Two Mistakes I Keep Making
The Amplified Impact Podcast
June 12th, 2023
During my Instagram AMA, someone asked me, “What mistakes do you find yourself continually making?”
It’s an excellent question because we often know what we should do…yet still find ourselves making the same mistakes over and over.
The first mistake is what I like to call “shiny object syndrome.”
Now, I could blame it on my ADHD or my inherent love for novelty, but the truth is, humans are naturally drawn to new and exciting things.
The challenge arises when we get caught up in pursuing these shiny objects that distract us from our primary goals.
Often, the answer lies in doing more of what we already know we should be doing.
The second mistake I frequently make is waiting too long to start.
Procrastination often stems from the difficulty of taking the initial step.
We spend too much time planning, researching, and perfecting before we even begin. However, speed is crucial in both business and life.
You’ll never feel completely ready, and the best preparation is getting into the battle itself.
How about you? What are your personal challenges? What mistakes do you find yourself continually making?
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“There’s something very sexy about being able to take something from nothing and build something there and be able to say, I did that.”- Anthony Vicino
LEAVE A REVIEW if you liked this episode!!
Let’s Connect On Social Media!
instagram.com/theanthonyvicino
Join an exclusive community of peak performers at Beyond the Apex University learning how to build a business, invest in real estate, and develop hyperfocus.
Learn More About Investing With Anthony
Invictus Capital: www.invictusmultifamily.com
Multifamily Investing Made Simple Podcast
Passive Investing Made Simple Book: www.thepassiveinvestingbook.com
Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
Hey, yo, what’s up everybody? Just got back from a walk, feeling really good. I’m doing something a little bit different here. I’m recording in the evening time, whereas usually I do all my creative work in the morning right after I wake up, after I do a workout. I thought I’d do something different here. So I thought I’d come on this evening and see if the energy is any different, see if the insights are any more insightful, more poignant. Probably not. I mean, I’m still just me after all. Doesn’t matter what time of day it is.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:24]:
But there is some true to the idea that we do work better at certain times of the day. And that if we can get in flow with understanding where our energy levels are throughout the day because we go through these ultraian rhythms every 90 minutes or so, where we’re in like go in these high energy states or high focus states and then come back down into these low energy kind of recharged battery states. And so it’s important to really, I think, what’s the word? Coincide or sync up. Yeah, sync up. The type of work you do with your energy level so that you understand when do you do your best creative work, your best administrative work? Anyways, something we talk about a lot on this podcast and has literally, literally nothing to do with what I want to talk about in this episode today, which is a question that I got. I recently did an AMA or an Ask Me Anything on Instagram, went live over there, and I only intended to stay on for like 15 minutes, and next thing you know, I’m on for a full hour. You guys were awesome over there. You asked a ton of amazing questions.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:23]:
There’s a lot of engagement. And so it was really cool we kept going. And if you’re interested in catching those, I’m going to be doing those once a week. I don’t know what day it is, so I would recommend you go follow me on Instagram at the Anthony Vasino. And that’s where I will announce it, most likely every week and saying, hey, this is when we’re going to go live. Come join me, ask me anything. Let’s have a conversation, get to know each other, try and take this digital relationship and just go a little bit deeper with it. Anyways, one of the questions we got this week, and I thought it was a good one, I didn’t get a chance to answer it in that session, so I thought I would bring it to you guys here.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:58]:
Question is, I can’t remember if it was what is the mistake or what are the mistakes? But anyways, what are the mistakes that you find yourself continually making? And this is a really good question, I think, because I think it’s a good question that we’d all ask ourselves is trying to understand what are those things that though we know what we should do or how we should do something. We tend to keep making the mistake and doing it wrong or falling into the age old traps. And so I thought about this a little bit and there’s two things that immediately came to mind. So if they came immediately to my mind, then they are probably the mistakes that I continually make the most frequently. And these two I think you might be able to relate to. I think a lot of people listening to this will be able to relate. So the first one is shiny object syndrome. I can blame my ADHD.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:49]:
I can say I have this fleeting attention span. I am a dopamine seeking missile. And so I am always looking for new novel things that keep my brain excited and engaged. I can blame that, but I’m not going to. Truth is, I’m a human. Humans like novelty. We like new things. And so I find myself particularly struggling with shiny object syndromes.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:11]:
Now. I’m much, much better now than I was, say, 10, 15, 20 years ago. Like coming into college and out of college, I was a hot mess. If there was a shiny object, if there was anything even remotely interesting beyond the thing that I was doing in that moment, I was like I was on it. So couldn’t stay on task to save my life. Very frustrating. But the way that shiny object syndrome gets me tripped up these days is more around opportunities, more around the opportunities in my business or other business opportunities. And this gets hard because when you’re building a business, you want to be mindful of the possibility that you’re doing things wrong or that there’s a better way to do it or that there’s other opportunities that you should be pursuing.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:52]:
And rather maybe it’s time to pivot, right? You’re always wondering, like, is it time to pivot? And what I found is it can be very tempting. We can rationalize, we can lie to ourselves in a lot of cases to say, yes, this is not a shiny object. This is actually the direction, that’s the beacon, that’s the beacon I’m supposed to be going towards, not just some shiny object. It’s not just a shiny nickel at the bottom of a stream. That is the beacon of light towards which I should be marching my army. And we can convince ourselves of that. And I’ve been prone to do that over the years and even now still. And I have to continually bring myself back and reassess what are the most important things like getting back to that idea of what are the priorities that are going to move you towards your goal and just always being really clear about that.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:33]:
Because if you’re not very clear about your desired end state, then you can easily find yourself justifying any path to go any direction. And so number one rule is always know where you’re trying to get to and then run the shiny objects through the filter of, is this going to help me get there or is this a distraction? Is this the perception of an easier way to get there? When in reality, what I really need to do is just continue doing what I’m doing? And in a lot of cases, the answer is just do more of what you already know you should be doing. So that’s the first mistake I make a ton. I make that so frequently. And in the case in .2 years ago at Invictus, for those that are familiar with our real estate private equity firm, we buy apartment buildings, preexisting apartment buildings. We go in there, we make them better, we make better communities for our residents. We improve their lives and we add value. That’s what we do.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:25]:
A couple of years ago, we started getting shiny object syndrome. We started thinking, well, maybe instead of just going, buying these preexisting apartment buildings, maybe we could just go buy a plot of land and build our own apartment building. And that’s called development for those that aren’t like, in the real estate know how. And that’s a completely different game than just going and buying a building. And we’ve bought 30 plus buildings and we thought, hey, maybe it’s time to expand and try something else. And so we spent the better part of a year talking to other people who were developers and researching this new asset class, this new type of business model, because it was shiny, it was new, it was sexy. There’s something very sexy about being able to take something from nothing and build something there and be able to say, I did that. So we were drawn to that truthfully.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:09]:
And by the end of the year, we looked back and I was like, you know what? We are wasting a lot of time and energy trying to learn in something that we have no clue about, that we’re not necessarily even passionate about. But because it’s a potential opportunity, it seems like progress. We’ve been wasting a lot of time and energy towards that. And when we decided to pull the plug and say, let’s just stay in our lane and do what we know and just keep doing more of it, our business exploded. We went from like 30 million in assets under management to doubling the next year. So now we’re like 70, 75. And this year we’re going to do the same. We’re going to double again, go up to 150,000,000.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:42]:
We already have it in the pipeline now. Everything’s under contract. So that’s the power of staying focused and on track. The second mistake that I make very frequently is waiting too long to start. And what I mean by that is a lot of times procrastination occurs because we have a hard time initiating the task. Like starting is the hardest part of any activity. There’s this really cool phrase somebody said once it was something to the effect of, like, it will take 20 years to complete this project, but 19 of those years will be spent thinking about taking the first step or something to that effect. And I find that incredibly true, especially when it comes to business and launching products or taking initiatives or launching anything.
Anthony Vicino [00:07:32]:
We often take way too much time to take those steps to take the action when in business and in life, speed is king. Speed wins championships. And so the ability, like your ability to get things done is often predicated on how compressed you can make the timeline between when you have the thought and when you bring that thought into fruition. And I think Alex RamosI was talking about this on a podcast I was listening to recently, and I think he put it really interesting way. He said, if we think about power as the gap between when we have a thought and our ability to make that thought reality, then an omnipotent being, an all powerful being, would think and the thing would be done. They would think reality into being right. And that’s our perception of an omnipotent being. They think, and therefore it is.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:23]:
And so then as we’re humans, there is a gap between when we think the thing and then when we actually create the thing. The more powerful you are then is your ability to shrink that time period to make it as short as possible. And in that regardless of whether or not that product, that thing that you end up making is good or the right thing, even, you learn so much in that process of having started. And I find that learning, 80% of my learning occurs, like, within the first handful of hours on a task. And instead of sitting and trying to research and plan perfectly, spending 20 hours without actually taking action and trying to get everything just right before we start, you’re probably wasting a lot of time. And I find that that’s been the big mistake that I often make, is just waiting too long to start thinking it’s going to be harder. I need to be more prepared. I need to do more planning.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:15]:
I’m not quite ready yet. And the truth is, you’ll never feel ready. No matter how much information you collect, you will never feel ready. The only thing that’s going to prepare you for getting better at battle is getting into battle. That’s it. So try to decrease at that time between when you have the thought and when you get into the battle, because everything else is just wasted. Like you’re just wasting one of your most precious resources, which is your time. So those are two mistakes that I make.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:42]:
I keep making. Can’t stop, can’t stop, won’t stop. Probably shiny object syndrome, waiting too long to start. So I’m curious, what are your big mistakes that you keep making the things that you know you shouldn’t, you know better, but you just keep falling back into the trap. Find me on Instagram at the Anthony Vasina, shoot me a DM and let me know. What’s the thing that you’re struggling with, the mistake that keeps coming back up. And excited, as always, to see you back here tomorrow. But until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
This Week On YouTube
These 3 Daily Habits Made Me A Millionaire in 3 Years
Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:
1. Unleash your hyperfocused mind to dominate life, business, and everything in between? Here’s how:
→ The Hyperfocused Masterclass: the exact system I used to overcome ADHD, write 12 books, build 4 businesses, and acquire $70M of real estate.
There are a handful of spaces left in The Hyperfocus Masterclass for those who want to snag the early bird preorder special discount of $49.
Email anthony@anthonyvicino.com to let me know you want on the waitlist.
2. Learn to passively invest in commercial real estate with better returns, less risk, and zeo hassle.
→ Invictus Capital: my real estate private equity firm.
→ Multifamily Investing Made Simple: Top Apple Podcast.
→ Passive Investing Made Simple: Amazon Best Selling Book with 100 5 star reviews.
3. Want more like this? Check out these 3 popular articles from the vault:
