be concentrated, especially with a big liquidity event in one thing, which is your thing you want to try to diversify away from that business sooner rather than.
Um, so that you don’t have all your eggs in one basket, specifically [00:05:00] your basket, which is tricky because you’re so rewarded for that in the early years of being an entrepreneur, it’s tough to tell. Okay. When is the appropriate time to start to Parson capital outside of my operation in something that’s not correlated to me stuff.
[00:05:14] Anthony: Yeah. And there is no, I think you’ve got to do it as soon as possible and it might not be in like the great quantities that you. You, you, you imagine like millions of dollars, but I think you have to get in the habit early on because it’s like that whole, um, tithing or learning how to pay yourself 10% of your income before it goes anywhere else.
If you can’t do that and be diligent with the small amounts, then thinking like, oh, someday when I have enough money, I will donate to charity. Or when I hit this number, I will do this thing. Um, I, I find it doesn’t happen unless you can build that. That discipline, that skillset early. And so it’s probably with less money than you think, but it is very difficult because we’re so rewarded for investing back into.[00:06:00]
And
usually
[00:06:01] Dan: the returns are really high, really good, but
[00:06:05] Anthony: here’s the really interesting thing is that, um, you know, the, the, the investors that we predominantly serve at Invictus capital are entrepreneurs who find themselves in the situation where they haven’t been investing in anything outside of their business.
And now they’re like, oh, I need to take some eggs out of this school. Basket, because if something happens with my business or even if things are going swimmingly over there, it’s still really good to diversify around that. So that your only sole means of income is not coming from that one business.
Right? Like you can start creating passive income.
[00:06:38] Dan: And I think usually it’s implied. It’s usually somewhat the case that if you reinvest into your business, that’s, that’s not really going to be a passive investment. Right. You’re effectively going to probably create some level of work for yourself, but you know where you’re at in your growth, but, um, There’s only so many hours in the day.
So a lot of our investors, like you mentioned, are getting to that point where they have capital that needs to be deployed [00:07:00] and they’re already fully busy with their business and they need to put this capital somewhere that doesn’t require more input from them. And that inevitably leads them outside of their business to some sort of external investment opportunity, whatever that may be so nice.
[00:07:16] Anthony: I liked that lesson and it’s not one that I had on mine, so well done. Uh, one of mine is. Earning it versus keeping it are completely different skillsets. Like the ability to go. And this ties back to, uh, investing back in your business and growing. And theoretically you’re pretty good at that. Um, but actually keeping that money, saving on taxes or creating asset protection plans where you’re not liable in the future to just kind of collapse in on yourself, like a flan in the cupboard.
Like those are completely different skills and entrepreneurs. Probably 90% of the time fixated on how do I make more? How do I earn more? And they don’t have as much time dedicated to how do I keep it? And [00:08:00] it’s something that we’re wrestling with in all honesty, like we’re, we’re talking more about like life insurance plans and then asset protection plans and like, what are we doing?
So that. Yeah, we’re good at making money, but how do we ensure that we fortify that money that comes in because as that old Maxim says, um, it’s not about what you make it’s about what. Right. And you can make a ton of money and you can give it all away. If you, if you don’t play your cards, right?
[00:08:25] Dan: Yeah. It’s tricky because I think what, what got you, the capital or the money or the wealth in the first place is probably going to be an appetite for risk and what keeps that capital or money.
Um, on your balance sheet is probably going to be risk aversion. So you’re going to have to kind of probably transition from, uh, one type of activity you want to approach early in your business and your growth phase to the more stability, risk averse stage at some point that that might be a tricky transition for some people taking risk.
Eventually I’ve got to start to hedge some of that off. [00:09:00]
[00:09:00] Anthony: Yeah. And what you, what you just said, there is actually a perfect segue into my second point. So I’m going to actually just push this one to the forefront and you might also have it. Um, but I think it’s super important. And instead of like putting it to the later and then like, circling.
It’s it’s knowing yourself and realizing, like to succeed as an entrepreneur, you had to be willing to take on certain levels of risk, right. And, and willpower and through and optimism about like what the future holds for you. And those are good qualities to have that you could not survive with otherwise in this world, but at a certain point, those things can also become the limiting factor.
They can be, become the weakness. So I’m curious, did you, did you also have something to that effect?
[00:09:43] Dan: Um, Kind of not really my fifth one is w we’ll get to it. It’s um, not now I’m going to say no, but the fifth one I have is somewhat related, but the second one I had was actually very similar to the one you just had, [00:10:00] which was around the asset protection and protecting the, for your families and your personal assets.
