This week we are breaking down a favorite book here at Invictus Capital… Traction!
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!
Gino Wickman’s, Traction, gives you the key to strengthening the six key components of your business. With simple yet powerful ways to run your company that will give you and your leadership team more focus, more growth, and more enjoyment. Many companies (including Invictus Capital!) are applying Traction every day to run successful and profitable businesses.
Here are our top 10 takeaways:
- How To Have Meetings
- The Visionary Integrator Identification
- The 3 Uniques
- Letting Go Of The Vine
- Rocks
- The Vision Component
- Get Back Into The Box
- Analyzing People
- 80% Is Good Enough
- Data Component
Tweetable Quotes:
“That’s how projects become zombies. They never die. They never get to realize their full potential. They just kind of stay on the to-do list forever making a mental drag.”  – Anthony Vicino
“When you’re a solo entrepreneur, you really have two kinds of aspects of the business that need to be taken care of, the visionary side and the operations.”  – Dan Krueger
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** Transcripts
[00:00:00] Anthony: hello and welcome to multi-family. Investing made simple to podcasts. It’s all about taking the complexity out of real estate investing so that you can take action today. I’m your host, Anthony Pacino of Invictus capital joined as always by Dan. Let’s get to it.
[00:00:25] Dan: 10 bucks, 10 bucks. I feel like your oxygen ain’t but $10
[00:00:29] Anthony: your offer.
[00:00:31] Dan: I don’t know what you’re. You don’t even know what I’m talking, but I want to give you 10 minutes. I wanted
[00:00:35] Anthony: to get through the intro very, very quickly this time, because I wanted to get to the meat and potatoes of this episode because we’ve got a banger. We got a banger is that I’ve been listening to this Australian commentator.
Banger all the time, but music, um, no, not really about music, not about music. It’s about, I don’t want to talk about what it’s about, but, um, I feel like the word banger is, is hard to introduce in like your day to day lexicon [00:01:00] without looking like a frat boy.
[00:01:03] Dan: Yeah. I don’t want to move on yet. I’m kind of curious what he’s talking about because he just kind of skirted right by that.
Well, what was a banger? Oh, curious.
[00:01:10] Anthony: Um, okay. This is a safe place.
[00:01:13] Dan: Yeah. I mean, it’s the internet. Okay. So,
[00:01:16] Anthony: okay. That’s safest places we’re going to get. Okay. So, um, did you know in high school I played like pretty competitive video games originally. Like I played StarCraft pre competitively. I don’t know if
[00:01:31] Dan: I’ve heard the word competitive before
[00:01:33] Anthony: we’re ranked top 300 type thing.
So. Pretty competitive God. And I’m just recently, no girlfriend, no girlfriends in high school. I played chess. You know, you know that, like I tell everybody on the street about that when every time I meet him, like, um, it’s not the coolest state chess champion, but I also played a lot of. And recently I’ve been rekindling my love affair with things that I enjoy doing when I was younger, because I think a [00:02:00] lot of times when we’re struggling to find our purpose and our passion and our meaning in life, a lot of times it goes, if you just go back to what you enjoyed as a kid, that’s where you find a lot of purpose and meaning and passion, because the things that you were drawn to as a.
Are things that you naturally resonate with, but then society, people and culture tells us, oh, those aren’t things for you. Like you need to put those childish things away. And then we get to this midlife point where like, what do I really enjoy in life? Right. So I’ve been trying to, like, I’ve been trying to rekindle some, a passion with things that I liked when I was younger.
Um, but um, I feel that she’s cool with it. She’s totally cool with it. She cares she gets it, but, um, like video games are super addictive for me. So I don’t play video games. But every now and then I’ll indulge in watch other people play video games. So that’s what I did. I watched them play a video game and he was always saying banger like this is, we got a real banger of a game on our hands.
[00:02:49] Dan: No matter what, it’s a good thing. If something’s a banger. It’s yeah.
[00:02:52] Anthony: So I, I shared something there. Um, I
[00:02:54] Dan: learned a little bit,
[00:02:56] Anthony: not a lot, not a lot, a little bit. I mean, you got, you guys knew. I wasn’t heard, so [00:03:00] anyway, let’s talk about something else that I’m really passionate.
[00:03:04] Dan: Knowledge,
[00:03:06] Anthony: uh, specifically building businesses or building systems.
I really love building systems, not with my hands, cause everything I built in my hand just crumbles and dies. I’m not building the human mind. Uh, that’s why I really like entrepreneurship and business building is, uh, I don’t have to use my hands physically for it. Yeah. And one of the, one of the best books I’ve ever read on the topic of building businesses and creating structures and systems, and there’s a ton of really good ones.
But, um, this book that we’re going to talk about today is traction by Gino Wickman. And, uh, it’s actually the framework that we use in building Invictus. And it’s been very helpful and enjoyable, but I will preface this by saying, like, if you’re listening to this and you’re like, what should I use to build my business?
Like, is this the best framework? My answer to that, it’s going to be the, the best framework is the one that you actually implement. They’re all about the same, honestly, at the end, at the end of. You can’t go wrong as long as you’re [00:04:00] implementing consistently something. But with that said, traction is pretty good.
[00:04:04] Dan: Pretty good. Yeah. And, and I think it’s a good place to start here before we dive into our takeaways and all that stuff. It’s like, what is this book actually, uh, first off, it’s not about real estate. This is not a real estate book review or anything like that. This is a book that provides, uh, a system that you can plug into your business.
