There is a concept that we like to mention from time to time on the podcast… Failing your way to success. This is something we truly believe in. You must try in order to succeed, and if you fail, you have to try again.
So, in this episode, we are going to be discussing some of our biggest failures in life that have actually led us to where we are today. Without these moments in our life, we would not be where we are: our careers in investing, our relationships, etc.
Dan’s first property, partnerships lacking synergy, finding our career path, and so much more. We have failed a lot. But through those failures, we have learned even more. It’s what we can take from our failures that make our success even more impactful.
Find out to fail your way to success in this week’s episode of Multifamily Investing Made Simple.
Tweetable Quotes:
“Failure is the universe showing you that you’re not yet good enough in all the areas that you need to be in order to win the game. And you can take that and be demoralized by that. Or, you can get up and be like “well, I guess I just need to figure out how to suck less.” – Anthony Vicino
“Failure is a prerequisite to success.” – Dan Krueger
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** Transcripts
TLearning From Our Greatest Failures
[00:00:00] welcome to multifamily
[00:00:14] Anthony: investing made simple to podcasts. That is. Mostly about taking the complexity out of real estate investing, but it’s also about having fun. I’m your host, Anthony Vicino of capital joined by Dan. How do you like my pen Kroger?
[00:00:29] Dan: It’s a remarkable pen and not just, that’s a, that’s a pretty expensive, uh, remarkable these, these deals.
I don’t know how we’re not sponsored by these hashtag remarkable. I don’t know. Could we tag us?
[00:00:41] Anthony: Let me get right up here to come. Uh, here we are. Have the listeners at home or. Are these two checkoffs doing visual comedy again? Don’t they know that this is an audio program.
[00:00:54] Dan: Yeah, we well do have video. I don’t know if you guys knew if he had done.
No. Then now
[00:00:58] Anthony: you do. If you don’t know how, [00:01:00] you know, try to go to YouTube type in multifamily, investing made simple, all the videos are there in 4k. It’s great. Yeah. And, and oh yeah, we’ve been broadcasting live, so we’re alive right now. If you guys are interested on Fridays afternoon, around three to 5:00 PM,
[00:01:17] Dan: we’ve been known to skip days.
We’ve been known.
[00:01:21] Anthony: Um, Reed is our sound engineer at the moment. He is.
[00:01:25] Dan: Yeah. Everything. That’s about us. It’s not just engineering sound is streaming. He’s recording. He’s editing. He’s making the magic happen. It’s making it look like we know what we talked about. I don’t have a clue, but
[00:01:36] Anthony: today we’re going to talk about topic.
I know a lot about failing. Oh, that’s right. Yeah. I forgot to talk about, uh, a concept that I really enjoy, which is how to fail your way to success. In particular, I thought it would be a lot of fun maybe to talk about some of the key failures in your life and in my life or investment careers that have, uh, [00:02:00] ultimately led to the biggest successes and in full disclosure, I want to get to know what my failures are.
I haven’t written them down. I haven’t put much thought into this. So it’s going to be very off the cuff improv style.
[00:02:12] Dan: So
[00:02:13] Anthony: let’s, let’s set the goal of three failures each. Okay. We gotta be fast, then we gotta go. We gotta be fast. Okay. But before we do that, what do you think about. Bad investment advice.
[00:02:27] Dan: Oh, I’ve got, I’ve got against it.
Oh, I love that advice. I want to tell people things that are going to ruin them. So
[00:02:35] Anthony: yeah. So full disclosure, don’t take this advice.
[00:02:39] Dan: Alrighty guys. A bad investing tip or advice. I can never remember if it’s tapered advice. My bad advice for the week is, uh, real estate is a crummy. And that’s not a direct quote, but it’s a very close quote.
Something that Warren buffet said at one of his, uh, shareholder meetings. [00:03:00] Yeah.
[00:03:00] Anthony: And the other, you know, this podcast is called multifamily investing and that that’s not like investing in multiple families.
[00:03:07] Dan: Oh, that’s real estate. Oh, shoot. This isn’t going to land well. Um, okay. So here’s the deal. Keep listening.
