I read a fantastic thread by @brentBeshore that really stuck with me and got me thinking about my own list of answers to the question:
“What are the ten most powerful ideas that changed your life”
Here is what I came up with 👇
1⃣Radical Transparency / Honesty
The world already has enough puffery and fluff.
I decided many years ago that I would instead lead with the truth even if it was ugly, and let the pieces fall where they may. I can say with certainty this changed everything for me.
2⃣Look at the Big Picture
I worked with a partner who was easily 10X smarter than me. He would find genius-level solutions to complex problems yet miss that the project should be dumped because the market shifted. Sapiens by @harari_yuval brings focus to our place in history.
3⃣ Respect Everyone.
This sounds obvious, but I can assure you it isn’t. Respecting everyone, regardless of what they can do for you is something that pays off in 🪣🪣 over time. I don’t always get this right, but I am committed to never stop trying.
4⃣Strong Opinions Weakly Held
Or a different way to say it is, “You are only as young as the last time you changed your mind”. The world is in a state of constant change, and we should always-always-always be learning and evolving to keep up.
5⃣ Talk Less, Listen More
I can’t say enough about how things changed for me when I learned to ask a few simple yet powerful questions and then shut my mouth and wait for an answer. Allow the awkward silence to hang in the room, just sit quietly and listen. Observe. Learn.
6⃣ Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. Voltaire
The older I get the less I am sure about. I’ve tried hard to embrace the fact that we can only know part of the truth about any situation, the key is learning to identify relevant data then play the odds.
7⃣ Never underestimate the power of a good story
Whenever possible, communicate what you have to say through a story, and you will get 10X the buy-in from your audience.
Also, don’t be afraid to repeat a story.
8⃣ Everything will be ok as soon as you are ok with everything.
Learning to calm my heartbeat, feel my breath, and know deep inside of my core that I am fundamentally ok regardless of what is going on around me has been transformational for me. The @10percent app is 🎯
9⃣ Extreme Generosity
Learning to hold what you have with open hands changes who you are for the better. Give 💰 and ideas and both will come back to you in multiples.
🔟 Change the landscape - things and people will change themselves.
We often get stuck thinking that the best way to change our world is by complaining. Instead, I have been learning to change the landscape. Change jobs. Move cities. Stop going to those crap meetings.
Hop back to the top and retweet if you learned something new today! 👊
You can follow me at @levijameshere, I tweet about real estate and growing Harbor Capital where we are assembling a $1B portfolio of industrial properties in Texas.
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Gotta be honest. Sharing my track record today was/is terrifying. Including the 2008 losses in a document now seen by over 40,000 people ranks up there on the emotional intensity scale for me. It’s hard not to feel like deals that went south define you.
Biggest lesson for me is be wary of deals that don’t generate cashflow. I had $40M in land dev properties at the same time, in 2008… In Northern California…
It doesn’t matter that I’ve done 160M in equity raises since that time and that those investments have done well.
That project that isn’t in your wheelhouse but you are considering taking on because it’s a “once in a lifetime opportunity”, you should probably pass on it. 👇
I spent more of my life than I care to admit thinking that I could make any type of deal work if I just pushed hard enough. I got lucky a bunch of times but didn’t know it was luck. I thought it was me. 🤦♂️
Turns out the best way to consistently build wealth isn’t by getting lucky, it’s by getting really freaking, better-than-the-rest, good at one type of market.
14 Undisputable rules for building a strong fundraising pipeline
After 20 years and more than $200M raised for real estate investments around the 🌎 I created a simple set of rules that we use to raise money. These aren't hacks or cheat codes, just the right way to do things.
Before we start, I need to address the 🐘: Not all GPs have the same starting line for raising 💸. Some have connections that help them go big out of the gate. Over time, however, track records win out, and a GP will have access to the capital flow they deserve.
1 Operate with integrity - A GP has many opportunities to hide little facts or make things sound better than they really are. Don’t go down that dark road, even if it makes life easier in the short term. ALWAYS operate with integrity down to the penny in everything you do.
Interesting new industrial tenant we started working with to lease space from us. Business model is a new twist on the 3PL model, this time for corporate clients. 👇
They are basically the WeWork of industrial space. They lease (or buy) 20-200k square foot warehouses all over the city and set them up with racks and digital inventory management systems. They operate a full fleet of trucks and do all of their own stock movement.
Their customers are mostly manufacturers or large distributors who need to store a massive amount of product and to be able to pull it into their sites within a few hours notice.
I like to keep around a list of things that I don't need more of, but often spend time chasing for one reason or another. 1.Small deals 2.Followers on Twitter 3. More investors for Harbor Capital.
I find myself chasing the items on this list because bring those lovely little dopamine hits when in reality we don't need more of them.
The theory of constraints is a great way to run a business, focus energy on the bottlenecks that are slowing you down.