Progress Is Process

The Amplified Impact Podcast
January 2nd, 2023

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This is one of the most important lessons of 2021.

Progress is a process.

Focusing on this idea, Anthony reflects on his own personal and professional growth over the course of the previous year.

Greatness is, indeed, within all of us, and that we should strive for alignment with our true potential through consistent effort.

So take a moment, and recognize your progress.

 

TWEETABLE QUOTE:

“Again, progress is a process that doesn’t look like much in the moment.” – Anthony Vicino

 

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Episode Transcript:

09_Progress is a Process (2021 Lessons 1)

Anthony: [00:00:00] Hey, what’s up guys? Welcome to Amplified Impact. This is the podcast where we try to figure out how the heck we can maximize our return on life by building better businesses and investing in real estate. I’m Anthony Vicino. If you don’t know me, I’m a serial entrepreneur, co-founding partner of Invictus Capital.

Anthony: We have about 30 million of assets under management. I’ve built multiple. Seven, eight figure companies from the ground up and yeah, I’m just on this quest to become the absolute best version of myself as possible. Tying back to something that Abraham Maslow said, you might be familiar with him in his hierarchy of needs, but.

Anthony: He said something else that I found so pivotal and important for my life to put into context why I feel driven to accomplish the things that I do. And maybe you can relate to this. He said that which we can be, we must be. And , it’s this recognition that inside of us all, there’s greatness. Nobody believes themselves that they are average.

Anthony: Nobody thinks that they were put onto this planet to be mediocre. And so inside of us all, we have this greatness that we are trying to manifest and move towards, but it becomes difficult. We get [00:01:00] frustrated and angry and just discontent. When we know that we’re not living in alignment with that greatness.

Anthony: So this is the podcast where we’re going to try and figure out how to heck we can move towards our potential chasing our capacity, as we say around these parts. And to that end, we’re going to be diving into, if you haven’t listened to last two episodes, I, I laid out 21 of the lessons that I learned in 2021 because 2021 lessons seemed like it would fit really well with 21 next year.

Anthony: Maybe we’ll do 22. I don’t know. It seemed like it made sense. So I, I unpacked 21 lessons that I learned over the last two episodes, just kind of giving you the list of them. And now we’re going to dive into each one of those lessons a little bit more deeply and intently. And, and what’s really interesting about these lessons, and I said this in the previous episodes, again, if you haven’t listened to those, you probably should just be, get some context.

Anthony: But there’s not anything in here in any of these lessons that’s going to be revelatory. It’s not like revolutionary. It’s not going to change the way that [00:02:00] you see the world. In fact, a lot of this is stuff that you probably have already heard before in one form or another. But sometimes learning is less about like learning something new, and it’s more about remembering something you already know.

Anthony: And for me, as I sat down to reflect on these lessons of 2021, I was like, you know what? I know all these. It’s just for whatever reason, they hit differently this year. They just had a different importance. So I’m not saying these are the most important lessons ever in life. I’m just saying these are the ones that came to mind in 2021.

Anthony: So today the, the focus is lesson number one, and these are in no particular order. So if you think like number one, we’re kicking it off with this one, that must be the best one. I’m sorry to disappoint. It might be the best one. It might not be. I, I don’t know. It could be just middle of the pack. But, , today’s lesson is progress is a process that doesn’t look like much in the.

Anthony: And this one’s, this was a big one for me because 2021 was a very large growth year for me as an individual, but then also for my companies, Invictus in particular. And what stuck [00:03:00] out to me like, to give a little bit of context, last year we acquired about 30 million of assets. , we wrote a book. We wrote and published an Amazon bestselling book.

Anthony: We published over a hundred podcast episodes just on multi-family investing Made simple. I had another podcast Brain Dump that put out another 50-ish episodes. So a lot of content going out there into the. And we got on stage for the first time, spoke on in front of a thousand people at Jake and Gino’s Multi-Family Mastery.