Don’t turn off your guys. These shareholder meetings, uh, the buffet does these annual meetings, or, uh, they’re kind of a big deal in the investing community. Everybody wants to hear about what this guy’s going to say. He writes big letter all the time, and then everybody listens to the sky when it comes to investing.
I want to say that he was prompted by some kind of question by when the shareholders are one of the attendees at this meeting. And they’re asking about real estate and I didn’t hear the actual question. I heard his response to it. And one line in there was that real estate is a crummy. Now that’s a sound bite that gets extracted.
But, uh, what doesn’t get talked about is that he was answering a question that was framed in the way that, and it was something along the lines of why doesn’t Berkshire Hathaway own real estate. And his response was because we’re a secret. [00:04:00] It’s a crummy investment, because for those of you that don’t know if you’re structured as a C Corp, as opposed to an S Corp or just an LLC, which is ideal, you could screw it on taxes as a single tax.
Yeah. And then the cap gains at the end, you pay a much higher rate when you exit. And I’ll say that’s where you make most of your money. So from an investor’s perspective, if you’re going to own. You don’t want to do it at a C Corp. Now this soundbite had been taken out and people have kind of run with it and then they want to say, oh, Warren buffet says that real estate stinks.
And it’s no, he was saying that in a C Corp, it sucks. And as reading re uh, uh, Charlie’s Almanack, you know, a while ago, it’s been a while, but they did a lot of real estate stuff back in the day. Um, and so they’re not opposed to real estate, but they don’t do it in Berkshire because it’s.
[00:04:45] Anthony: So understanding the structure.
Yeah. This is maybe good advice for people who are just starting out and you’re like, what structure should I be? Should I be an LLC or an S Corp? Like both are fine, but not a C Corp. Don’t do that. I mean, and again, this isn’t a financial or an investing [00:05:00] advice. You should talk to your lawyer lawyer and say like, what’s the right entity for me, but chances are, it’s not going to be the C Corp.
Sure.
[00:05:05] Dan: So what I kind of want to tie into this, I’ve kind of said something similar before is that you got. You can’t just take somebody who’s, you know, someone like Warren buffet or Ray Dalio, or Paul Tudor Jones, like these guys who like everyone hangs on every word, when it comes to investing, you’ve got to understand the full context of what they’re saying, understand the market environment that they’re currently living in.
When they’re saying the thing and, and, and look at the whole picture, you can’t just extract a soundbite and, and run with that. You’ve got to have a lot of context to understand what these guys are talking about. And the other component with buffet is. He just doesn’t invest in stuff that isn’t his, the highest and best use of his time.
And he said also in the same shareholder mean that like, if you want to invest. In real estate you’ve you’ve got it’s, it’s a business and he has no interest in running a real estate business. And so when he invests, it’s in a passive way, um, he’s not out there doing all the work himself. And so that’s no, he
[00:05:56] Anthony: can invest passively and apartments.
He should get, somebody should send [00:06:00] Warren my book, passive investing made simple. So I mean, you take
[00:06:02] Dan: a look made so much money, doing a certain thing, a certain way. You it’s really hard to not keep doing that same thing, even if there’s other cool stuff out there, like. You know, so it makes sense. He’s, he’s found his niche.
He’s really good at finding undervalued companies. And so that’s what he spends his time doing and spending the time looking at a real estate deal, even though he can make great money, it’s probably not the highest and best use of his time. And he probably enjoys just reading, uh,
[00:06:24] Anthony: after imagine he’s personally invested in some real estate.
Of course. Yeah.
[00:06:28] Dan: I mean, reading monger’s book, like they did a ton of real estate stuff, so it’s like, they’re not stopping, but anyways, stop. Well, that’s it for this week.
[00:06:38] Anthony: It’s going to do it guys was an earlier episode. Um, oh no, I guess we got to talk about the topic of this week’s episode. Yeah. All right, everybody back into your seats.
Let’s, let’s do this thing. Let’s talk about, um, a concept that is near and dear to my heart, which is the idea of failing your way to success. Number one, um, you only ever fail. If you stop, if you don’t stop, you haven’t failed yet. [00:07:00] You’re just in the process of still. So everyone, every go up. Um, but I like this concept failing your way to success because it’s all about like quick iterations and learning and growing and accepting that, uh, 90% of the time you’re going to fail and 10, only 10% you’re going to actually succeed.