And the reason I pulled this one out was the, the blurb that really got me was the, the line about. How entrepreneurs are conditioned to withstand a certain amount of stress and agony that comes with being an entrepreneur like we’re, um, we’ve got pretty thick skin when it comes to. Failures. Uh, but our families might not.
Right. And so we need entrepreneurs recognize that I might be fine personally, with this risk. I’m putting myself out there for this potential upside, but how does my family feel about that? Right. You’ve got to take that into consideration to make sure that your family and your personal side of things are as segmented from your business as possible.
So that entrepreneurial risk that you’re taking. You know, you might be able to deal with the consequences, but maybe your, your family is not, and you need to make sure your affairs are in order in that regard. I know you’ve done a lot of work on this recently and I’m starting to, but I [00:11:00] know a lot of people like us are not looking at this until they’re in their fifties or sixties.
Yeah. So that was a big takeaway for me because I know it’s something that. I’m going to be working on. I feel like we’re still on the early side being in her mid thirties, looking at this type of stuff. But, um, it’s really important because it only gets more complex the longer you wait. I think, yeah.
[00:11:21] Anthony: I think what you’re talking about there is like asset protection, but then also like, um, setting up trust and legacy planning and saying, what happens if something happens to me and are my, my loved ones taken care of?
[00:11:32] Dan: And I think that’s the one that her prediction was something else that, uh, Clark called out that, you know, you can make things such that, uh, you, you limit your liabilities that you take on. You don’t need to sign these blanket, personal guarantees all over town, you know, negotiate such that you’re, you’re taking on a reasonable amount of risk and not excessive risk that opens up your.
[00:11:54] Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. And that kind of ties into, uh, that was your second one, right? I’m not skipping ahead. [00:12:00] And, okay. So my third one that ties in well is, um, just understanding that leverage is a double-edged sword. So you have to be careful specifically when it comes to personal recourse and what you’re signing on.
Uh, even without personal recourse, honestly, like you, you have to be careful because. Leverage can help you accelerate it’s it’s jet fuel for the machinery. And obviously we love leverage. It allows us to go out there and acquire, you know, big apartment complexes that are cash flowing, but that’s the key, right?
Like cash flowing and understanding. What’s the amount of, of, uh, risk that you’re taking off. It is proportional to the return that you’re expecting. Right. And I think it can be really easy when you’re, when you’re just chasing growth or growth at all costs that suddenly you’re, you’re using too much leverage and.
And that that gets dangerous real quick. I think that was one of the recurring themes throughout the book is people who [00:13:00] used leverage to grow really quickly and then did not pivot away from it. There comes a point. There comes an inflection point when it helps you grow to a certain point. But beyond that, the marginal utility of more dollars is not worth the additional risk.
And if you can’t. If you can’t accurately peg, when that moment in time occurs, then you’re, you’re, you’re floating really close to the sun and your, your wings might melt.
[00:13:27] Dan: Yeah. I think that ties back to that, uh, switching from kind of risk appetite for risks to risk aversion stage in growth. I think that’s important because it’s addictive.
You know, leverage could be like a drug it’s like nitrous. Uh, if you’re, if you’re racing through drag racing, if you just keep pushing. Nitrous and your engine, you’re going to blow it up. Right? You could use it for a quick boost to get you from point a to point B you know, for a short period of time. So early in her growth, maybe use some leverage to get, you know, that initial jumpstart that you need, but if you can’t get off [00:14:00] the stuff, uh, at some time, You know, that risk is going to catch up with you.
So I think that’s, that’s imperative. That’s something that we’ve been taking a lot of, uh, time to look at in our business with respect to our, our guarantees, our debts, our exposure, things like that, make sure that it’s appropriate, but not aggressive. Um, my third one that I pulled out was keep it simple slash don’t grow too fast.
These two kind of concepts came in. Uh, kind of in the same story with, I believe it was the author talking about the business that he was, uh, building, which was the sort of. Combination of a bunch of different businesses. It was like development and running an education business. And then this whole financing piece, it just grew into this monstrosity that was just overly complex.
And, um, it turned out that it was just so complex. They didn’t realize that there was some inaccuracy is that, that resulted in, um, uh, Their burn rate, [00:15:00] exceeding what they actually thought thought it was and, you know, cash crunch. So it kind of leads into some other topics that we’re going to discuss here.
