For today’s episode, we will be discussing one of the most complex questions. What should I invest in?
This week we’re covering the 3 best investments to make. One of them surprisingly is not real estate.
We will talk about these things…and more in another episode of Multifamily Investing Made Simple in under 10 minutes.
Tweetable Quotes:
“You’ve got to put every dollar into getting as smart as you can get and try to know and understand everything that’s out there.” – Dan Kreuger
“you are the most valuable asset. So anything that you can do that adds value to yourself, it’s going to compound over time.” – Anthony Vicino
“I would say learn how to communicate. Communication, whether through the written word or through the spoken word” – Anthony Vicino
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The 3 Best Investments You Can Make
The 3 Best Investments You Can Make_processed.mp3
Anthony Vicino: [00:00:14] Hello and welcome to the multifamily investing made simple podcast, it’s all about taking the complexity out of real estate investing so that you can take action today. I am your host, Anthony Vecino of Invictus Capital, joined as always, by this guy, Dan.
Dan Krueger: [00:00:30] Who am I today? Kruger. It’s good. It’s not your most creative intro, but
Anthony Vicino: [00:00:35] That was audience participation. I think that makes it themselves.
Dan Krueger: [00:00:40] I’m curious what you guys put in there. Yeah. So comments,
Anthony Vicino: [00:00:43] Leave a comment. Go over to iTunes. Leave a review and let us know what was your Dan Blank Kruger nickname? I love it. That’s great. And also, while you’re there, leave a five-star review. Now, today we are going to be taking the complexity out of one of the most complex topics in existence investing. Specifically, let’s talk about the three best investments that you can make lottery
Dan Krueger: [00:01:11] Tickets, cars and
Anthony Vicino: [00:01:13] Boats. Those are the three, right? I did not hear crypto on there, so I’m disappointed.
Dan Krueger: [00:01:19] I mean, you know, soon I’m not there yet. Lottery tickets are still a better bet. Now we all know boats appreciate like crazy.
Anthony Vicino: [00:01:26] So do boats actually appreciate?
Dan Krueger: [00:01:28] Oh yeah, a hundred percent like, really quickly.
Anthony Vicino: [00:01:30] Ok, not like a car
Dan Krueger: [00:01:33] That goes to the Moon.
Anthony Vicino: [00:01:35] Ok, well, well. More on a more serious note. Now you’re listening to this podcast, you might be thinking, OK, they’re going to tell me real estate, real estate is going to be on that top three somewhere. But guess what, people? You’re wrong. This is a real estate podcast, but it does not make it into the top three. So Dan, number one, what’s the number one best investment you can make?
Dan Krueger: [00:01:55] It’s going to sound cliche, but yourself. But really, it’s all about education, right? The first part of your life, regardless of what you’re going to end up doing. You’ve got to put every dollar into getting as smart as you can get and try to know and understand everything that’s out there. Try to figure out what you like. And then also, I think this part goes unnoticed quite a bit, but really try to get educated on yourself. Try to learn who you are, what makes you tick, and learn about what’s going on under the hood in your brain. If you can be really self-aware about yourself and educate yourself, you know, in college or learning a trade or working or something. That’s where all your time and capital need to go. In my opinion, I might be wrong, though
Anthony Vicino: [00:02:39] I would agree with that. Actually, I’m writing this down because of self-awareness. I say this all the time. It is not a superpower. It is a superpower. Like to understand how you work, your strengths. Your weaknesses are how you communicate with the world. That is invaluable. And so anything that you can do to level up that ability and going back to what you mentioned before, you are the most valuable asset. So anything that you can do that adds value to yourself, it’s going to compound over time. And so think about all the skills that you’re acquiring as though you’re leveling up this beast, this machine so that it can go out there and do bigger, better, badder things. And one of the coolest things than about investing in yourself is the fact that regardless of what the market does, regardless of who’s the president, regardless of what happens with COVID, nobody can take your skills away from you. You always have those. So even if you go to zero, even if your business has to start over, you still have your skills from which to rebuild. Yeah, it’s
Dan Krueger: [00:03:39] Like scooping up a car almost. You just tack it on different things to make it more powerful and more versatile. And like that comment I made about understanding yourself and becoming more self-aware is really almost like trying to figure out what kind of vehicle you’re driving, right? Might be in a car, you might be in a plane, you might be on a scooter. And if you don’t really understand yourself and what kind of vehicle you’re in, you’re not going to understand effectively how to how to drive yourself or steer yourself or whatever it is like. You have to figure out what the heck you’re in and then learn how to drive it.