And it teaches something called EOS, which is the entrepreneur operating system. It’s effectively a framework that you can plug in. Like Anthony mentioned, there’s a multitude of different things that are like this. Um, there was, I think it was called lean that a Toyota used. Is that accurate? Yeah. Lean manufacturing.
Yeah. So there’s a, there’s a lot of different kind of frameworks that you can plug into various businesses, uh, to operate based on. And it’s the one that resonates with us, which we’ll dive into, uh, you know, why that is in this episode, but this isn’t by any means the one and only thing, it’s just what we’ve opted to use.
And we’ll talk about why, why
[00:04:55] Anthony: that is case and point at escape, you know, manufacturing environment. We used a [00:05:00] combination of the Toyota way, which is lean manufacturing, and then the Ford use of execute. And also a little bit of a book called the goal, which is about the theory of constraints and that fits really well for that area.
And traction really works well for the type of business that we’re building here at Invictus and focused around real estate, where a lot, there’s a lot more meetings. Um, there’s a lot of
[00:05:19] Dan: meetings. Yeah. There’s a lot of things happening all at once and we’re going to dive into all the things that really.
You know, uh, that were impactful for us in this book. Cause there’s a lot of stuff in here, but, um, we, we identified a few key things that takeaways made
[00:05:35] Anthony: this now also before, before we get off, um, before we dive into that, um, I do just want to let everybody know who’s listening that you are. You might not realize this, but we’re creating what we’re calling.
I don’t remember what we’re calling it. Something like the sophisticated investor notes or something like that. It’s like philosopher notes or SparkNotes. So what we’re doing is we’re taking our takeaways from these books and we’re creating beautiful little cool graphics. That’s um, just laying them all out in like bullet point form.
So if you want to [00:06:00] download those, you can access them. I don’t know what the link is off the top of my head, but you can just email me, Anthony at Invictus. I’ll send you a link to all of these notes from all the books that we’ll be reviewing over indefinitely into the future forever until we run out of books.
Um, and then you can access all of those and keep a little stockpile. So you can always go back and quickly reference them. I just want to put that there
[00:06:24] Dan: episodes because I want to keep doing them so far. I haven’t heard any, I don’t care
[00:06:27] Anthony: if you like them or not. Yeah. How’s that for deal with give the customers what they want?
Um, yeah, no, I think it’s still early days. It’s the third one that we’re doing. If you guys like this format, if you like what we’re doing, let us know, leave a review. Otherwise, if you have a book that you want us to talk about, um, or your book that you think we should read, that we haven’t, that you’ve never heard us talk about, send it to us.
We’d love a recommendation. Yes, please. All right, so let’s get, let’s get into it. I’m going to kick it off. I’m going to go first, um, specifically around how to actually hold meetings. I think. [00:07:00] You hear people say really negative things about meetings like, oh man could have solved like hunger and world peace, if not for meetings.
Right. And I think meetings get a really bad rap because generally we’re really bad at holding meetings and we’re not using that time effectively. We don’t come in with clear goals and, uh, we don’t walk away with, um, clear to dues and accountabilities. And so it just feels like a lot of wasted time generally speaking.
And I know I’ve always felt that way. And uh, to a lesser degree, I do, I feel that way less and less, um, as we implement more and more of the traction model, because coming in, whether it’s your , which is like your leadership 10 meet, I don’t know even what it stands for. The weekly pulse meeting, there’s all these different meeting frameworks that Gino talks about in this book that are, it’s really helpful because he lays out, okay, this is what you do at the different intervals.
Okay. Spend five minutes on this five minutes here, 10 minutes there. And I like having a checklist that we can walk. But it also helps then streamline the [00:08:00] conversation so that everybody on the team always knows what are we talking about now? And w how long were we spending on this and what are we moving towards?
And I think a lot of times meetings are, are wasted because they lack clarity and intention. And this book I think, has helped us as a company, generally speaking like that, got a lot of room for improvement. Um, a lot of room for improvement on meetings, but, um, I think we’re way better than we otherwise would be without.
[00:08:26] Dan: Yeah. And this was one of those, um, uh, you know, potential takeaways. I mean, this book was filled with so many things that could have called out this one, wasn’t on my list, but this was definitely something I thought about because, uh, most of the time meeting sup, because they don’t have a format, they don’t have any structure to them and they don’t necessarily even have a clear purpose and you just get a bunch of people in the room.
They say a bunch of words, everybody leaves and you were. If anything was accomplished at all, that’s surprising. And it probably could have just been done in an email or a phone call. But what I love about this, um, uh, system or this, this framework that is [00:09:00] provided with respect to meetings is it gives you the format and it gives you the ability to, uh, keep things on track without feeling like a jerk, uh, cause I’m kind of a bullet point get to the point kind of guy.
And so if we have meetings with people that are a little bit more. They like to talk about things a little bit more. They use more words and create a story. And really, I just want to get some data and move on. It gives me the ability to say, okay, we’ve hit our time limit or we’re we’re off track. Let’s get back on track without having to feel bad because we’re just following the framework.
So it makes it easier for me to just get to the bullet points, stay on track and it makes it easier for them to be.
[00:09:32] Anthony: Yes.
[00:09:34] Dan: That’s really the bullet point because I can blame it on the book. Hey, Chino said we got, we got it.
[00:09:38] Anthony: Gina. Gina would be mad if we didn’t move on here. So let’s move on. What’s what’s your number one?