And, but that that’s, if you can maintain that ratio, that is a in fact winning ratio when it comes to business, when it comes to life, when it comes to investing. And so let’s share, what did we say? Three, each three. Failures that were instrumental in our lives. I don’t think it has to be just investing or business.
It could be anything. Yeah. Um, that led us to where we are now. What
[00:07:41] Dan: do you think about that? Let’s do it. You got your failure. I got two of them kind of you got, we’ll see what we do on time
[00:07:46] Anthony: here. Yeah, you got one more than me already. All right. How about you go first and I’ll try and steal one of yours.
[00:07:51] Dan: Okay. All right. Um, failure number one. And just real quick context. You’re uh, you already kind of said it, but. [00:08:00] Failure is a prerequisite to success. You’re not going to find anybody who’s successful, who has not failed at a thing. So it’s not a negative thing that you should look at as bad. It is a process it’s part of the process.
Of succeeding. So that’s kind of the logic behind failing your way to success. The first one I’m going to say is the first property that I acquired a six unit, tried to get into it, thinking it was going to be passive. I’ll just hire a management company. That’ll go. Great. It’s a pretty heavy lift value.
Add deal, small little building. There’s no incentive for third-party management. To come in and be project manager and manager and leaser of a six unit where they might make like 200 bucks a month. Uh, didn’t realize that going into it, but learned really quickly. And so, you know, you might look at that and say that was a failed attempt.
Uh, they didn’t do real well. Uh, took a couple months out of the process, but it all worked out. Uh, I [00:09:00] cut ties with them. I did all the work myself learned a lot. I didn’t really do good work. Um, property manager. Cause I had no idea what the heck I was doing, but I got it done. And I purchase that building in January and by uh, September or October, I was refinancing it, getting that capital ready for the next deal.
So it went well. It was a great learning experience. I learned a lot about property management in that short period of time and uh, realized really quick. That taking ownership over that management component was going to be an integral part, at least for the short term of my business. And it turned out that that is, uh, still a big part of our business.
It’s how we take responsibility and ownership over the end product that gets delivered to. Uh, residents and it’s a big part of our business. So at the time it seemed like a kind of a failed attempt at trying to passively invest in real estate. But, uh, in retrospect it was a great learning experience and, um, provided a ton of value for.
The next several years, I’d like you
[00:09:59] Anthony: develop this [00:10:00] new skill and that’s what, that’s one of the cool things about failing is that it, it, failure is a way of the universe showing you that you suck that you’re not yet good enough in all the areas that you need to be in order to win the game. And you can take that and be demoralized by that.
Cry about that, or you can get up and be like, well, I guess I just need to figure out how to suck less.
[00:10:20] Dan: Yeah. Now I know exactly what not to do the next time I try
[00:10:22] Anthony: this. Yeah. So now what’s really cool is you can fail in all new, exciting, novel ways. And I think that’s the goal of life is just to keep making like fail in ever more creative and interesting ways.
I think if you can do that, then you’re doing something right. Um, So my failure, um, I’ve talked about this one before is
[00:10:45] Dan: evil. We got one from your entire life.
[00:10:47] Anthony: I got one failure. This is the big one. It’s the only one. Um, I learned a lot from it. Never needed to fail after that. So do, as I do. So, um, I I’ve said before that, like every business I’ve been a part [00:11:00] of that succeeded has been off the back of a strong partnership.
Partnership that has sucked has led to a bad business outcome every single time. And, um, in the beginning, when I decided I wanted to be an active real estate investor, like I wanted to own assets and scale and start building a business around it, which is fundamentally different than what I think a lot of people think of a lot of people come into this business saying I want to invest in real estate.
Not that they want to build a real estate business. A lot of people don’t realize that those are very, very different things. I came in. I was like, I want to build a real estate business. I don’t just want to invest in real estate. That was the moment where I was like making that shift because before that I had invested in real estate, but I had no interest in building a company and.