I’m sure. But the big thing that I pulled out of that, that resonated with me that also kind of resonated with me because I’m also reading Sam’s Elle’s book is, you know, reducing the complexity, sticking with what you know, and that kind of theme of trying to keep it simple. I don’t know if you guys have noticed on our content we’d like word simple.
Um, But, you know, in Sam’s Elle’s book, it was somewhere he, he was starting, he started property management, moved up into acquire an existing multi-family assets and then dabbled in the development and then came back because development is just, it got a little bit too complex for me, like the simple stuff.
And this was echoing similar, uh, concepts. Where, uh, he was talking about his, his business was just overly complex and he grew too fast. Uh, that combination, those two things together resulted in a fairly negative outcome. And that I think resonates with maybe because it just reinforces what I already thought, I guess, which was simplicity is good.
[00:16:00] So,
[00:16:00] Anthony: yeah. That’s why I pulled it up. I agree. I agree. I have nothing to add here. I mean, our whole brand is around. Making things simple and understanding that a needless complexity is needless. So really nothing to add that. Beautiful. Yep. Let’s get it. Um, my number four and this one’s funny, I think because I’ve been thinking about this one a lot as it pertains because I’ve been studying a lot on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
Um,
[00:16:37] Dan: Like the frozen there is.
[00:16:40] Anthony: Okay. You, yeah. Can
[00:16:42] Dan: you restart from when you said you were reading a lot about cryptocurrency, right? Like right after that you froze.
[00:16:47] Anthony: Yep. Cool. Cool. Yeah, it looks like it said, um, unstable. Um, so you’ve been reading a lot about. What’s that.
[00:16:58] Dan: Alright. [00:17:00]
[00:17:00] Anthony: So, um, I’ve been reading a lot about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, which is, um, It’s similar in context to this particular lesson, which is don’t do business with the government, the whole context behind cryptocurrency and blockchain technology is it’s like the decentralization of information.
Here’s what I find fascinating is if you’re playing a game with another party and that other party at any point can change the rules and they don’t have to put up to consensus or vote or anything, they can just change the rules whenever they like they own. Right. And the government can do that as it pertains to money, which is where cryptocurrency kind of becomes like this interesting, um, alternative solution where nobody can go in there and manipulate the money pool and take it away from the government.
But in the same way, like working with the government and government contracts, they can do the same thing at any given. Right. And you could Sue them, but you know, you’re, you’re, you’re suing the government. You’re gonna have to go to the government to get [00:18:00] any kind of restitution and that’s gonna take a long time.
So if they decide they don’t want to honor the contract or they change the terms or they take long to pay or for whatever reason, like your business can be absolutely screwed. And so I’ve never had any interest in doing business specifically with the government, but this lesson I think is important for us as we explore, you know, Some alternative funding structures that would allow us to get, say into low income housing tax credits, right?
Like everything I’ve heard from people say you can make really good money in that particular sector, but it’s a headache. And for me, the idea of doing business with the government, no matter how much money you stand to make it, I don’t think I could ever sleep well at night knowing that the other side of the table could change the rules at a moment’s notice.
And there’s nothing I can do about it.
[00:18:49] Dan: I think that th the, the, the trick there is that you have to do business with every government, then you’re good because yeah. You just, you just, you know, you [00:19:00] you’re, you’re backing everybody so that no matter who comes out on top, you’re good that that’s, it’s kind of a binary strategy.
If you’re going to government work at the mall, had your beds. Um, no, I think that makes sense, because it really becomes a question of like, how, um, uh, How concentrated is your customer, right? If typically those companies that, that lean on on government business, that’s a significant amount of their income.
Their revenue might be 50, 60, 80, a hundred percent from government contracts. Like if you look at Lockheed Martin, I don’t know what that is. That number is for them, but it’s. A lot of the revenue comes from the us government. So like, what if that spicket turns off for whatever reason, that’s a pretty concentrated exposure.
Um, so aside from this, the government able to change the rules. Typically the companies do do business with the government. It’s primarily with the government. So there’s a lot of concern. ‘
[00:19:50] Anthony: cause he kinda needs to be like, if you, I was talking to somebody yesterday, uh, about this, where if you want to do business with the government, they have so many esoteric rules and regulations.
And so you, you have to [00:20:00] become kind of an expert in that if you want to work there and the way that you’ve worked with a government versus with just a, you know, a private institution, it’s fundamentally different. So if you want to succeed, you have to go, you have to go deep and become an expert. Yeah.