Anthony Vicino: [00:04:06] Mm-hmm. So figure out what are those skills are going to serve you best in life? If you’re an entrepreneur or an investor and you’re listening to this, some ideas of things to be thinking about. One is probably really understanding finance, start to learn accounting and bookkeeping. Spend some time learning, marketing, and branding like these. These are skills that you’re always going to need. I would say learn how to communicate communication, whether through the written word or through the spoken word, whether that’s in a podcast format or this is like I’m trying to communicate to an employee my vision for the world, or I’m trying to communicate to a loved one like what it is that I need out of the relationship like communication is everything and there’s no shortage of ways that you can invest into that.
Dan Krueger: [00:04:49] Yeah, I mean, if you it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the best thing in the world, the best idea, the best product. If you can’t effectively communicate what that is and the fact that you’ve got it and what it can do to the world around you, no one’s going to buy it right. And, you know, to kind of double down on that point, you could have a really silly idea like the shake weight. For example, if you’re really good at communicating that thing out into the world, you can sell a ton of them. But yeah, I mean, communications, everything, and just real quick on the whole financing because I’m kind of the finance geek between the two of us. You don’t need to understand anything complex, right? If you can understand how to read a profit and loss statement and a balance sheet and a cash flow statement, then you’re going to be good. Beyond that, you get experts in your life to really handle the nitty-gritty of it, but you do want to be able to speak the language of business, which is accounting.
Anthony Vicino: [00:05:35] So that’s absolutely right. So that is number one, that is the best investment that you can make is in yourself. Number two is going to be in your network. You hear it all the time. Your network is your net worth. It’s cliché, it’s trite, but it’s true the people that you surround yourself with and how much they like, know, and trust you and want to work with you. It’s going to dictate a lot of your ability to realize success in life.
Dan Krueger: [00:06:01] Yeah, and I’ve noticed this throughout any venture I’ve been in that it doesn’t matter. Like almost that marketing comment I made before is almost the same thing here where you can have a really great product. If you don’t know how to communicate about it to the world, then no one’s going to come out and. And it’s really the same thing if you don’t have a network of really good quality people around you. There’s only so much you can do and only so much you can be good at personally. So it’s imperative to surround yourself with a strong network of people so that they can fill in the gaps in your skillset. No matter what industry you’re in, the network component of it is, is, you know. It’s the foundation, I’ll say,
Anthony Vicino: [00:06:41] Yeah, I think it’s one of the reasons like network effects are one of the reasons that technology companies and social media sites have exploded in the last 20 years, and why they’ve been able to realize trillions of dollars worth of value is because they get multiple like just network effects of tons of people involved. One of the problems a lot of people make mistakes that they make when it comes to networking is thinking it’s about who you know, and that’s not really so much the case. It’s more important. Who knows you, right? Like, I know who Gary Vaynerchuk is, but he doesn’t know me, so it doesn’t do me any good. So really think about that. And one of the interesting things then when it comes to investing in your network is the fact that when I say that a lot of people will think, Oh, I’ll just go to a networking event down the street, there are free events, right? Free events attract a particular type of person and the same way that a free product attracts a particular type of customer. If you want to be around a higher caliber individual, whether that’s entrepreneurs or investors, you probably have to pay to get into their sphere. They’re not just going to the free. All-you-can-eat buffet at Sizzler on Thursday. They might be, but they’re probably
Dan Krueger: [00:07:52] Not there to talk to you there.
Anthony Vicino: [00:07:54] And in that way, I’ll share a personal experience right now is like I just spent about $5000 for an event specifically to go in-network with Tom Billoo, a billionaire can’t get in his sphere of influence any other way. So I paid to get into it, and now I’ve gotten to have conversations with them, and that’s really cool and who knows where that goes. That’s the thing with networking is you can never go into it with the expectation of like, what? What can I get out of this? You go into it like a real human being trying to create a relationship and finding the value proposition for the other person. And that’s the key.