At that point, my very best friend in the world. And I decided, Hey, let’s do this together. We’re going to build a business. We had a previous business, um, relationship that absolutely failed. Uh, surely you can’t fail twice. We thought we’d we fell twice. Um, before we even got out the gate, we had a deal under [00:12:00] contract.
Uh, and almost immediately it became evident that the relationship wasn’t going to survive this partnership because we’re pretty much good at the same things. And we really sucked at the same things. And we also were very bad at communicating expectations and accountabilities, and then holding each other to that.
And man, during the due diligence phase of this deal, it was just. The most stressful thing ever. And I believe that things that start hard and hard. And so the date, literally the day before closing, I pulled the plug on that deal. And I was like, we w it would be better just to walk away from this deal, give up the earnest money and like save the relationship than it would be to do this deal.
Because once we’re in this deal, there’s a there’s there’s, it’s not going to end well, it’s going to be a long bumpy, rough patch. It’s probably going to cost us our friendship, probably going to lose money in the way. Like, it’s just better to it. To make the hard decision to rip the bandaid off. So that’s what I did.
And it honestly, it did a lot of damage to that relationship for a long time. Like we’re still not even fully healed, um, because re uh, [00:13:00] emotions get very easily caught into the business. Cogs sometimes and people get fingers pinched and limbs fall off, but, oh, that was a failure that I learned a lot from, which was, you gotta be really intentional before going into partnership about who’s doing what, and are there actual alignment of interests and values and skillsets as a complimentary or is everybody going to be trying to pick up the same bucket?
[00:13:24] Dan: Yeah, they got the partnership topic. That’s uh, that’s one where I think the mud. It’s rare to, to, to find a really good partner. I think that’s a less likely than finding a subpar or poor partner because I’ve heard I’ve had very few partnerships in my life, mostly because of. Uh, a little antisocial, uh, but he’s a weird man.
I’m super weird. And most people don’t want to be in the same room with me. So, no, but in all, honestly, I, I haven’t done a ton of partnerships, uh, just because that’s my personality. I tend to like to work kind of independently. And so the business I’ve done outside of [00:14:00] the corporate world have been just like a consulting type thing where it’s just me.
So on my time, But from talking to people, the number of like failed partnership stories. I hear compared to the number of like partnership, success stories. I hear the failed list is a lot long, a while longer. Um, just because I think there’s so many ways that there could be friction or problems. And so it’s like, have you said, you’ve got to find out on the front end, you know, whether or not it’s truly a good fit or if you’re just trying to force a partnership.
For the sake of forest and a partnership, because you’ve got to have complimentary skill sets. You’ve got to have offsetting skillsets. You’ve got to have a good communication and know how to speak to one another and, uh, really get clear on who’s doing what early on and stick to it. And if there’s any kind of ambiguity to the arrangement, if things aren’t clearly defined with who’s doing it.
Uh, then it gets real hairy real quick.
[00:14:55] Anthony: Um, when you, when you were talking about how there’s so many ways for the thing to go wrong [00:15:00] and to be on, like, to be unhappy, it reminded me of, I can’t remember which Russian writer it was like Dostoevsky or somebody. One of those like toll skier, tolls. I don’t know.
Clearly my Russian fiction or literature knowledges is, is strained here, but he said something to the fact that all happy families look the same. But every unhappy family is unique in their own happiness, which is to say like, there are so many ways for a thing to go wrong, but when things go right, it almost always looks the same.
Yeah. There’s good communication. There’s good accountabilities. Like, but when things go wrong, like it, every single time, it looks a little bit different and it’s, it’s a lot harder to control for.
[00:15:41] Dan: Yeah, no, it’s yeah. It’s. Yeah, I think I’ve pretty much nailed it. Say there. What’s your, what’s your second field moving on?
Uh, college? Um, I wasn’t quite sure what you’re
[00:15:55] Anthony: like, look, you’re like read that off the sheet of paper and they were like college.
[00:15:59] Dan: I don’t [00:16:00] know like how to, like, I don’t what to name this one per se. Um, I’ll kind of explain the, the thought process here. Cause I didn’t, I didn’t fail. I, I graduated, but, um, Basically like, uh, don’t don’t try it yet.