Takeaway. Yeah, I don’t
[00:09:43] Dan: have these in any kind of order. Right? Okay. So the first one that I wrote down for my takeaway was, uh, the visionary integrator identification. Element. Uh, so this wasn’t really like a, um, a big part. I mean, it was a, it was an important part of the book. I don’t know how much [00:10:00] actual space this took up.
It probably was very brief in the book, but just that the concept of identifying when you’re a solo entrepreneur or maybe you have a partner, um, you really have two kind of aspects of the business that need to be taken care of as, as the owner and is the visionary side and the operation. And in a perfect world, you’ve got somebody for each chair, cause it’s really difficult in my opinion, to do both effectively, because on one hand you’ve got to be thinking big picture.
Long-term dreaming about, you know, stuff that’s not even possible. And then on the other hand, and that’s, that’s the visionary side of things on the, uh, on the operator side that that’s the, the, the guy that kind of keeps things on track and who actually takes these dreams and turns them into reality through the day-to-day operations.
And it’s really tough to be in both places at once because. You know, effectively down in the weeds all the time and the other guys way up here in the clouds, which is great. And they kind of balance each other out. And if you’re trying to do both, it’s in my opinion, tricky to do both faculty, you’re probably more so one or the [00:11:00] other, or just doing both half-assed
[00:11:02] Anthony: yeah.
You’re probably, um, giving up some, some growth opportunity or potential you’re, you’re leaving some something on the table because I think of it like chaos and order. Uh, to be a functional business, you have to have a certain amount of chaos, which I think is divisionary or like the willingness to go and try new things and chase shiny objects and set really big audacious goals and break things.
But you can’t just run a business, breaking things and running towards like a thousand different things. So you have to have the order, the stability, the side of the operation. That’s actually. Implementing and, you know, you could, you could build, you could, if you were just an integrator and you were just implementing, you can build a pretty good business.
It just won’t be a very, um, to go. It’s not going to be inspired business. And it probably is going to cap out at a certain point. And then the, if you’re just running on pure. Yeah, we all know those people who just have like a million good ideas, but then none of them actually come to anything. And after a certain point, it’s like, you’re tired of hearing about this.
[00:12:00] Guy’s like 32nd, like million dollar idea. And you’re like, dude, you’re never going to do anything with it. So you got to find that balance. And if you don’t have a partner, then you’re going to need. Maybe figure out what do you skew towards and then figure out how you can compliment, like how can you make space in your own schedules that you can like wear the other hat, otherwise find a partner.
And what’s really interesting is you and I, I think I’m the, I’m the visionary and you’re the integrator. Right. And that’s not always the case. Like for me, like sometimes in other relationships I’m more. And my partner is more of the visionary. And so it’s not always about like, w you just, you ha you’re one or the other, like, sometimes you, you’re kind of like bipolar and we, and
[00:12:43] Dan: we flip-flop to there’s times where you’ll take more of a, an integrator stance on things and I’ll take more of a visionary stance on things.
But I think by and large, that’s kind of how things are segmented. So it doesn’t necessarily need to be, you know, like a black. Uh, black and white line drawn that. Okay. You only do these [00:13:00] things. I only do these things, but you’ve got to have both personalities in the room, I think, which is important. I have noticed this in my marriage.
It’s a, it’s the exact same dynamic and that’s why it works. We have to have the same person. And I think you had this in a business in the past. If you have two people that are too much, like each other, that that’s not going to bode well either, right. You need a little bit of push and pull a little bit of positive and negative energy to, to kind of
bounce
[00:13:22] Anthony: it out.
Yeah. Because here’s a really interesting, I think when it comes to integrate. Is that there’s certain things that I’m really good at integrating and I love integrating and certain things I really hate integrating, like if I have to integrate, if I just do a pen at the microphone. So I’m sorry about that.
Uh, if you guys heard that, um, if I have to integrate something with a spreadsheet, don’t love it. If I have to integrate something with the written word, love it. Right. And so that one little difference. It could mean all the difference. So figuring out what, what you’re good at, figuring out what you lack and then find a partner who can compliment it.
And. You swap hats or underpants as
[00:13:54] Dan: needed and you can hire it to, I mean, if you need an integrator go buy an
[00:13:59] Anthony: easier to [00:14:00] hire. Yeah.
[00:14:01] Dan: Yeah. I mean, the visionary, that’s going to be a partner, but you could effectively hire a CFO or COO or a CEO to kind of be that integrator person.
[00:14:10] Anthony: So. All right. So my number two is.
Understanding and being very clear about what is it that you’re known for when somebody thinks about you or your business. What’s the one thing that comes to their mind or at most like three things and specifically Gino talks about what are your three uniques. And this is great from a marketing perspective and understanding what, what makes you different than the competitors out in the marketplace.
And if you don’t have a way of articulating that, and if you don’t have at least three uniques that you can point to that, You’re really a commodity and there’s no difference between you and the competitor, which makes it very difficult than for a customer to decide who to go with. And they’re going to make that decision probably based on price, which is depending on the type of business that you’re running.
Probably not what you want, the, the deciding factor to be. So this is, this is a hard one. I think to get really clear on like, what is it that you want to be known for, for [00:15:00] us, we’re a real estate investment firms. So that makes it very easy. When you, if you’re a W2 employee or maybe you’re like, maybe you have multiple businesses and you start thinking about yourself personally, it’s like, what’s the one thing you want people to think of that can get a little bit harder, right?