[00:20:14] Dan: It’s a different game. All right. Number four for me, I feel like you jumped ahead. You’re you’ve already gotten your four. Oh, this is my fourth. So we’ve got,
[00:20:23] Anthony: I skipped you remember on my second one, I just went one and soon I was like, boom, take that, Dan.
[00:20:30] Dan: Uh, they were good though. I like it. Uh, my next one is businesses should always, and I, in my notes, I wrote this in all capital letters.
Always, always. Wow. Yes. Emphasis. Keep ample cash reserves and that kind of ties back into some of the other stuff that we’ve talked about. But again, this is one that I pulled out, probably just because it aligns with my personal philosophies. So I would just like to reinforce my own beliefs
[00:20:57] Anthony: to confirm my own bias.
[00:20:59] Dan: Exactly. I’m looking [00:21:00] for things that justify what I’m already doing. Um, but no, I just, I feel passionate about this because I come from a household where, you know, We didn’t have a bunch of money. So I come from a scarcity mindset. So anytime I get kind of some reinforcing, uh, information that says, yeah, you should actually, uh, Be conservative with respect to these, these things like cash balances.
Um, I don’t know what the industry standard is out there for companies. It’s probably different per sector and type of industry. But I know on our side, I feel like we err on the, um, the longer and of what most companies want to keep around in cash. Uh, but I’ve got a limited frame of reference.
[00:21:41] Anthony: Yeah. In terms of like working capital and reserves.
It’s interesting because when you look back on say 2020, and all the restaurants went under, like almost immediately, because they only had like 30 days, maybe two months of working capital and reserves, um, it’s, it’s, it’s this balancing act versus [00:22:00] cash flows in versus reserves and cashflow out. And how do you, how do you, how do you find that perfect equilibrium for me?
I don’t think there it’s less about maximizing the efficiency of your dollar and more about maximizing your potential for catastrophic resistance. And so if you had say a year’s worth of working capital, uh, when 2020 hit as a restaurant, like, okay, that’s, you can be out of it. You can be shut down for a year.
Right. Like, that’s really what that means. It’s like, you don’t have to do business for a year and you could, you could come out the other side. And in the same with like 2007, 2008, the people that really got screwed were the ones who didn’t have the money. To be able to answer, um, their, their bank loans when they’re suddenly like, Hey, you’re you’re underwater.
We need you to true this up. Or there just wasn’t enough cashflow to actually substantiate the business’s existence. So. I think in all con no matter what happens in the future. Cause I was [00:23:00] talking to somebody about this the other day. They’re like, Hey, what do you think happens with interest rates and, and Ukraine and Russia and China, and like all the things that are happening in the world.
And like another pandemic I’m like, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the. I assume it’s going to be bad because I think that’s always the default setting for an entrepreneur. You should assume it’s going to be worse than it currently is. All I know is like the only thing that can get you through pretty much every single downturn in every single crisis is having a lot of money in reserve.
That’s really, that’s the only thing I can think of. Like, and even that can go to zero, so.
[00:23:36] Dan: Yeah, every time the shit hits the fan, everybody calls Warren buffet. And there’s one reason for that. He’s, he’s sitting on a pile of cash every time. Um, you know, someone’s about to go under called buffet. See if he can step in and save our ass.
[00:23:51] Anthony: He’s got, that’s why this actually is a good segue. It’s my last, uh, my last, my last lesson learned from mistakes that millionaires make it’s, [00:24:00] um, it’s just that understanding, like bad luck. It’s omnipresent. And if you stay in the game long enough, you’re going to be exposed to some pretty, pretty bad luck.
And it ties back to that idea that you can do everything right, and still lose. And so, even though we’re talking about like all of these things that you should be aware of and trying to protect yourself against recognize that you could have had a full year of reserve capital, you could have done everything right.
And it’s totally possible that it still won’t quite work. Yeah, right? Like
[00:24:32] Dan: the world’s destroyed.
[00:24:34] Anthony: Yeah. The U S dollar no longer as the reserve currency. We’ve hyperinflated it goes to zero and it’s like, all, whoops, like there’s, there’s just bad luck happens. And so the best investment that you can make is into yourself, your network, your relationships, your skills, because those can’t be taken away from you barring some kind of physical disaster, you know, terminal.
Obviously then you can lose them, [00:25:00] but as long as you’re still in the game and you still have your skills, you still have your relationships. Like you can always get back on the horse or the donkey and, and keep riding,
[00:25:11] Dan: but a Lama,
[00:25:12] Anthony: you can’t get on the Lama porno pack. You
[00:25:15] Dan: can get a Lama. Um, I like that. Um, My last one is, is pretty similar actually.