No, so basically my path was very windy when I was 18, 19 20, 21, 22, 23. I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do until I was into my twenties. Even that. Really correct. I ended up finding out, you know, I, late twenties, I actually wanted to do something completely different, but my house is very windy.
I started initially with a community college right after high school, and I was not ready to do that. I needed to just party. And so that lasted, I went to a local school called Normandale for like a semester and then just stopped because I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do. And it felt like a waste of time.
And then I went and spent like a year working at a pizza joint and felt like a basically [00:17:00] like failure. Um, didn’t feel good at all about like everybody else. I knew from high school in college, like progressing in life, doing things, and I felt really crummy. And so then I made the decision to get back into school, went to a tech school thinking I was going to go and start an it program and then transfer and go into computer science program.
I found out there that that didn’t feel right. Either again, felt like a failure made a switch, decided that finance was the way to go, but then things actually start to feel like they’re clicking. Right? I was like, this feels good. This is the right decision transferred over to another community. College knocked out the generals then went to St.
Thomas went up, finish up the finance degree there. So that whole period of time, pretty much up until I was like halfway through, um, my, uh, St Thomas portion, I felt like it was just like a string of failures. It felt bad because I thought you’d just went to college after high school and then spent four years and graduated and got a job.
And the fact that I was taking this, like really zig-zaggy path felt like, uh, embarrassing and I [00:18:00] didn’t feel good about it at all. In retrospect, I just tried a bunch of stuff and then find found out what, what clicked for me and what was right. Which is, I think now being older, like if I were to tell a child like what to do after high school, um, I’d tell her like, just try everything.
Until you find something you like, and if you decide that something’s not a good fit and you stop and try something new, like don’t perceive it as a failure because I was beating myself up and feeling depressed and I was like, why am I maybe I’m too dumb for college. I was just trying to do things that I had no real interest in doing.
I just thought it was what I should have been doing. So I journaled about
[00:18:35] Anthony: this the other day, which was. That it’s really, we’re similar in that we picked up a lot of things to put down a lot of things throughout our life. And for me, I go through these intense periods of obsession with things, whether that’s, you know, running or chess and rock climbing or, um, writing, like whatever it is.
And I’ll pick it up for a season. And sometimes that lasts like six months. Sometimes it lasts six years and then I put it away and I’m [00:19:00] like, I move on to something completely. And for a long time, I felt weird and bad about that. Like, why can’t they just stay with this thing and focus on this thing? Like everybody else seems to be able to like for long periods of time, and now I look back on it, I’m like, no, that was like my, my greatest gift.
Like that, that, that ability to put things aside and then just pick up something new without
[00:19:21] Dan: fear. Yeah. What you needed. And he moved on. So people just keep doing the same stuff and their lives are really boring. Don’t don’t live a boring life. See
new
[00:19:29] Anthony: things lane. Okay. My, um, I want to piggyback off that one.
I’m going to share a story that I’ve never shared on any podcast or anywhere it’s a failure. This is a failure that I’ve never shared this one, actually. So I talk about how, you know, my fiance left me at one point and then I lived in the back of a van. I was $80,000 in debt. And I don’t know if you talked about that in podcasts.
I’ve talked about that in muni. Uh, I’m here though. I probably like 200 episodes. I probably have, I probably mentioned the story. Um, and for me, Mike Brown entrepreneurship, what I tell people is that my entrepreneurship career started because I was in that really bad [00:20:00] place. And a friend came to me. He was like, Hey, let’s build this business together.
It’s not exactly what happened. Also at that same moment, I got fired from a job where I was. So when I was a rock climber, I was, I was. There’s not a lot of ways to make money as a professional rock climber. So to subsidize that I worked as what’s known as the professional route center for the biggest climbing gym in, in a place.
I won’t say where, um, because as I start telling the story that might give me some legal troubles here. Well, I got fired from this job. There was a lot of extenuating circumstances around it having to do with an OSHA claim that I filed. And I thought I was protected as a whistleblower turns out. Just so you guys know if you ever file a OSHA whistleblower case, you better have some money to like ride it out because it’s going to take a very long time to get anything out of it.
