EP 37 | How Climbing Mountains, Making Widgets and Buying Apartment Buildings Are One In the Same with Anthony Vicino

On this episode of the Passive Income Attorney podcast, Seth is joined by Anthony Vicino as they discuss how to strategically figure out where you belong and how you can put yourself in a position to succeed. Anthony explains how he discovered he’s not meant to be in an office setting, and how he used his personal interests to discover his entrepreneurial niche that has now made him into a best-selling author, investor, and business owner.

“Make sure that when you jump in, that you can at least see the bottom of the water and you know how deep you’re getting in.”

HIGHLIGHTS:

Here’s a breakdown of what to expect in this episode:

Strategies for scaling into different businesses quickly
How giving roles to the right people affects a business
Real estate as the ideal investment vehicle
Benefits of passive investing first
Tips on how you can get started in commercial real estate investing
And so much more!

ABOUT | ANTHONY VICINO:

Anthony Vicino is a best-selling author, investor, and entrepreneur. He’s built multiple successful businesses from the ground up by creating systems that scale and by never losing sight of end-user satisfaction.

After years of managing a personal portfolio of multifamily assets spread across the country, Anthony joined forces with Dan Krueger in 2019 to launch Invictus Capital and execute their first syndication.

Together, Anthony and Dan are helping busy professionals passively invest in multifamily properties based in the Twin Cities, in an environment of trust, transparency, and clarity.

FIND | ANTHONY VICINO:

Website: www.invictusmultifamily.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkxcOhsIbBqyrYVZdXg5aUg

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/multifamily-investing-made-simple/id1510038568

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyvicino/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anthony_vicino/

CONNECT | SETH BRADLEY:

Snag | The Freedom Blueprint: http://www.attorneybydesign.com

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Seth: [00:00:00] Hey, y’all. This is Seth Bradley and you are listening to the Passive Income Attorney podcast. Before we get started, be sure to go to intelligentpassiveinvestor.com and enjoy the cash flow calculator for free while you still can. It will show you how you can start buying back your time piece by piece.

Now to get into the episode, do you feel out of place in your office setting? Do you feel like you’re going to pull your hair out, being constrained to the confines of the cubicle or your office? I know that I did that’s for sure. I knew I had to get out of there. Uh, but maybe you don’t, maybe you Excel at it.

Maybe you thrive in the office and you’ve mastered the art of the office etiquette, uh, regardless of where you settle with that, you need to figure it out. You need to figure out where you belong, what makes you, you, and put yourself in a position to succeed? Wherever that might be. Our guests has done that for himself and for others.

And hopefully we can help you today, too. Today we get to meet a true Renaissance man, a man of the times, a man of all the hats he climbs mountains sells widgets, writes fiction and buys apartment buildings. Anthony Vicino is a best-selling author, investor, and entrepreneur. He’s built several successful businesses from the ground up by creating systems at scale and by never losing sight of end user satisfaction.

After years of managing a personal portfolio of multi-family assets spread across the country. Anthony launched Invictus capital to help busy professionals passively invest in multifamily properties based in the twin cities of Minnesota. All right, I’m ready. Let’s go.

Seth: [00:02:21] Hey Anthony. How’s it going, brother? Welcome to the show.

Anthony: [00:02:26] Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.

Seth: [00:02:27] Yeah, man. Really happy to have you on the show today. So let’s just start out and jump right in. What’s your story?

Anthony: [00:02:35] My story. I always struggled to know where to start, but I think the, the place that resonates with the most people is the fact that I’m a really, really, really bad employee.

Like I knew coming out of college, that it was never going to work out for me going the corporate route, working for other people. Uh, I had a summer job as a landscaper where like this encapsulates how bad of an employee I was, the foreman hated me so much. He would have me dig a hole and then he’d have me fill a hole at the end of the day.

That was all I did was just dig a hole, fill a hole. And so I knew like that was not going to work, giving other people control over my. My actions, my freedom like that, I just didn’t jive with me. Um, and so I went the entrepreneurial route pretty early on and, um, started by using my body in the form of like being a professional athlete and a couple different sports, and then started transitioning to using my mind a bit more through telling stories.

So it was a science fiction and fantasy author for a number of years. And then I started building businesses. And, you know, when you think about being a lazy employee, um, One of the things that bill Gates said that has always really resonated with me is I would rather hire a lazy A-player than at hardworking B player, because the lazy A-player figures out how to get the job done in less time and with less energy.