Like when you’re, it’s funny, like, uh, we were at lunch the other day and. We had a partner and we’re meeting somebody new for the first time. And somebody pointed out that you used to be fitness and they’re like, look, I’m call ripped. He is, and you could have your shirt off. You could clearly see Dan like kind of like rebelling a little bit against it kind of being like, that’s not the thing I want to be known for anymore.
Like that’s not the
[00:15:36] Dan: label. Right? Exactly. It’s not, yeah. It’s not, it’s not on brand. Right. Exactly. Going for so it’s um, but yeah, I think this is. I really, I like this one, especially because it, it, it lines up nicely with some her mosey, uh, isms that we brought up before and in the angle we’ve taken with it in the past is, you know, you don’t have anything that makes you unique.
Then, like you said before, you’re a [00:16:00] commodity and it’s just becomes a price point thing. You have to be the cheapest option to be competitive. Whereas if you get more specialized and unique, then kind of the sky’s the limit, right? If, if you get really niche down, Uh, that’s why I like this one. I, this one, I wasn’t actually on my radar as potential takeaways.
I do like
[00:16:16] Anthony: a good one. And then just for clarity, for people who are listening and wondering, like, what is Invictus is three uniques. It is. Um, we’re local experts. We’re vertically integrated and we’re impact driven. So there you go. Like, and those, and when you really like get into what those three things mean, it’s like, oh yeah.
Like we, we, we really are a unique
[00:16:35] Dan: little duck and episode on breaking down our uniques because I think we have,
[00:16:38] Anthony: I think we did. I think if you go back into the, the podcast directory, you can find an episode where you’re talking about a three uniques and why we landed on those and why they’re so important.
[00:16:47] Dan: Yeah, check it out should be linked to in the show notes. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that hopefully it is. If it’s not, let me say
[00:16:53] Anthony: that. Just assuming it’ll get there. I don’t know how it gets there. It might be magic.
[00:16:57] Dan: I’d be read, read, [00:17:00] read some magic. Yeah. Reed does it all. And what’s your number two, number two in no particular order again is letting go of the.
Just this concept, this wasn’t again, I don’t know. Maybe this was a section in the book or if it was just like a real fine, I don’t remember this. What is this? Uh, it’s basically just, uh, getting comfortable, which is tough for entrepreneurs letting go of things and allowing, and delegating and allowing other people who come in to join your organization to start to do the things that you did because, uh, it’s very common.
Uh, if not, almost guaranteed. If you start a business as kind of a one man show and grow into the point where you’re handing things off to other people that it’s going to be tough at first, at least for the vast majority of people had found it very hard to believe that there’s anybody that just does this easily.
Uh, but this rings true with me because we’re kind of in the middle of that now. And it’s, it can be a little jarring giving up things that you’ve always done and that you think. And you know, that somebody else is probably going to do not quite as good as you could do, but at the end of the day, or they’ll just do it [00:18:00] differently,
[00:18:00] Anthony: they do it like without, without being in alignment with how you would do it.
And so then the perception is it’s not as good. Yes.
[00:18:06] Dan: I fall into this one a lot, a lot, but it’s the central, because there’s only 24 hours and there’s only one of you. Yeah. And one of each bus. And so right there, there’s, there’s, there’s a limiting factor. If we don’t hand things off, then we become the bottleneck and it’s a really important part of growing.
And it’s a really difficult part for, I think every entrepreneur, at least me. Um, so just the concept of letting go of the vine and Gino talks a lot about like, you know, what you’ve got to do kind of mentally to do that. But just that, that concept, that it has to happen and finding the right people in the right seats and who align with your values as the way to effectively do that.
And so I found a lot of comfort in kind of having. This tied into some of these other things we’re going to talk about, uh, you know, how do you actually find, how do you, how do you get comfortable with that? And a lot of the rest of the book helps you, you know, make sure that you can do that with confidence using the framework of your values and hiring through that lens and all that stuff.
But [00:19:00] just the concept of letting go of the vine and having that kind of at the forefront of the book was, uh, impacting.
[00:19:06] Anthony: That one’s super hard. I have nothing to add here. It’s just super delegating. Bringing on people, building a team is really, really hard when you spend so long as a solopreneur or like being used to doing things yourself.
So good luck. Um, got to do it though. Gotta do it. Got it. Do it. So number three for me is the concept of rocks, which isn’t revolutionary. So what he talks about are like these rocks. I don’t remember exactly why he calls them rocks. At all actually, but what they are is what are the most important things that you as an individual or the organization needs to accomplish within the next quarter, it’s really sitting down and saying, what is the big, quarterly goal that we’re all going to be measuring our progress towards.
Now this is not revolutionary by any means, but I do think there’s a lot of power in sitting. Every quarter much, because a lot of times we sit down and we do it annually. And we said, what’s our goals for the year. And I don’t think that’s nearly frequently enough. I think quarterly is a good amount of time to make [00:20:00] progress towards completing really big projects.
And so the idea of rocks and setting out what I call my five to thrive, which is just like, what are the five projects this quarter that if I get those done, it’s going to be a really good quarter and just getting clear and going through the mental exercise and then setting the target and saying, this is what I mean.
Uh, and then using the L 10 meetings as a way of holding accountability, because it’s one thing to say, this is what I’m gonna accomplish. Isn’t my, these are my rocks, but then without accountability, it’s really easy just to say, yeah, it wasn’t that important. Something else came up more important. I just didn’t realize.