Um, I mean, I felt at the time that I was wrongfully terminated and I was, um, but that was the [00:21:00] moment where I was like, I’m never working for somebody. Like that the low, and it was humiliating because I like to work as a route setter for this company on this particular team, it was like the cream of the crop.
It was like the place to be. And I was considered like the top route setter in the. For the, and, and so like to get knocked off that pedestal, it was center. Those are the guys that when you go to a climbing gym, they’re the ones that put up all the, on the create routes. So they’re like vertical artists.
Um, but we also, we do this for competitions, like the Olympics and whatnot. Um, and so I was like in a very publicly, like a very public way humiliated and like knocked off of that when I was fired. And it was very, very hard and it put a huge chip on my shoulder. And that was really the moment where I was like, I’m now.
Working for somebody else. Again, I’m never putting myself in a position where my future is up for somebody else to decide what to do with it. Um, ultimately it really worked out [00:22:00] well. Um, but it really sucked at the time. I’ll say that. And also full disclosure, like with the time and distance that I’ve had from it, um, they weren’t entirely wrong to fire me.
I’ll just say that I was young and had a lot of ego. I wasn’t a right, but I was also bring a deck.
[00:22:17] Dan: I I get it. Yeah, no, I honestly I’ve. I said whenever I talked to somebody who was lost their job, uh, where it wasn’t like a voluntary thing where they were asked to leave for whatever reason, I always tell them, because I think it’s true.
I genuinely believe it. Especially these days when been in like literally the best job market for somebody who wants a job ever, um, that that’s actually a gift because you literally. Forced into the situation where you could do literally anything you want for most people. So if some people have some responsibilities where their, their options are kind of limited, but generally speaking, that’s a reset and you get the chance to pick anything in the world that you want to do, and you can go and pursue that.[00:23:00]
Um, and that’s a great opportunity, but people tend to focus on the negative aspect of things when they’re playing out and they forget to pay attention to the opportunity. And then they, you know, if they’re not careful, they end up in just negative space and that’s not a productive place to be. But I always try to look at the, the opportunity that’s created at the same time that this seemingly negative thing is happening, because it almost always turns into the thing that pushed you into something better.
And maybe it’s not right away, but. Um, yeah, that’s, that’s what I try to tell people. Cause if you start looking for opportunities in that situation, it’s supposed to focus on negative. There’s probably something there that a hundred percent.
[00:23:38] Anthony: I think the hard thing about getting fired is that it feels like a personal indictment of somebody else saying like your character isn’t good enough.
And. You have to figure out for yourself. I think to really be happy in life is to find a way to not care what other people think. Yeah. And recognize that somebody else’s judgment of. Has no say on your self [00:24:00] worth and like who you in the value that you really have as an individual. And so that was my failure.
Never shared that before.
[00:24:06] Dan: I think my, uh, failure for my third one is actually quite similar. I wrote down corporate world. Oh, there you go. Uh, and it’s pretty much, uh, it’s a very similar story in that I. After after I went to college, uh, study finance, I was so certain that this was the thing that I was supposed to be doing.
It felt right in college. I was super motivated. I was engaged for the first time in school because I had something. Um, uh, what’s the word I’m looking for? I guess, you know, you’re in like a junior high and high school and you’re taking classes like math and it’s, it’s, it’s applied, right? You’re just learning like math for the sake of math.
And then you get into college, you choose your major and all of a sudden you’re applying these concepts of something that you actually care about. And that’s where I got really engaged. I was like, okay, when there’s an application and I’m not just learning and memorizing facts, this is like really exciting.
So it felt really good [00:25:00] got into the corporate world. Supersite got that first job and within. Six to eight months at the most, I was like, oh, this is it. I’m bored, sick. Um, don’t like digging the vibe. I kept like trying to tell myself that I was into it and this was what I was supposed to be doing. My parents were proud.
I was the first person to go to actual university and get like a corporate job in our family. And so my parents were just like ecstatic. And then in the back of my head, I’m like, It’s kind of sucks and I’m still broke. Uh, cause I have all these student loans and once you get taxes taken out of the check and you pay off all your loans, I’m like actually more broke than I was before college.