And it reminds me of the Tom Sawyer story where he’s painting the fence and he figures out how to get his buddies to paint the fence for him. So he could go play in the pool and like, yeah. That mentality, if you embody that it lends itself really well towards the entrepreneurial journey of building businesses, because the whole thing is figuring out how do we scale this?

How do we build a system here so I can do this better, deliver the same quality product or better quality product to our customers more consistently. And so I found my niche there started building businesses. And then, you know, fast forward to where I’m at today, we’re building a number of different types of businesses.

The one that we’re here to talk about, I think is real estate in particular. And so we are multifamily syndicators out of the twin cities and we, we buy, we operate assets up here with a focus on how do we deliver a really exceptional living. Arrangement for our residents and never losing sight of that’s our number one customer, because if we can serve them extraordinarily well, then the downstream effects for our investors and for ourselves is always really, really good.

Seth: [00:04:54] Gotcha. Yeah. I can certainly relate to the, not being the best employee, man. I mean, some of us just aren’t meant to be in the office. Did you have any kind of like awkward moments in the office where you’re like, you know what I’ve got to get out of here? This is absolutely not for me. I need to go do some rock climbing professional.

Anthony: [00:05:09] Yeah. One of the, yeah, this is really funny. Actually. One of the, I remember I was working at a climbing gym of all places. And this was like before I had like really established myself as a climber and every day we would have to enter in all these waivers manually entering them. And I was always really quick at it, really fast at it.

And people would look at me cause they’d be like, how did he do that so quickly? And I had figured out kind of a cheat code system to get the information in there really, really quickly. And so it takes me like, A third of the time that everybody else checked, but they would look at me afterwards because I’d just be sitting there then twiddling my thumbs and can tell what do I do?

Um, and I, at that time, when you’re working for somebody else, my, my modus operandi was not to go and be like, how can I take on more work? It was like, Oh, I did my work. This is what you’re paying me for. I did it now. I’m out. And that’s like, The quintessential mindset that also makes me feel really bad about myself at the end of the day, because I’m the type of guy who likes to challenge myself like to grow.

I like to learn, but at, but there was always this push and pull of like, well, I’m not going to give my soul to this place. That’s only paying me, you know, a minimum hourly wage. And so like I needed to go into business for myself and build these things because at least then I’m like, okay, I can burn myself out on this knowing.

But at the end of the day, I live and I die by my failures or my successes are like what? The work that I put in, it was a little bit more clearly correlated to my outcome.

Seth: [00:06:37] Yeah, well, at least you weren’t just like lazy. I mean, there are lazy people that just don’t like to work, right. They’re just stuck in their job and they’re like, you know what?

I just, I just want to sit on the couch and watch TV, but that’s obviously not your mindset. Tell, tell me about some of the other businesses that you’ve started before we jump into the real estate

Anthony: [00:06:52] stuff. Yeah. So the two big ones, uh, in recent years it started a high rise window washing company, which is actually a really interesting intersection of my skills as a rock climber.

And just like that network of rock climbers who are really comfortable in high locations and on ribs. So it’s like, How do you find your unique skill that you can deliver a product to the marketplace? And so we started that and th that did really well. I exited that a number of years ago, and then started a manufacturing company.

Actually the manufacturing company had already been started by my, my, my now partner. Um, but I came in in the early days and really we started scaling this thing and what we were producing were polyurethane widgets. So again, I’m using the rock climbing background. We were producing. Plastic rock climbing holds.

So when you go into a climbing gym and you see all those colorful climbing holds on the wall and you see the walls and the hardware, that’s used to build these things we produce and manufacture and distribute all of that stuff. And so again, like trying to find that unique intersection of what am I good at?

How can I serve the marketplace? And so that was, that was a really interesting learning experience because. What I’ll tell everybody is like, I am not good with my hands. I am not a manufacturer like a physical builder. I’m not good at building physical things. So I’m really blessed to have an amazing partner who thinks in those ways.

And that’s one of the keys, I think, to a good partnership. And one of the areas I’ve gotten into trouble in the past is finding partners who have all the same complimentary strengths and not, and also the same weaknesses. And so then you kind of find yourselves in this position where. You’re, you’re both really good at the same thing and really bad at the same thing.

And that’s not a very synergistic relationship. So I’m really lucky to have him.

Seth: [00:08:33] Gotcha. And this next question kind of leads right from that. I mean, what are some of the overarching strategies that have allowed you to scale so quickly and in all these different businesses? I mean, like, what are some of the common overlaps that have allowed you, that you can apply to any business that made you so successful?