Dan Krueger: [00:08:27] Yeah, one hundred percent. I’m going to double down on that because there are so many people that think that networking is just showing up going into a room and handing somebody a business card like you’ve actually got to be intentional about forming quality, like real relationships with people, not just trying to get your business card in front of as many people as possible, but really find those people that you have some alignment with and that you can provide value to and actually maintain a real relationship with them. So it’s not a game of numbers. It kind of is a little bit, but at the end of the day, it’s really going to be a game of how good, how good quality of relationships that you’re actually maintaining at these things. So it’s not just going in and meet everybody, it shows up, tries to help them, and keeps it going, you know, follow up with it. It’s not just a one-and-done thing. Hey, we met, we followed up, we got coffee and then we move on like it’s a long-term relationship because it should be.
Anthony Vicino: [00:09:13] I know a guy who likes to brag about how many people, how many contacts he has in his phone, and he’s always saying that as though it’s a metric of networking success. And I don’t really look at that as being a metric of success. As much as having very, maybe a few very deep quality relationships with key players in the industry is going to be much more valuable than having 10000 contacts with people who maybe can help. You maybe can’t maybe keep in touch with. Maybe you don’t and you probably have a shallow relationship because humans, we can only maintain relationships with so many other people. And so the network effect of having 10000 people loosely connected versus having one hundred people very deeply connected, I would take the hundred every time.
Dan Krueger: [00:09:55] Yeah, it’s I mean, it’s the same thing with people who get obsessed with their social media followers and things like that. It’s like you might have a million followers on some sort of social media platform, but if you’re not truly like having some kind of impact on those people, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a big number on a platform, so you can kind of dig a little bit deeper and see how much all these people are actually engaging with you. And, you know, are they actually listening to the things you’re saying, or are they just subscribers to your social media page and there’s no real connection there? Mm-hmm.
Anthony Vicino: [00:10:24] So that is investment number two. Number one as yourself. Number two is into your network number three. Number three is investing back into your community. And this is an interesting one because I’m a big proponent that of the idea. The number one return metric in the universe is the return on karma. You can’t measure it. It’s not on the balance sheet. It’s not on the profit loss statement. You can’t find it in any of the hard numbers, but I know that the positive net effect of return on karma is immense. And if we can put that out into the universe that we can contribute meaningfully to our communities, then that will always come back around to us in the end.
Dan Krueger: [00:11:08] Yeah, I agree 100 percent. And you know, beyond a certain point, there’s been actually a lot of studies on this as well. Once you have a certain amount of income or money like your incremental increase in happiness starts to really taper off, go flat or even go negative after a certain point. So really beyond a certain point. And I think the study was thinking of the kind of found like 70 grand or something. Yeah, to be a sweet spot where once you get above that, your incremental happiness doesn’t really go up that much. It’s not a one-for-one correlation after that point. So once you do, once you. Hit a certain hurdle or threshold of how much money you’re actually making for yourself. The only way to really become happier or feel better after that is to help those around you. So it just makes sense, even from a selfish perspective, if you’re trying to get happier, the way to do it is to help other people around you. You can’t just keep accumulating assets and actually expect your happiness to keep increasing.
Anthony Vicino: [00:12:00] Yeah, and that’s the thing, right? When we talk about the best investments that you can make, you’ll notice we didn’t talk about real estate or crypto or any of these other things that would make you more money. The goal here, when you’re investing into yourself or into your network, or another way of putting that is your relationships or the community, really, it’s so that you can get the desired end state, which is happiness. That’s really the return we want is the return of happiness. And if you want happiness, well, invest in yourself because you’re going to get that sense of growth and personal progress, which is integral to human satisfaction or like life satisfaction, and then invest into your community, into your network, the people around you. These are all ways of maximizing this thing that we call life.
Dan Krueger: [00:12:42] Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty simple at the end of the day, right? I mean, if that’s the framework, it’s three steps invest in yourself, invest in your network and then invest in your community. I mean, is that it?
Anthony Vicino: [00:12:52] Is that it? I think that’s it. I think you do. I think if you do that, you’re going to be doing OK in life. And I don’t think there’s any need to overcomplicate this. So let’s keep it simple. Let’s leave it there. Those are the three best investments you can make. I want to challenge you if you’re at home, you’re listening to this right now. You’re on the podcast or you’re in the car, listening to the podcast or on the treadmill. What are you going to do today? Because you should be doing something every single day to realize the benefits of compounding interest? What are you doing today to invest in yourself in your network or your relationships and into your community? And with that, we will bid you adieu. Hmm. I love it. See you guys next week.