So this kind of blow. And so I was like, okay, well I just need to work really hard, get promotion. And then, uh, when I’m like higher up making more money, it’s gonna be better. And then like, I, it was like year and a half in, got that, went up to financial analysts too. And, uh, didn’t like that at all. It was a really bad team, uh, super negative environment.
Absolutely hated it. And, uh, tried to kind of [00:26:00] make it work for a little bit there, but ended up in the same kind of thing about six months in just dragging, like not motivating. Not engaged, just not feeling the culture that any of, any of it. And, uh, use the negativity of the group I was in as my catalyst exit and go to a different company, uh, which I did, but then lo and behold, same thing happened there.
Uh, within a year I’m bored sick. I can’t say focus. I can’t be engaged. And I, my performance is not great because I just don’t care. It’s didn’t care at all. And I thought it was because I was stupid or it was too hard for me or. W it felt like I didn’t fit. And it was frustrating because I’m not the most, uh, uh, Confident person.
Typically I looked at myself like I was just failing again, right. Just like it was back in high school or early college, or I didn’t know what I want to do. And everything was a struggle. It was felt the same. And it wasn’t until that third job that I, I got into researching real [00:27:00] estate and got really hooked because then things felt like they really fit.
Uh, and then I exit, but for the, almost the entirety of my corporate career, I felt like I was always like, A C student in the, in the job world at best. Like I was struggling to just get the basic stuff to him because everybody else seemed like they genuinely like were good and they like cared. But I was just, I couldn’t keep my mind engaged for more than like eight or 12 months, because once I got done learning.
I was so bored. The learning phase, I was fine, but, uh, throughout that whole corporate experience, I just felt like I sucked at it, which I did, but I wasn’t even supposed to be there in the first place. So the fact that I sucked at it was a good thing. Uh, that was the universe telling me, like, dude, you’re not in the right spot.
You’re supposed to be over here. And at the time it was really stressful and didn’t feel good, but in retrospect, I’m so glad that happened because I could have just stayed there for 40 years. You just there. Yeah. And a lot of people stay in jobs. [00:28:00] Uh, sock, because I think that that’s just the way the world is.
Like everyone hates their job, but, and I was like that, but it took me a few years to figure out like, oh wait, uh, I can actually go do this thing over here. I might not hate it. I might actually like doing stuff every day. So,
[00:28:14] Anthony: and it’s frustrating cause that’s the narrative that society. Like so much of a work is supposed to suck or like you’re supposed to dislike your boss or like it’s supposed to be this grind,
[00:28:25] Dan: James, like how you can actually like spend your life
[00:28:28] Anthony: somebody.
Yeah. Why, why live a life and work at a job? Like we talk about this a lot at Invictus and in terms of like, We want to work around people who are really, really, really psyched about what they’re doing and waking up everyday to come to work and do the things that we’re doing. And if you’re not, then that’s cool.
Like go find the thing that sparks your soul with joy. Like don’t spend a minute doing something that you hate doing. Like life’s too short for that. Cause if you get hit by a bus today, like what was it all for?
[00:28:52] Dan: You were miserable. Her Moseley just posted something the other day. Like. Something about like, uh, people need to stop saying like fifties, middle age.[00:29:00]
Cause like the average life expectancy is like 80 something. And like, so if you’re 35, you’re actually every time there’s kind of a sack. Well, but it was actually like really good to remember. Like, you know, it, it, time is finite. So do not spend any time doing stupid things that you hate because. You only get one life and what you believe, but anyways, the
[00:29:20] Anthony: game is short people.
All right. So, um, we are running long on time here, so I’m gonna keep this one. I’m gonna keep this one real short, and then we’re going to nail out the book review recommendation. Um, this one’s more high level. This isn’t a story about like a personal failure, so much as just a systemic failure that I’ve had throughout my life.
And it’s something that in the last 10 years I’ve been more conscious of and trying to fix. And it’s still a very, very difficult one. Which is around the idea of, uh, relationships and maintaining relationships and investing into the people around me and really caring. Um, I, I just, since I’ve been, I’m just ADHD, people can quite often be kind of authentic.