Anthony: [00:08:50] So I think two things. One is starting with the end state in mind. So really understanding where is it that you’re trying to go and start building the business that’s going to allow you to get there, not the business where you currently are. I think a lot of people, when they first start a business, they’re just trying to they’re in survival mode, just trying to get through the day and as a, you know, an owner you’re probably wearing all the hats yourself.

And if you do that, then you’re always going to be stuck inside the business. And we’ve heard it before you have to work on the business network in the business, but that only happens if you lay the foundation from day one so that you can pull yourself out and put somebody who’s even better suited for that role than you are.

Um, so, so that’s, that’s one, one really big area. Um, What’s another one. I had it, but I lost it. It’s gone now.

Seth: [00:09:39] Oh, good. So, so what I’m hearing though is like, you know, go into the business with an end game in mind, have a plan and don’t be afraid to put people in the right seats. I mean, right. Like delegating hire right partner.

Right,

Anthony: [00:09:51] exactly. Yeah. And so I just, I just recalled the other thing I was going to say. So that’s, that’s one big aspect of it is understand where you’re trying to go to, um, Man, I just lost it again. So one of the other things, so Seth, this is, this is pertinent because, um, I have ADHD pretty severely, and one of the things that’s helped me really like Excel in life is creating habits, structures, routines around my day.

That keep me focused because what you see here is like, sometimes my squirrely brain just kind of goes on on a tangent, then it loses the tangent. So I found a tangent again. So. Um, one of the things is the incremental improvement of the process. And this is something that’s really, some people are really good at it.

Some people aren’t so good at it, but the goal of anything that you do, whether it’s a manufacturing business or real estate, is to create a system that’s replicatable by anybody doesn’t. It doesn’t have a high skill gap. You want to be able to take somebody off the street and within a couple of hours, train them, understand the process so that they can execute it themselves.

And one of the metrics that we have for measuring that internally is we, we think about it in terms of, are you an, a player, a B player, a C player. A C player is somebody that if we give them a system that’s already established, they’re going to incrementally make it worse. They’re going to cut corners.

They’re not going to perform it as well as it is supposed to be the B player. We’re going to put them in that role. And they’re going to execute the system exactly as it is, but they’re not going to do it better. They’re not going to do it worse. Right. The A-player, we put them into a position with a system and they’re constantly improving it in ways that we couldn’t even foresee.

And that’s been one of the secrets for us is how do we constantly improve? And one of the things we talk about are two second improvements, improvements that maybe only save you one or two seconds of efficiency, but by doing this over and over, we get the benefits of large. Um, you know, efficiencies and that, that really plays, it pays dividends, especially in a manufacturing environment, but definitely I would say in every other business that we’ve done as well.

Seth: [00:11:54] love that, man. So when you create kind of new positions that you hire for, I mean, do you kind of say, okay, we need an, a player, a B player, a C player in this position, or do you kind of evaluate the person as they come in and be like, Oh, this is a B player. That’s not going to work. This is an A-player.

Yes. Let’s. Let’s hire them now and pay them whatever to get it done.

Anthony: [00:12:12] That’s a, that’s a perfect question, Seth. It really is because in the early days we, we were just trying to find a players for every role always. And that was actually a mistake because you don’t. You don’t need a players in every single role.

B player is perfectly good in certain roles. You have to understand what those roles are, um, and hire appropriately. But the key then is if you put an, a player in a role, that’s it, that’s going to be sufficient for a B player that a player is going to burn out. They’re going to hit their natural ceiling because they know they can do better.

They can, they can do more. So they’ll feel contained and you need to give them passes to run freely. And so one of our things is okay, let’s hire for the position, what the position needs, but. Always keep her eyes open for an A-player because a players are few and far between like you, you can’t just go out there, put out an ad on Craigslist or indeed or ZipRecruiter, and then have them the next day.

It doesn’t really work like that. They’re more like a unicorn. And when they cross your path, you know, you need to do whatever it takes to get them into the end of the stable, because they, they, they’re just one of a kind. And, and honestly, what I would also say is like a players are situational dependent, right?

Like. Some people are going to be an, a player in a manufacturing environment. Some are going to be an, a player and, you know, um, illegal environment. And so it’s understanding if the person is finding that they’re not. Motivated or excited to go into work. They’re, you know, they’re not putting in the full effort.

It’s maybe not that you’re lazy. It’s maybe that you’re in the wrong environment. And, you know, as an employer, you have a responsibility as well to, you know, your staff, but to that individual to help them realize their full potential. And if they’re on a, if they’re on a seat in the bus, that’s not right for them, they’re going to fail.

You’re setting them up for failure. So put them in the right seat and that, and sometimes that right seat, unfortunately, isn’t on your bus.

Seth: [00:14:02] Right. Yeah. I mean, that just makes me think of that book, traction. I mean, put the right people in the right seats and if they’re not the right people and they’re not in the right seats, I mean, they can be one or the other.

And like you just said, I love that, you know, you might not even have that right seat for them, but it’s best for both of you to kind of move on and, and, and be in that right deed somewhere else.

Anthony: [00:14:21] And, and what I’ll say there too, is like, you can help people find the right seat, even if it’s not on your bus.

You know, we had a graphic designer for a number of years. He was fantastic for where we were at as a company and where he was at in his career trajectory. But there came a point when we S we realized, okay, we can’t take you any further. You’re not growing anymore. And our needs, aren’t going to be expanding.

And so this isn’t going to be good for you as an individual for your creativity and the longterm trajectory. So we helped them find a, a role at a. Another company that was going to be a much better fit for him. And because we did that, actually, he then, you know, when we were hiring for a shipping manager, he came back and he’s like, my wife would be perfect for that.

And it turns out she was a rockstar and she’s still with us today. And like, and so, you know, you can treat people, right. Even if they’re not going to be on your bus anymore, if you do that, I, I, I’m a big proponent of the idea of maximizing your return on karma and just doing right by the people that you’ve brought into your close fold.

Seth: [00:15:18] Yeah. Yeah, I agree, man. I mean, it always comes full circle, treat people with respect, look out for them and they’ll look out for you, you know, for lifetimes to come, um, you know, on this show, we always talk about inflection points and like, you know, aha moments, so to speak. So, you know, it seems like you’ve always been an entrepreneur for the most part and bill numerous successful businesses.

Um, but at what point in your life and in your career, did you have the aha moment to start looking at real estate as an investment vehicle?

Anthony: [00:15:49] Real estate’s interesting. Cause it’s number of intersections in my life where at that point I didn’t recognize it for what it was. So the first one I was in college, we were doing fix and flips with my roommate and his dad.

We did about three of those. And all I knew coming out of that experience was that I absolutely hate construction. Like I can swing the hammer, I can’t hit the nail. And so for the next decade, I wanted nothing to do with real estate because that’s what I had in my mind was real estate. And then fast forward about a decade of buddy comes to me and he’s like, Hey, I’m buying these quads and triplexes, do you want to do that together?

And I was like, well, not really. It doesn’t sound super interesting, but I’ll give you money. So you go do that. So he does that and you know, that’s been a nice passive investment, but it still didn’t click in my brain that it was something that I wanted it to do. So the inflection point, and I don’t even know if this story is true anymore, but it’s what I tell people, because it’s the closest moment I can remember two minutes.

Action point is driving into downtown Minneapolis one day and there was probably a sunset or sunrise. It’s probably really pretty because I was looking up at the skyline at the skyscrapers and I was hit with the question. What’s it. Take to buy a skyscraper. And that’s a really big question to try and answer.

And at that point I knew nothing about it. I didn’t even know where to start it. Like, does a person does an entity? Like, I, I don’t know. And now I don’t have any interest in owning a skyscraper. That’s not the point. Like I went into trying to answer that question and in trying to answer it, I got onto the rabbit tail, a trail of multi-family and there was something about.

That educational process as the light bulb started to go off about how interesting that sector is for a lot of reasons. One. You know, coming from the manufacturing background, it’s a really complicated, very complex environment. And what I love about real estate multi-family in particular is it’s really simple.

It’s like Lego pieces. What, they only go together in like 20 different ways, but once you know how they go together, you can build a death star attractor, you can build whatever you want with them. Right. And that’s what. Real estate became at that moment, I realized I could build anything with this, the sky’s the limit.

And once I understand the pieces, like we could, we could just go to the moon. And so that’s, that became interesting to me because through scale, we can have maximum impact and that’s something that I’ve always been really fascinated by when starting a business is asking, who are we impacting? Who are the lives that we can have a positive influence on.

And with real estate. I think too often, we look at these buildings as just the sticks, the bricks and the mortar. And how many units do you have under management? How many dollars? And we look at that, but we lose sight of the flesh and blood living inside of these apartment buildings and residents, renters, and landlords.