Anthony: So it was like an incredible year where so much amazing stuff happened. You’d look at it and you’re like, man, those guys crushed it. But I was left with the feeling like every, I remember I look at my journal and like I look at my state of mind and what I was, the kind of verbiage and language I was using in my journal throughout the year, and the language was.

Anthony: We’re not there yet. We’re not growing fast enough. Like I don’t feel like I’m making progress. I don’t see it. And so like even with like all of these enormous accomplishments, there was still like [00:04:00] these gaps and gains throughout the year where it’s like nothing’s happening. So like you look at the book, a book is like a really good example.

Anthony: That got published in August. It hit number one on Amazon. Stayed up there for a couple of weeks. It’s been more or less than the top 10 ever since. That’s awesome. But that book took like almost a year and a half. Yeah, a year and a half to write. And so there was like day after day after day of just showing up and putting words onto the page.

Anthony: And sometimes those words were really bad. Sometimes they were okay. But it was just a, it’s just a slog, right? Writing a book is always hard. I’ve written, that was number 13. That was my 13th book. And it like, maybe gets easier, but it never gets easy. And the, the distance between like when you’re working and creating the product and then actually delivering it for the result is so long sometimes that it doesn’t even feel like you’re moving.

Anthony: It doesn’t make you feel like you’re making any progress. Cause like, Put this in the context. That book was about 65,000 words and I aim to write about a thousand words a [00:05:00] day. So you just do the math on that. It’s like 60 days to write, and then you figure how many times you have to go back and edit it, and then all the design and then like putting it in front of people to get their feedback and then editing edit again.

Anthony: And like it just takes so much darn time to do these things. And it’s the. With real estate buying assets, it takes a long time because you can’t just rush out there and say, I want this building, I’m going to buy it at any number. Like it doesn’t work like that. You have to spend a lot of time just kind of sitting on your hands and just waiting for an opportunity to arise.

Anthony: So that can leave you with the sense that like, you’re not making progress because it comes in like these fits and starts sometimes where it’s like all of a sudden the, it’s like compounding interest where it doesn’t feel like it’s doing anything until it hits this inflection point and then all of a sudden you look and you’re like, holy crap, that’s really growing, , like exponentially at this point.

Anthony: It’s crazy. But before that moment, it’s just like, what’s the point of compounding interest when you have a hundred dollars in the bank and it’s compounding at 2% per day, per year. Like, it doesn’t do anything. . But once you hit that critical mass, things get crazy. And it’s the same with like [00:06:00] I think life and any accomplishment in general.

Anthony: Like whether you’re in a sport, you’re building a business, you’re investing in real estate, like whatever it is, progress is a process that doesn’t look like much in the moment. And that’s because. It just we’re, we’re maintaining static, we’re putting in the work every single day, showing up, being consistent, diligent, doing the work, but that work doesn’t really, like, you need a lot of it to pile on top of each other before you’re able to crawl up that dirt mound and get onto the next level.

Anthony: And that is a really weird analogy, but it kind of made sense in my mind as I was saying it. So we’re going to roll with it. So I guess the takeaway here is really, okay, what do we do then to find contentment, fulfillment, and a accomplishments or a sense of achievement or success, , in those long gaps between the external validating the circumstances of, I bought a property, or I published a book, right?

Anthony: Because. If it takes a year and a half to publish a book and [00:07:00] that’s the dopamine hit that you’re waiting for, is like that moment, like then you’re going to spend a year and a half just in this space of constantly looking forward and wondering, how do I get there faster? Why am I not there yet? And you hear it all the time, like right process.

Anthony: Not outcome, it’s all about the work that you’re doing. It’s the journey and success really. Like the way I manifest or think about it is that success is a, is a road. It’s not the destination, it’s just we’re trying to make another step, another, , forward, a little bit more forward moment on that road of success and trying to avoid ever taking steps backwards, because that can definitely happen as well.

Anthony: And it, my chair just popped down, so if you guys are watching the video and you saw me just get. That was my chair just dropping me to the floor. . So, but if we think about success as that road, then really what we need to be focusing on is that day-to-day action, , that work that we’re putting in, because it’s going to take a whole lot of that to level up our skills and get to the place where we’re putting out things into the universe that [00:08:00] we can look back on proudly and say, I did.

Anthony: And I know it’s easy to say that, , like, hey, focus on the process. Be happy with like, the journey. But also I recognize that I’m hypocrite in the sense that when I’m showing up and doing the work often I am also, , fantasizing about that end state that result, and I’m just wanting to get there. So it is like this yin yang, push, pull, stability, chaos, , relationship.

Anthony: So maybe just be, you know, compassionate with yourself if you’re in that place where you’re struggling with that decision. But recognize, like one of the greatest things I’ve, I’ve figured out that works for keeping me in the moment focused on the process is to like set up intermediate, checkpoints and trying to find ways to measure.

Anthony: and celebrate the progress that I’m making on any given day. So I have a whole bunch of type, different types of to-do lists and checklists, things that I get to go in check off on a box when I do the thing. So like for instance, I have the [00:09:00] rules of my life, which is a list of. It’s ever growing, but right now there’s probably like 15 or 20.

Anthony: Actually, I have it pulled up right here. So how many I got here? We got 22 rules that I live my life by, which is every single day. These are the things that I’m trying to like check off and they’re, they’re little things like every single day, recite my yearly goals or every single day, spend 30 minutes learning or every single day work workout for 30 minutes or time block my day.

Anthony: And every time I get to do those things, I get to check them off the box. And so I get to look at that and I get to have that dopamine, that, that, , sense of accomplishment to say, look at that. I’m making progress, I’m doing the thing. Even if I can’t see the result. Now I’ve identified that these are my lead measures, which are more important than the lag measures, because the lag measure is I want to lose 20 pounds.

Anthony: Okay. Well the only way to know than when you’ve lost 20 pounds is when you go to the skill to measure yourself. And you either did it or you didn’t. It’s. Whereas the lead measure is less about, I’m going to lose the weight, and more about what are the actions that you’re taking every single day, that if [00:10:00] you do them consistently, you believe will maximize your opportunity or your chances or likelihood.

Anthony: Of accomplishing the lag measure. So that might be okay. Instead of focusing on losing the weight, I’m going to focus on eating, , a salad every day, or drinking three bottles of water every single day, or getting to the gym for an hour every day. Like, those are the lead steps that if you do these things, hopefully they lead to the lag.

Anthony: and because progress is a process that doesn’t look like much in the moment, that’s because it takes so long to achieve those lag measures. We have to find ways to measure those lead measures, those things in our life that we can control on a daily basis so that we can reward and, and acknowledge that we are making progress.

Anthony: Because I, I think one of the things that hans need to have, if they want to be successful or they want to have a sense of success and they want to have a feeling of fulfillment. Or just content is they have to feel like they are making progress. We’re like sharks. If you’re not swimming forwards, you’re drowning.

Anthony: Hans are like that, like [00:11:00] the people who lives have just kind of stalled out. They’re no longer making progress in their relationships or in their health or in their careers. Those are the people that start to slide into depression or just slide into this state of chaotic entropy. So we need to be moving forward.

Anthony: We have to have a sense of forward progress, and that can be hard. Again, progress is a process that doesn’t look like much in the moment. So that was one of the lessons that I learned in 2021, not the necessarily the most important one, but a very important one definitely for maintaining the mindset and the habits to rituals that you need to have if you want to chase and maybe someday even catch your capacity.

Anthony: So hopefully, I hope, I hope, I hope you found some of this, , ranting this pontificating. This monologuing. Interesting. Hopefully it brought you a little bit of value, and if it did, hey, do me a favor. Just go share it with a friend and a family member, somebody that you think would benefit from hearing the message of today’s [00:12:00] , podcast.

Anthony: And if you get a chance, also go drop a review on iTunes, because that just helps algorithm, helps us think spread so that other people can come into the community and hopefully they can amplify their impact in the world as well. So without further ado, get on out of here. Go tackle your day and I’ll see you tomorrow.

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