And I’m going to push this one until the next quarter. Right. And that’s how PR that’s how projects becomes zombies. They never get. They, they never die. They never get to realize their full potential. They just kind of stay on the to-do list forever making a mental drag. And that’s not good for.
[00:20:50] Dan: Yeah, I like this.
I add a little bonus section. Cause I had my type, my takeaways, and I had a couple kind of in the can just in case we needed, I guess I stole one. Yeah. In case he’s stolen or see
[00:20:59] Anthony: him [00:21:00] before we start recording, he guards his sheet from me. So fast fastidiously.
[00:21:05] Dan: Next time I’m going to rate it like a cipher.
So you have to like, I’m going to make a really weird
[00:21:11] Anthony: getting into cryptography over here.
[00:21:12] Dan: Yeah. Uh, but this one is like something that I’ve found a lot. Uh, joy and satisfaction in early on in my entrepreneurial journey was, was starting to practically identify of all the things that you’re doing. What’s important and urgent what’s, uh, important and not urgent.
What is not important, not urgent, what should just be off your list that shouldn’t even be on your radar. And what is, um, Urgent, but not important. Those are kind of the four categories of things that all the things on your to-do list could fall into and specifically the important and urgent things.
Those are easy, right? Those are always at the top of the list, but it’s those really important things that aren’t. That are kind of the rocks, right? And those are those things that need to happen to move the business forward. But there’s no deadline [00:22:00] necessarily, unless you give yourself one, it’s really easy to kick the can on the down the road on this one, because it typically is that kind of annual goal that you set for yourself and you’ve got whole year to do, and it just never really gets addressed.
So having it, having this format of, of the quarterly rocks and having those reappeared. Every week when you meet as a team in your L 10 meetings, I think is huge to keep those top of mind, because they are very easy typically. I mean, sometimes they’re urgent, but typically they’re the things that technically don’t need to get done this week or next week.
So love it all of a sudden, all right. The vision component is my number three. This was a whole section of the book. And, um, so this one is, uh, I chose to pull this one out for myself, just because it’s, in my experience, it’s been very easy to kind of have some convoluted vision in your head as an entrepreneur, like, you know where you’re heading.
Right. And you’ve got your goal established for where you want to be. [00:23:00] But have you really flushed it out? Some people have a lot of people haven’t, but it’s not really necessary early on. And you can just hit the ground running and, and move towards this kind of abstract goal of being whatever it is that you want to be.
Right. For, for us, it could’ve just been, um, you know, a big real estate company. Right. But a lot of people don’t really iron out exactly what, what their vision is. They don’t really get granular and specific about it. And I think the most important part of this section was they don’t share it with them.
Uh, it might be in the owners’ heads. Um, and if they’ve actually flushed it out, that’s great. But most people who even get to the point of flushing out what their vision actually is, do a really poor job of actually sharing it with the team and actually getting everybody else on the team bought into this.
Um, and so this is something that I pulled out as a key takeaway because a super important, and we didn’t really fully flush this out until we did, uh, sat down with. The, the traction process and, uh, actually effectively sharing it with the team. Had we not had this framework probably would have taken us a long time to figure out that [00:24:00] we were behind the ball on be my guess.
[00:24:02] Anthony: You know, what’s really interesting about this one. I’ve reflected, um, quite a bit in my own personal life, how much I really hate setting futuristic goals beyond like a year or maybe even two, like I can set five and 10 year I’d do it. But the idea of like setting a vision for my life is really difficult because on the one hand I like to chase my obsession.
And I find a lot of fulfillment in just the process of like, whatever the thing is. W if that’s building this business, or if it’s writing a book, it’s less about finishing the thing and more about the process that I really find enjoyable. And once that process becomes unenjoyable, I stopped doing the thing and that’s my ADHD and my like, side of things coming in.
So what that means is that it’s really hard for me to get like, focused on a long, big vision and setting that like, what is the thing that I’m moving towards? But what I found is I, it’s impossible to motivate a team. To, to just go dive into the process without a clear objective and a destination. So
[00:24:58] Dan: not everybody’s a process addict like you, [00:25:00] so they’re not going to get the joy.
So
[00:25:02] Anthony: you’ve got to have a vision somehow. Like they get people that mark to, to judge success and failure, or at least know where they’re going. I’m very, okay. Not having a clue where I’m going as long as I’m happy doing the thing in the moment.
[00:25:12] Dan: So yeah. What was going to say, that’s what your, your vision should be for your life.
Personal life is just happiness. That way, whatever thing has got your attention at the moment. Yeah. In alignment with that vision. Yeah.
[00:25:22] Anthony: You know, you know, it’s, um, it’s interesting. It’s not even about, it’s not happiness for me. It’s just, I want to, I want to be obsessed. I want to be, I only want to spend my time on things that are like super easy for me to dive into.
I don’t want to do hard work. Right. So I want to chase the things that are like really fun and addictive for me, which, for other people, those are things that are very, very hard, right? Like for you, it might be spreadsheets for me. It’s like writing. I don’t know. Yeah. I like it. Alright. So, uh, what about
[00:25:48] Dan: number four?
Something like that. Okay. Uh, no, it’s me.
[00:25:52] Anthony: Ah, don’t you try and steal. Okay. So here’s number four for me. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a phrase. So what’s interesting is with this [00:26:00] book, we give it to all new employees and then we break it down after a month or two, and we talk about it as a team. And then we try to get everybody to do like a one page writeup where they share, like, what are your 10 takeaways that way it’s not just me and dancing.
Here’s what you need to take away from it. But also, Hey, what did you guys who are coming into the company for the first time, or, you know, being part of this culture, what are you getting out of this? What are you noticing where what’s interesting and what are we not living in alignment with? And this one, I think.
I think this one came from Reed. Um, I came from the book, but, um, I stole it from him cause I liked it. Um, it was get back in the box and do the thing you actually do best. And I like this one because it’s really easy sometimes to chase shiny objects or to think of like, oh, where’s the market going? And how do we get ahead of that?
And how do we like, oh, self storage. That’s a really cool, sexy thing. Or crypto let’s go, let’s go that direction. Um, and sometimes it’s just about getting back inside the box, not thinking too far out. And just doing what you’re really good at over and over and over, which we’re talking about a lot, which is [00:27:00] stay in your lane.
We execute the same business model over and over and over. It’s not sexy, but the more we do it, the better we get at it. And therefore the less risky it becomes, which is one of the things that is so important about investing is just de-risking investments over time. So get back in the box and do the thing you’re really.
Yeah,
[00:27:17] Dan: I think I liked a lot of, uh, in the middle of reading. Um, and I’ve been to subtle. Oh, Samsung. Yeah. Have you read that? I
[00:27:23] Anthony: haven’t, but, uh, yeah, it’s a crazy
[00:27:25] Dan: story I’ve heard. Uh, well, first off it’s just, I mean, that guy is just awesome. Uh, he’s like the coolest dude ever, and he’s got some really good stories and there’s a lot of alignment between what he’s done and what we’re doing now.
Obviously a little bigger than us, but, uh, something he noticed. Sorry, what made a dad joke? I’m outta here.
[00:27:49] Anthony: That’s not how you play drunk. Yeah. Sorry. He’s very,
[00:27:54] Dan: yeah, he’s, he’s uh, his, his balance sheet is probably got a couple extra zeros. It’s gotta to be in front of it. [00:28:00] Yeah, that’s a big one. Um, anyway, something he said in there was, uh, he, he started out like us buying existing properties and apartment buildings.
He got in, he got into it, uh, into the business, through, um, uh, the student housing market. And so his business was, uh, really similar to ours. He’d buy something and he’d fix it. And he’d hold it for a long time. He didn’t really talk much about revise or anything like that, but he buy a thing and he’d fix it up and he’d hold it and cashflow it.
And he started getting investors. And then, um, at some point, uh, shifted over to the development space, started doing some development deals and, uh, came to kind of a similar conclusion that he wanted to get back in the box and do what he was good at, which was buying existing assets because he’s like. Uh, I mean, taking on all this additional risk with these development deals, there’s infinitely harder.
There’s all these different moving pieces. And honestly, it just makes a hell of a lot more sense from a risk reward perspective, given the time that the, this was taking place and in his experience at that time, he made the decision that I’m going to go [00:29:00] back to just buying existing assets that are cash flowing.
And I’m just doing the same old, just because. Ate a lot more sense. He, he was, it was his comfort zone. The risk reward made more sense. And he was getting back in the box and doing what he was good at. Yeah.
[00:29:13] Anthony: And he, if I, if I remember his timeline correctly, he was buying the bulk majority of his stuff and like seventies.
Right. Does that sound right? Yeah.
[00:29:21] Dan: And you got it started in the sixties and then seventies is kind of where he hit his stride. And then the eighties, I think that’s where it started to kind of shift more towards the office space and that’s pretty much, um, I mean he did a lot of stuff, but the office space was really very, kinda made some big strides and started the, one of the earliest and biggest office REITs that later sold.
I think it was Blackstone, um, for a lot of. Yeah,
[00:29:47] Anthony: but all that’s to say is like, um, you know, the eighties were a fraught time, difficult time for real estate. Like there was a lot that happened in that decade. I think it’s a really, it’s a really interesting period of time to look back on. Um, [00:30:00] interest rates were a little bit higher.
Interest rates were quite a bit higher. There was a, there was a very big change to tax laws, which fundamentally changed how people were using depreciation, which as a result tanked the valuation. Of buildings. Yeah. I think
[00:30:14] Dan: that was a large part of why the pivot into the REIT model kind of took place. So it’s really fascinating to see how well he handled
[00:30:21] Anthony: that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause a lot of people got completely wiped out if you’re, if you’re new to real estate investing, I think a lot of people look back on 2007, 2008 and they’re like, gosh, this crazy thing. And they don’t look back beyond that. I would recommend go study the eighties for a while. There is some fast.
It was a fascinating time period, all the things, a lot of things that happened during that period of time, unlikely to occur again in our current ecosystem. But like, I think mark Twain always says it’s like history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. So probably go pay attention to that.
[00:30:53] Dan: Yeah.
Yeah. It was a. Looking little crazy. Yeah.
[00:30:57] Anthony: Okay. My last one might last [00:31:00] one, maybe best one.
[00:31:01] Dan: I feel like we skipped mine. I think I did a bunch of commentary on yours and I don’t give you my
[00:31:05] Anthony: oh yeah. Get back in the box. I wanted to skip yours cause I assumed it. Wasn’t very good, but cool. No, it’s
[00:31:09] Dan: good.
Analyzing people.
Okay.
[00:31:15] Anthony: That’s that’s my take for a minute. Put them in a spreadsheet.
[00:31:17] Dan: You pretty much, pretty much. No, not some, all. No. Um, no, I picked out the concept of analyzing people as a key takeaway for me, because for me personally, uh, I’ve been a solo preneur for the most of my entrepreneurial journey. I did a lot of consulting stuff and so actually hiring people and building a team, uh, is something that I’m still trying to wrap my head around, how to do effectively and the concept of actually trying to grade.
Was something that I kind of shied away from aggressively because I didn’t think people wanted to be graded or told how well they’re doing and found out that it was actually the complete opposite people really want to know [00:32:00] like how they’re measuring up against the expectations and. Traction provides a really great framework for how to effectively measure all the people in your organization.
And so I found a lot of comfort in having a framework around how to do this effectively, because it was really not something I felt comfortable with doing early on. I did not want to have the conversations where you were telling somebody, Hey, on a scale of one to 10 year, like a six right scale, it gives you that that process just seems.
I didn’t feel like people wanted that, but they actually do. And there’s the framework that a attraction provides actually gives us. It gives you a lot of useful tools for how to effectively do that. And really the key, key thing there is. You want to be measuring things the matter, and you want to be measuring things in a quantifiable way that isn’t subjective.
And so you want to really zero in on, okay, how can we effectively grade people and make sure that they’re in the right seats because they might be great people, but just in the wrong seats, we want to have a good framework for how to do that and do it consistently. So that was a big takeaway from me. I got a lot of
[00:32:59] Anthony: value out of that one.[00:33:00]
I don’t know if it’s in traction. I don’t think it is. I think it’s from another book. Uh, but the idea is that when you’re, when you watch kids play. Um, they play very differently when they’re not keeping score. The moment you start keeping score, everything changes, the intensity, the focus, everything. And this isn’t just for kids, but this is for adults as well.
Like have you ever played a game and suddenly it’s like, you’re keeping score with your buddy. Like you get competitive. I think it’s the same thing in life. Like people want, people want to know that they’re doing well and they want, they want to have like some measure of where they stack up. When you’re not keeping score, you just, you show up differently.
Yeah. I’m not saying you need to turn the workplace into like this ultra Uber competitive place where everybody’s like, you can come in and you see like the active rankings list and you see like, who’s the top three employees. And then at the bottom, you’re like, Ooh, you’re on the ball. So
[00:33:53] Dan: we’re not Stratton Oakmont.
Nah,
[00:33:57] Anthony: I don’t think sell or die. I think there comes a point where [00:34:00] it’s not healthy. Um, but I think a little. Oh, knowing where you stack up is
[00:34:05] Dan: helpful. Always. Yeah, it makes perfect sense in retrospect. So I think it was just my own kind of insecurities early on that led me to shy away from that. But again, just having the framework in the book, uh, for somebody who’s newer to this kind of thing is a very useful, alright.
[00:34:19] Anthony: So my last one is 80% is good enough. And this one’s sparked some really interesting conversations with the team. Last time we, we dove into these takeaways, um, I don’t know if it was a difference in how we all interpreted this. I think most of the team felt like this one was, I really didn’t really care for it.
Didn’t really like it. Um, I did like it because it so much in life just doing 80% will put you so far ahead of everybody else. And the remaining 20% usually takes just as much time. As the proceeding 80%. So if you follow Pareto’s distribution of like 80 20, where 20% of inputs account for 80% of outputs, and we [00:35:00] follow that distribution curve all the way through, well, don’t spend your time trying to go from 80 to a hundred, just get to 80 and then find another thing.
Get that to 80. Find another thing, get that to 80. And you’re going to get so much more traction traction, uh, than if you were just taking one thing and trying so hard to get it to a hundred. Which in reality, you never will. You’ll never get it to a hundred. You might get it’s 95, but the, the marginal utility of getting one thing to 95 versus getting two things in the same amount of time to 80, I’ll take the two things at 80 every time.
[00:35:32] Dan: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, It’s the same kind of logic that I talk about when people ask me, like, okay, why are you guys selling a deal here? Or like, you know, what’s the, what’s the impetus to sell something. That’s, uh, that’s a good deal. And it’s, it’s really that, that, like, we get the most out of our deals in the first few years where we add that value and we juice up the, the valuation that’s sort of the, you know, 80% of the value is.
And does it make sense to keep holding the thing for [00:36:00] another several years to get a little bit more out? Is it an opportunity cost question? Where are we still putting resources into this thing where we’ve already squeezed most of the juice out and passing up this thing over here, because we’re still messing around with this thing that we already pretty much got as much yield out of as we could.
So it’s the same kind of thing, except instead of talking about a property you’re investing in and it’s just your, your bandwidth, right. Is it really worth it? Aside from the, the, the, the good satisfying feeling of saying you got something to a hundred to spend all your resources, trying to get that little extra.
And I think a lot of that pushback you were getting in the meeting, it was probably just because it was you that said
[00:36:35] Anthony: it often, often I get pushed back because I say things, Anthony said a thing.
[00:36:40] Dan: Disagree.
[00:36:41] Anthony: I am. I am the punching horse.
[00:36:43] Dan: We are, whoever’s talking at the moment, I think is the punching horse.
But anyways, uh, can you take away number five for me? Uh, the data component. That’s I’m sure it’s surprising to everyone. Hmm. I didn’t see that coming. Hmm. Wow. [00:37:00] Data component. Um, no, but I think this one was, was, uh, good for me because what the, what the real kind of takeaway for, for this section was that a lot of businesses are looking in the rear view mirror when they are looking at the data that they think matters.
Right. You usually look at the P and L and you want to look at, you know, how much money did we make? That’s the data that a lot of companies are operating on. That’s history that’s already happened. It’s in the books. And so the data that you really do need to be focusing on is the stuff that’s going to produce those future results.
All right. And this is not a. It’s not the typical type of data. It’s, it’s the, it’s the actions that we need to be taking in order to produce the future results that align with our goals. Right? So it’s how many calls are we making? Uh, how many deals are we looking at? How many investors that we talk to, right.
If we, if we were hitting these numbers on a weekly basis, then our one-year five-year and ten-year goals, uh, are going to come to fruition because we’ve reversed, engineered all the things that need to happen. And it comes down to, you know, some. [00:38:00] Simple consistent actions. And as long as we are hitting those numbers and doing it, you know, with enough occurrences, we’ll, we’ll get the outcome that we’re looking for.
And so I thought this was incredibly impactful because it’s really easy to be looking at the traditional metrics in, you know, real estate, for example, you know, what’s, what’s all the typical stuff, the vacancy, the occupancy, the turn time, the cash and cash return. And that’s all great, but like, what do we need to be doing to produce the actual results that we want?
And tracking that
[00:38:27] Anthony: it goes back to what we were talking about before about like process versus results. Or another way of, uh, I’ve heard this talked about is lead and lag measures. The lag measure is typically how we set these goals and how data really is. Uh, we use it like I want to lose 50 pounds.
That’s a lag. Right because to lose 50 pounds, I only ever get to know if I did it when I step on the scale and I see that I did it right. That’s not really a goal. That’s going to influence my day to day process more impactful is every day I’m going to work out for an hour. Right. And now I can show up every single day.
And I know if I do this lead [00:39:00] measure long enough, it will lead to the desired result, which is lose 50 pounds. So if the goal is increase revenue to my 50%. Well, we only get to measure that at the end of the, at the end of the year, whether or not we did it is it’s too late to affect the result. Right. But if every day we’re saying, okay, we’re going to bring in X number of customers and we’re going to increase the conversion rate.
And we’re going to increase the lifetime value of these customers by doing X, Y, and Z every single day. Well, then we know on a consistent track record, if we keep doing it, then we will get to. End goal of increased margins or whatever
[00:39:33] Dan: profitability. Yeah. It’s a really fun process of just reverse engineering.
All the things say, okay, we need this many customers. Like how many ads we need to post and how many engagements with each ad we need to get. Dial it way back. So that even daily data is telling you whether or not you’re on track for something a year from now. Yeah. A
[00:39:51] Anthony: good way to know if you’re looking at the right data is if you can’t look at your data and know what that means for you and your, and what you need to be doing [00:40:00] today, it’s not good.
If my goal, again, lose 50 pounds, I don’t know what that means for me today. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, but if I set the goal. You’re not doing it now. I’m not
[00:40:08] Dan: doing it. Now. The
[00:40:09] Anthony: goal is eat a salad or, um, get B 500 calories in deficits. And therefore, uh, that means I need to eat less and work out more, right?
Like I know what needs to be done today. So if you can’t translate the data into what you need to do today, honestly, it’s not good data. It’s not
[00:40:25] Dan: helpful. You know, I think the thing about this, having this perspective on things that that’s so great is that you get to. Give yourself a gold star every single day.
Instead of waiting until that point, when you’ve lost 50 pounds to give yourself the star. If all you do is work out and hit your 500 calorie deficit, like every single day, you get to reward yourself, completely blow your diet every day. Give me my gold star. No, but that’s, I think it’s just mentally speaking.
It’s, it’s a bunch of healthier way to approach things because you get to feel successful every day, which is [00:41:00] way more rewarding than feeling like, oh, I still got 49 pounds and
[00:41:03] Anthony: you’re and you’re likely to achieve the goal. Yes. Right? Like if that’s really, what we’re trying to do is not just be busy, but be effective, then that’s the way to do it.
That is the book traction. Get it. Get a grip, get a grip on your business by Gino Wickman, get a
[00:41:17] Dan: grip. I didn’t realize he was that little. Do you have a grip
[00:41:21] Anthony: on your business? Cause if not, union traction by Gino Wickman. So, uh, I hope I hope this serves somebody out there. You’ve got hope you got some value.
Remember if you want the sophisticated investor notes or whatever the heck we’re calling these kids. Um, shoot me an email. Anthony Invictus, multifamily.com say, Hey, I want those notes and I’ll send you a. Where were we we’ll be storing all of these resources and, uh, that’s it. It’s all I got. I don’t, I don’t know what else people want from me.
Yeah, I did everything I could here. Um, just get outta here. Any parting words? Yeah.
[00:41:53] Dan: I mean, read it, get it, go get it. I mean, unless you’re not like an entrepreneur, like why’d you listen
[00:41:59] Anthony: [00:42:00] to this podcast, this is 40 minutes of irrelevant conversation. You’re a masochist. You must love us in that
[00:42:07] Dan: case, but thanks for
[00:42:08] Anthony: that craziness.
Yeah, that’s all I got. That’s all we got. That’s great. We love you guys. We’ll see you in the next episode. Bye bye.