They have this inherent. Friction, this power dichotomy. And it’s a very, it’s very interesting having been a renter that this thing, that’s your home. It’s the most important place we sanctuary where you feel safe. You don’t fully own it because somebody, the sky or gal that you don’t even know. They might be making minimum wage, like a property manager can just come in and, you know, rip it out from underneath of you.

Or if your stoves out, you have to call them. And that’s like this weird power dichotomy that I was like, well, we can have a really positive influence on these people that we serve. And so that’s really, really gratifying. And then you go one step back and you say, okay, our employees, they can also have an incredible.

Experience, because they get to know at the end of the day, they’re helping put families into homes and take care of them and create memories. And there there’s something really powerful there. And then we go one step back, you know, for a long time, we were just buying assets ourselves. And it wasn’t until 2020 that we started raising money from passive investors because we realized, well, there’s, there’s another audience that we can serve.

And that’s our, you know, our brothers, our sisters, or our family and friends, people who, you know, they. They don’t know that real estate is open to them as an investing vehicle. They never learned about it. Like I only learned about it maybe five years ago. And so we can open this vehicle to them and give them the opportunity.

And now we have like this trifecta of, of people that we can positively impact. And it’s really powerful.

Seth: [00:20:04] Yeah. So I love that you highlighted, uh, all the different people that are actually benefiting from this. It’s not just the business. We’re helping people passively invest like our brothers or sisters or family members, um, our friends and family, and also that we’re able to transform these communities and help other people help the tenants really.

Um, you know, improve their lives by having a better place to live, both in the exteriors and the interiors creating, you know, going the extra step and creating afterschool programs and, you know, entertainment spaces and playgrounds and all that kind of good stuff that, that sometimes, uh, traditional landlords may have bypass, but we’re trying to actually improve these communities, improve the lives of the people that are living in them.

So I love that, man. And it’s, it’s good to highlight that and keep that in mind. So, um, you know, how were you able to scale so quickly? So do you, you said you just got started in 2020 with, um, you know, raising for other people’s money or using other people’s money to, to make a bigger and larger impact, uh, in this real estate world.

Uh, what are some of the things you did to, to help you scale?

Anthony: [00:21:07] So, yeah, there’s a, there’s a lot of creative ways, you know, for me, I bought my first property. Uh, it was a triplex. I wanted to understand the process, the system, I wanted to prove that I could operate a small business before I started scaling.

I wanted to do that on the smallest level. So I took out an FHA loan, went and bought a triplex for about 7,000. Dollars down. And then, you know, I would say learned, learned the ropes that way, and that was a really valuable learning experience. And through that I learned, well, I don’t want to be in the small multifamily sector.

I want, I need to be at least over four units because that property, I owned it for about two years. And the first nine months, it appreciated by $125,000 through zero effort of my own. So I didn’t put really any money into it. I didn’t run it more efficiently. It was just suddenly worth more money because all the comparable properties in that area were worth more.

And I really didn’t like that because it wasn’t based off of merit. Wasn’t controllable to any degree. And so that from there then started scaling, did a cash out refinance, take that money, roll into the next deal. And that’s pretty similar to how my partner, Dan, he got started as well. He started with a.

Well, actually a little bit more. Interestingly, he, his wife had a life insurance policy that has, that her grandfather started for her when she was a child. So there was a ton of equity built into that. And a lot of people aren’t aware that you could borrow against that, put that into real estate. And like this requires more sophistication and savvy, obviously understanding all the moving pieces, but generally, if you can use debt to acquire cashflow.

Producing assets that are in excess of the debt. That’s, that’s usually a net win. And so that was how we started. And then we started, you know, using our own money at a certain point, you run out of your own money because you know, real estate is very expensive. And that’s then where we saw this intersection and people were coming up, our friends and family were saying, Hey, we’re seeing you do all this.

Can we participate? And for a long time, I was really hesitant to the idea of taking other people’s money. And that’s because. I had a business. Well, it wasn’t my business, but my friends had a business that they had started and it wasn’t doing well. And I kind of had in my mind this golden touch, like I could fix this, I could fix any business, whatever, like too, too confident, not enough experience, not enough skill.

And I went into that and I said, Hey, I can, I can turn this around. We can fix this. And then, you know, Three years later, we had to shut the doors on it. Cause it just, I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t fix the thing. And I was left with this feeling of like, wow, I really run my friend’s dream into the ground. I couldn’t like, I, they trusted me with this thing and I didn’t do right by it.

And so for a long time, I was really hesitant to the idea of taking other people’s money. Cause I didn’t want to be in that situation again where people, you know, they work so hard. The money is very much like this. You can see the time and energy that went into acquiring it. It’s not just this hypothetical thing.

It’s not just cold, hard cash. It’s somebody whose life savings. It’s, somebody’s, you know, financial freedom. And so I was very hesitant for a long time to take that. And there came a point where, you know, somebody said something to the effect of you do the world, no favors by playing small. And that hit me because.

I had the ability. I knew I could help people. I knew I could help my brothers and sister. I have many brothers and sisters. I knew I could help them, um, by opening up this opportunity to them. But I was resistant out of fear and that fear is still there because when you take people’s money, it’s kind of the sacred trust and you have to do right by it.

But I think at the end of the day, if you’re not doing things that scare you a little bit, then you’re not growing. You’re not challenging yourself and you’re not playing at the edge of your abilities. Yeah.

Seth: [00:24:49] Yeah, I agree, man. And I had this, I had the same thought process. I mean, trying to get over that hump to be like, okay, well, I’m going to take somebody else’s hard earned money and invest it.

You’ve got to be confident enough to do that. You’ve got to put their money in front of yours. You’ve got to say, that’s, that’s even more important than my own money. It’s their money. And I’m going to treat it with a fiduciary duty almost to the point where it’s, like I said, more important than even your own.

So look out for it, uh, you know, with your life really? Um, cause like you said, it’s not just money, it’s their life savings. It’s their financial freedom. It’s their, it’s their long-term

Anthony: [00:25:25] future. Sure. That’s that’s exactly right. Like, um, it’s. For people that are just getting started in real estate. If you’re listening to this and you’ve just become like the light bulb is going on and you’re thinking multi-family is the way that you want to do that.

And maybe you’re thinking of going the active route, because I think syndication is the really sexy term these days everybody’s talking about it. Everybody’s a syndicator, even if they’ve never bought a piece of real estate themselves, just really take some time to like, do some deep soul searching and ask yourself what you would do in certain situations.

If things don’t go right and you’re facing the possibility of losing. Yeah. You know, your loved ones or, you know, even if you don’t love them other people’s money because. That’s a very real possibility that you need to, you know, they’ll come to grips with before you get into this business. Yeah.

Seth: [00:26:11] Yeah.

Build off of that a little bit. I mean, I know you focus a lot on creating educational content for people interested in real estate investing. So, you know, what are some of those tips for people that are just getting started? They’re just starting to look at. Um, you know, the larger commercial properties, maybe they’re thinking about getting into a fix and flip, who knows, and then, you know what, you know, what should they ask themselves?

What they should be, what should they be looking at to decide where to move forward?

Anthony: [00:26:36] So I’m a big fan of always starting with the end in mind. Like where do you want to go? Where do you want to be in 10, 15, 20 years, and then working backwards and figuring out what’s the next easiest, smallest step necessary to make progress towards that goal.

And we hear all the time, 10 X, 10 X, 10 X, and that’s, that’s great advice in theory. And I’m, I have nothing against it generally, but in practical application, it’s not super helpful, especially because. Have you just dive into really big commercial real estate, you’re probably gonna get hurt or you’re gonna hurt somebody else.

And one of the things that we try to keep at the forefront of our minds is we fail our way to success. But only if we have micro failures and macro successes, because if you fail so bigly bigly, if you fail so big that it kills you or it like kills the company, then that was no good. It was, it was a bad failure.

So we can’t be afraid to fail, but we can’t fail too big that it breaks us. And so. I’m a big fan of start with what’s just one step outside of your comfort zone. If right now that’s educating yourself. Good. Go educate yourself. If the next step is networking. Okay. Take the next step and get outside yourself and start networking.

If that’s I’m ready to buy something, I need to now prove that I can do this thing. Then start with where you’re confident that you, you can Excel. But you’re also still a little bit of afraid that maybe you can’t. And so I, I’m not a big fan of just going really big initially. Like if your first property is over a hundred units, that’s man, that terrifies the heck out of me, just knowing what I know about, you know, buildings and how complicated this business can be.

If you have business experience with other. Um, ventures. That can be very, very helpful. I think a lot of people are looking to get out of their W2 and they see real estate as Avenue to do that. And they’ve never operated a business. They’ve never run a PNL or a balance sheet, and they don’t know how to do that stuff.

Then you definitely need to start small and learn those skills because. Everybody can write in their Instagram profile that they’re an entrepreneur. Like there’s no test that you have to take, nobody’s coming and looking over your shoulder and you can do that. Like, you can just go start a business tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean that you have the skills to successfully operate yet.