[00:30:00] And like how they focus inside their brain, where like, you could literally put me in a room by myself for two weeks and like, I would just be fine. I’d be happy. I’d be, I’d be so fine. Um, but I, I do have a desire for connection and like maintaining relationships and being with people I care about, but it is one of those things that just does not come naturally to my body.
At all. Um, it’s something I’ve gotten a lot better at, as I get older. And when I say better, I’m using some pretty big air quotes there because I’m still really bad at it, like really, really bad. Um, but when I was young, I was absolutely atrocious. Like the number of people that I don’t think I have a single person from high school or college.
Um, I think that, I don’t think I know anybody before when I was like 25. So what did you
[00:30:47] Dan: do socially? There was such a turnoff to people.
[00:30:50] Anthony: No, no, no. It wasn’t about being like turning people off socially. It was about not investing back into those relationships and maintaining them. And I think, um, [00:31:00] because I think it’s about making people feel cared for.
And that they matter, and that they’re important. And if you don’t make people feel that way, then they assume that you don’t care that you, that they don’t matter to you, which might be true. It might not be true. Um, and if you don’t show it, if you don’t tell them that then quite often, what else are they to deduce?
And so I think a lot of my, my relationships in my life, people walk away thinking, oh, you just. Like, I don’t really mean that much to them. So that’s one of my big failures for sure. And as I’ve gotten older and I’ve reflected more on, on it, and like, I I’ve started to create systems in the last 10 years around how I can, um, get outside of my own way on that.
But it’s still so, so damn hard.
[00:31:42] Dan: It is. I can relate to that one a lot. Um, cause it’s like, I’ve been with Liz for a long time now. Like, oh, let’s see, uh, like 10 years or so. We’ve been married the whole time, but in my brain, like I have told her so [00:32:00] many times I love her, but it’s like, you got to keep telling her, like, I know, like we already covered that sticky note on the refrigerator.
You got to get down when I stop loving you in my brain. It’s like, you guys are in love. Like you do, you need to keep saying it over and over again. Like I thought we already talked about this, but never covered this. Yeah. So you gotta like, actually like put in work, um, like with anything else in life, you can’t just like put it on autopilot.
So I’ve kind of gone through a similar thing with Liz Dewey. I’ve had to realize that for myself too, I’ve got to have a system for remembering to do that stuff because it does not come naturally from. Uh, just randomly shared my feelings with people around me. So I usually keep that stuff internal. I don’t share my thoughts, my feelings, and actually saying it is something that is not a natural thing.
I’m on the same page. All right. So those
[00:32:47] Anthony: are our failures that have led to successes. Very few of them had a lot to do with real estate. Some of them did. Um, but hopefully that this gives you the listener, maybe a new perspective on some of your failures or some time to reflect [00:33:00] on some of the things in your life that have maybe not gone, how you wanted them to, but have ultimately led to you becoming the person that you are for better or for worse, depending on where you are now, before we get out of here and we do gotta wrap it up real Rover over.
Here’s a book recommendation people, two of them. First one is a book called token economic. Which is all about web 3.0 and NFTs and blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies, you got to know about this stuff. People it’s coming. It’s the future. It’s not the future. It’s here right now. It is how the internet of tomorrow will work.
And I’m sorry, but more and more and more, you can’t, you can’t be a techno idiot and can’t be a techno fool. You, you got to understand this stuff. If you want to have any hopes of surviving in the market, that’s coming in. The second book, if you’re not into crypto and blockchain, and you would like to just put your head in the sand and be a ludite.
This book is a biography about Leonardo da Vinci by Walter [00:34:00] Isaacson. Very good. Well, dementia is a it’s called, um, Isaac. Oh, uh, no, it’s called Leonardo. Oh, what was the author’s name? Uh, Walter Isaacson. He did the biography of Steve jobs, uh, Benjamin Franklin. He’s like the biographer. Leonardo DaVinci is one of the coolest people that you will ever read about.
He is. Madman. Um, so those are my book recommendations. Hopefully you pick one of those up. Hopefully like it. If you don’t, then I won’t lose any sleep over it. Now, before you get out of here, go drop a review. That’s it. That’s my ass. That was everything. All right, let’s get that. On the count of three. Ready?
One, two, go ahead.