Um, which is 50% of all the decisions you make will be wrong. And, uh, you need to focus on identifying the decisions that have the ability to ruin you. Um, and this kind of, I like this a lot because it kind of ties into the Keith Cunningham stuff we were talking about on. Through the other book that we did.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that was it. Yeah. There we go. So we came back full around. We remembered finally, that’s a great bonus. 20 minutes. We’re slow today. Um, but yeah, Keith Cunningham talked a lot about like asking better questions and this just really kind of, I love when I can connect the [00:26:00] dots between, uh, I apologize for the sirens.
If anybody can hear that there’s fires apparently, um, asking better questions. And I like when I can connect the dots between various. Different sources when the same kind of philosophy or logic pops up here and I can connect the dots and they tie together. And so this one I pulled out primarily for that reason that just tied nicely into Keith Cunningham’s logic with asking better questions to, to uncover the root problems, uh, not just the symptoms and in this book, it’s really just more so about, uh, identifying, uh, the decisions that you need to make that have the ability to.
Screw you to ruin you and again, bringing up Sam’s Elle’s book. Um, am I being too subtle? I’m going to talk about this some sooner where it’s a great book, but, uh, he talks a lot about being able to find out like where the risk is in the deal, because there’s usually one point. Where, if you, if you get something wrong, nothing else matters.
Like there’s going to be an element of risk where [00:27:00] you need to identify that thing where if that doesn’t get executed properly, everything else is for not. And this was pretty much the same thing. Like find, find the weak link, find the risk, concentrate on it and make sure that that’s where your energy goes into identifying the risk and getting in front of it.
[00:27:16] Anthony: I’ll tie this back to Neval Robert Kahn, who talks about how you can, you can afford to be wrong about practically everything. As long as the things you’re wrong about don’t lead to catastrophic ruin, stay out of jail. Don’t die. Don’t go to zero. Those are the three. Those are pretty much the three big things he identifies.
If you go to jail. Or if you go to zero, those are all examples of catastrophic ruin. So those all sound pretty bad. So you can be wrong about a lot of things. Just make sure that you’re not putting yourself at risk of being wrong about a mortality. And that’s really important. Like, I think Keith talks about this too, where [00:28:00] he’s like, if you could unwind your three worst financial decisions, how much would you make?
Like how much would you have made? Um, I think, yeah. And it’s like so much of your life. Like I would have gotten into Bitcoin in 2010. It’s like I
[00:28:12] Dan: need to do is eliminate the mistakes. That exactly.
[00:28:16] Anthony: So, so just tread really lightly and try to evaluate what’s the true risk potential of this thing. Not just like what’s the potential of this happening, but if this thing does happen, what are the consequences?
If the consequences lead to catastrophic ruin, you need to be treading
[00:28:33] Dan: so lightly. Do that Ilan must not get that memo. I’ve told him, I’ve heard him tell the story so many times about how that third rocket launch had failed would have bankrupt the company. Yeah. He threw this advice to the wind, but I feel like he had some.
Some, some insight into things. Well,
[00:28:53] Anthony: here’s the thing, actually, you know, in the grand scheme of things going to zero, I don’t consider catastrophic ruin depending on where you are in [00:29:00] your life. Now, if you have kids and family and people, depending on you, like going to zeros, pretty horrible, but as, as long as you’re not dead or in jail, You could start, you could start swinging again and for Dylon, it’s like, yeah, man, if you want to get to the moon and realize your ambitious goals, you’re going to have to take on some big risks that could set you back to zero.
But if he goes to zero, I give him like five years and he’s going to be back on top again, like. So it goes back to the skills and the network, like things that can’t be taken away from you and you can’t take Ilan skills or his network. So all that’s to say those are our 10 lessons learned from Harry Clark’s mistakes millionaires.
Make the subtitle on this is lessons from 30 successful entrepreneurs. So hopefully. Hopefully all got some value out of this. Hopefully enjoyed it. If you did just a favorite strop review again, if you want the sophisticated investor notes, email me, Anthony Victus, multifamily.com. And I will send you the [00:30:00] link for that.
Any, any parting words
of
[00:30:02] Dan: wisdom, Dan? How many email you right now? I want those, I want that folder.
[00:30:06] Anthony: Okay. Okay. I’m just going to have to look at my spam because I do have you blocked. Um, but we’ll, we’ll try and get you to that link soon enough. All right, everybody. We appreciate you taking some time out of your day to join us.
We’ll see you in the next episode.
Okay.