And so I would, I would take a hard look internally and say, okay, where am I weak? What do I need to do to get those skills? And I, I’m not saying that you need to just go. Yeah. Like always be afraid to, to jump in. Cause at some point you got to, but make sure that when you jump in that you can at least see the bottom of the water and you know how deep you’re getting in.

Yeah. Yeah.

Seth: [00:29:07] I mean, you’ve got to fill in that education and potentially the experience part before you jump in and go all the way. I mean, a lot of times people will invest passively first, before they invest actively. That’s a good way to get started. Not saying you have to do it that way, but a lot of people will have done it.

Did you invest passively in the large commercial deals before you went active?

Anthony: [00:29:25] No, not in the large deals. You know, I did that first passive deal, uh, passive with the quads with my buddy. And that was really more of a joint venture than it was like a passive investment in a syndication. And then I got to the point where I just started buying my own properties and then started joint venturing and then started syndicating on those.

Um, so I never went that passive route, but the passive route is a very powerful one for people. If they want a peek behind the hood, See how operators on the other side are doing it. So if you have aspirations of being active, that can be a really great way to do it. I also find that a lot of people, they think they want to be active.

And then at the end of the day, when you really get down to it, they tell them it’s not what you think it is. It’s a whole, it’s a whole different thing. Um, and so just honestly auditing your skillset and your desire and like what it is that you’re trying to do because. It’s a full-time gig, especially syndicating.

Like if you want to be a syndicator, it’s a full-time thing. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s going to be hard to Excel at it if you’re only doing it. Part-time and I, I personally wouldn’t invest with somebody who was just doing it part-time because it’s my money. And like, I want to know that this is your soul football that you’re focused on.

Seth: [00:30:34] Yeah. Yeah. And I see that same thing, man. I mean, people think that they want to be active, so they’ll invest passively first and then they realize, well, wait, I’ve got a full-time W2. I’m making a lot of money as a doctor or a lawyer or whatever it is. It really doesn’t make sense for me to, to kind of move my energy into something like that when I’m already making a lot of money and I can just invest passively and the returns are there.

So as, as we’re just kind of keep that, keep that thing turned and you’re going to end up creating some financial freedom for yourself anyways.

Anthony: [00:31:01] Yeah. People, people are generally surprised. I think when they start getting into the passive investing side to see and seeing the returns it’s benefits and going, Oh, well actually I thought I wanted to be active, but these are really good returns.

Like I’m fine. No, thank you. You guys do the work. I’m cool. You like, and if you have a job that you like. Or love, like why, why leave it for the people out there who are just like, so discontent with where they are in the work that they’re doing? Sure. This can be an Avenue for, for getting out of that. But if you generally like what you do and you wake up every day excited to go do it, like you might not need to change.

Seth: [00:31:35] Right. Exactly. Exactly. All right, man, before we jumped into the freedom for any last golden nugget for our listeners,

Anthony: [00:31:42] You know, the, the biggest one that I’ve been thinking about a lot for the last four months is play longterm games with long-term people. So regardless of what you’re doing, if you’re a passive investor, or if you want to be an active investor, you need to take the really long view.

So you’re not just taking an investor’s money this one time, and you’re not just giving this guy your money or the scale, your money this one time. Think about it on a 10 to 15 year timeframe. Nobody’s getting rich in this business on one deal. They’re getting. Wealthy over time as the best get rich, slowly scheme there is, but you need to play longterm games with long-term.

People love

Seth: [00:32:13] it, man. Love it. All right. Let’s jump into the freedom for

Anthony: [00:32:16] let’s do it. It’s time for the freedom for

Seth: [00:32:20] what’s the best thing you do to keep your mind and body healthy.

Anthony: [00:32:24] So every morning, first thing I do when I get out of bed is I go and I work out for half an hour in the garage. So that could be treadmill, lifting weights, calisthenics, to go play tennis, like whatever it is, like I have to move my body first.

And then the next thing that I do is meditate. So that’s a workout for the mind, and I do that for about an hour every morning. Um, and those are the two most impactful things that I would recommend for anybody to implement into their

Seth: [00:32:47] lives. Yep. I can, I can second, both of those man in an alternative universe where you weren’t involved in your current businesses, what would you be doing?

Anthony: [00:32:57] Yeah. Wow. I think I’d probably be doing some kind of business. I don’t, I can’t imagine that I wouldn’t be doing some sort of business. Um, You know, if my body had held out, I could see myself still competing in some, some sports I can see that have gone, have gone a different direction. I cannot imagine a world where I was ever going to be an employee though.

Like a W2 corporate, uh, world. I CA I could just not see that.

Seth: [00:33:21] Yeah. Yeah. That was pretty interesting for you because you have such a wide array of businesses. So it was like, okay, well you take away all those businesses. What would I do? You know? I don’t know something else.

Anthony: [00:33:32] Certainly

Seth: [00:33:32] one. Yeah. So where were you at?

Five years ago. And where do you see yourself? Five years from now?

Anthony: [00:33:38] Five years ago. What was that been? 2016. Oh, it’s this is, I was living in. Nashville Tennessee. I had just moved there from San Francisco. I had followed a woman down there and I was writing science fiction and fantasy full-time and I learned something really valuable, which was, you need to be really careful about the dreams that you dream because sometimes the dog does catch the car.

And then what do you do? And I thought that I wanted to be a full-time writer. That’s all I wanted to do. But what ended up happening was I lived. And breathed in my office. I never left, never saw another human. I just spent all day daydreaming about aliens and lasers and robots and things that go boom.

And that was really, really bad for me because it gave into my natural tendency, which is to be a hermit and a curmudgeon and an introvert. And I started getting really depressed because of that. And I, I had to make a pivot because I was like, I thought this is what I wanted, but the lifestyle is not good for me.

So I had to, I had to break out of that. That’s where I was at.

Seth: [00:34:38] Gotcha. How about five years from now?

Anthony: [00:34:42] Five years from now? Oh, I hope I’m still fit healthy, happy. That’s all I really care about. I hope that I’m making more impact. In five years and I’m making now that’s the metric that I judge success by is like, how much impact am I having on the lives around me and how happy am I, if I’m not happy, then what’s the point of any of it.

And if I’m not having impact, then I’m squandering my ability. Cause I know I can, I can have impact. That’s perfect,

Seth: [00:35:09] man. That’s probably the best answer I’ve heard so far. How has passive income made your life better?

Anthony: [00:35:16] It’s just opened up so much more time and freedom at the end of the day, money is only a vehicle for buying back our time and you only have so much of it.

So, you know, and so you need to figure out how to start buying back as much of it as quickly as possible. And passive investing is the best way that I found to do that because you don’t have to be an expert. You don’t have to put tons of time and energy and into this thing, and specifically where it applies to real estate.

I find. The, the mental comfort of the inherent stability of these assets to be very, very comforting. So you could passively invest in the stock market. And I do that as well, but that always comes with a whole lot more edge in the back of your mind. And I think it really matters how you make your money.

If you make your money in a stressful way, and you wake up every day with a knot in your stomach, because you don’t know if it’s going to be there, or if it’s going to disappear overnight, that’s, that’s not a good way to live your life. And so I love passive investing apartments because. It’s it’s stable.

It’s you can set a clock to it. You can, you have so much more control. And so that’s, that’s how it’s impacted my life.

Seth: [00:36:23] I love it, man. Love it, man. Anthony, where can our listeners find out more about you?

Anthony: [00:36:28] You can find me at invictusmultifamily.com. We have a bunch of free resources over, but right now the one that’s probably the most interesting is the five rules of investing, where we just studied, you know, billionaire real estate investors to figure out what were their tips or tricks or tactics.

And we just broke those down to five rules. So you can go download that. Otherwise we have a podcast called multifamily investing made simple, and it’s just, you know, real estate can be really scary and daunting overwhelming. And our goal is just to show, Hey, It’s simple. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it’s simple and you can understand it and you, you can have a place in this vehicle as well.

Great.

Seth: [00:37:02] It was awesome having you on today, brother.

Anthony: Thanks for having me great conversation.

Seth: Anthony is awesome. Everything this man touches seems to turn to gold. It was great to hear how all of his seemingly unrelated businesses are actually related beginning with his passion for rock climbing. Uh, I believe the key takeaways from this episode or that for a successful business to thrive, uh, consistently you need to have great leadership that systematizes and puts the right people.

In the right seats, they have an understanding of their business. They have an understanding of the people within it. Now this can be at your law firm, your own small business, or your next real estate or side hustle, venture, whatever it might be. Keep the end goal in mind and understand your people to learn more about our upcoming investments.

Join the Esquire Investor Club by going to passiveincomeattorney.com and clicking. Join the club. All right guys, until next time. Enjoy the journey.