Entrepreneur Survival Guide

What’s up guys, Nick De Angelo is here with Saint investment group. We have been talking in the office a lot about growth and mindset and education in general and so we put together some really cool questions that we thought were interesting and would open up a pretty good discussion. So here are some of the questions that have been asked, and we were discussing that we’re gonna share with you.

So the first question is, How has education played a role in your success?

I’d say education is probably the single biggest cheat code that people can have when entering, especially something fast-paced like entrepreneurship or a startup environment, but really in business overall and that’s because in today’s age, right? you hear these things like information age, or like kind of old, outdated sayings. The reality is not only is the information out there for almost anything that you’re looking for, but also there’s layers of that information, 

So there’s not just the start of your education on marketing or on copywriting or whatever, essentially, almost any niche that you can niche down. There are layers and courses on this, and there are good books on this. So to that degree, I’m super curious naturally and I become a little bit maybe obsessed. So education has been a massive amount of wind in my sales when I’m trying to get somewhere. 

So in the last business, it was primarily on operations. I needed to learn how to manage a team of several dozen people, right? and at first, it was just managing a handful, and then it was managing a dozen and then it was 20, 30, 40 plus. So that was huge for me because, in my previous businesses from that, I was just a solo entrepreneur doing my own thing. So management of the team was so important. It was how to keep the team accountable, and how to have goals and action items in the short-term, in the long-term. How to keep people engaged, how to create a culture, and how to create a company culture is something that is completely misunderstood, but there’s so much good information on it. So as far as what’s been super beneficial for me and us as a company for me and for us as a company recently, as far as education goes, we are very niched down. Especially on our acquisition models for real estate. 

We buy things that are, have very unique ways to find them and get in touch with the sellers, etc. So because of that to go down rabbit holes to find that education, but it’s out there sometimes that might mean books that are from the eighties that people just skip over today because they’re not super exciting, or they’re not, they feel that they’re not relevant, but in real estate, the riches are in the niches. So finding that unique education that other people or may not have spent the time trying to find has been so important and also for education, we’re part of masterminds, especially for things like funds. We’re always trying to learn best practices network with other fund managers, make sure we’re providing the best experience for investors, and also things like compliance and upcoming laws and things that are changing so that we’re always on the cutting edge. 

So I think education can take on a few different things. One, it can just be drilling down endlessly on a niche and find that you know, more about a niche than anybody else or to a degree that opens up massive opportunities for you. Two, I think from courses and things up-to-date. They’re just the absolute, most cutting-edge information and then three, I think from networking with other people and kind of that group mindset of high achievers that kind of can give and take information and can connect on what individuals are doing that they find best.

Between those three, I think education is absolutely limitless and will take you to a massive new level or what position you’re at in your career. Some of the best learning that takes place from like peer networking. Not so much networking like a cocktail reception, but peer networking. Like, Hey, we’re all in this room because we’re all interested in the fund space, right? We’re a fund we want to network with other high-achieving funds and compare notes. So what we would learn commonly in something like that is often very simple.

 It’ll be like, Hey, here’s one that happened last week. Hey, we’re sending these invites out for certain types of webinars using this niche software, right? So somebody chimed in and that you can actually if you do it this way, you can send 6,000 instead of 4,000, that’s a 50% increase in the number of invites that we could do a certain way. That was very beneficial and all that was a two-second comment from somebody and she just knew what she was doing at that moment and just fired it over and it was like multiple people in the group was like immediately taking notes. Just like I can’t believe that we didn’t know that beforehand.

In other examples, it’s something a little more honed in where it’s a larger discussion. It might be something related to reporting in the fund space. Hey, what do you manage as far as long- term discussion versus the immediate results and the things that you’re going through? There’s just a kind of ongoing discussion that might not have something as clear and defined as that woman’s answer at that moment about how to increase your invites on a certain platform. But instead, it might be somewhere you’re understanding at a bigger level, how to keep in touch with a large audience and these are invaluable tools that getting 10 people to answer is better than any single book or single course that you can take. So the networking side is actually really invaluable and provides a ton of a perspective where you as the individual can put that together and synthesize what you find best for your situation and for in this example, the audience that we are working with. So it’s been really helpful. 

Jumping on the second question, What platforms do you utilize the most for your own personal growth?

So for this answer, it’s not gonna be revolutionary. The first is without a doubt YouTube. There’s just so much freaking free content that’s amazing on YouTube. You can go for shorts and you can kind of bounce around and find some quick little information on something that’s really specific or you can go more of the long-form content on YouTube that I think is underutilized in many ways and it just dives deep on great topics. I mean, I just know from our channel, that we spent a ton of time picking unique real estate, fundamental topics and diving down so deep on them, and then when I see other people doing it, I’m the first person to geek out the amazing amount of depth and information that’s already available for something that I’ve been searching on. So YouTube’s the first for sure and it’s typically, I found it more up-to-date than kind of my next example, which is audible. 

I think the audible’s fantastic and I think it’s an even deeper dive on certain subjects. There are times when let’s say reading a book about market conditions, things can get slightly outdated. The concepts are good, but the examples might be a little outdated. So YouTube might be a little more up-to-date. Like there’s just something powerful about a billionaire happy person with a happy family. Like maybe they have a few things to share with you in their autobiography, right? Maybe they’re decades of killing it at life and doing amazing and achieving amazing results in multiple categories. Like that’s probably worth the four-hour lesson and you could speed it up and get it done in two and a half hours. If you put it on like 1.5 speed right? So I’d use audible to differentiate from YouTube in a big way because there are just those finished edits put together. 

I mean, these people have editors go through the full process, really think through clearly, and go through their ideas. So the level is just kind of higher quality, but also you miss some of the up-to-date stuff on certain topics. So that’s why I like those two particularly, in conjunction with each other, and the third, I would just say a podcasting app.

Whatever that looks like to you, whether using Spotify or apple, but just having those podcasts and seeing what’s going on in the industry and the most up-to-date discussions that are taking place super valuable. There are really great people that are doing five-minute podcasts on really cool topics and I think the podcast medium has evolved so much and it’s just easy to put on in the background, while you’re doing stuff as well to kind of replace like music or something else to where you can get a lot of information and a lot of good up-to-date things in your head at one time. 

So between those three, a star line of great platforms to learn a lot and find really whatever you need. So as a runner-up, and if there was a fourth place, truthfully, I would put Reddit and while there’s so much toxicity and crap in different parts of Reddit, there are also insanely niche things happening on Reddit and really high-level discussions. I mean, any health concern you’ve ever had, there’s a freaking entire form on that in Reddit where people are giving amazing feedback, any investment the style you can think of. There are 1600 people in some obscure channel on Reddit that are sitting there and talking about great details of that. It’s so valuable just to be able to have a back and forth with people. Sometimes on those other platforms.

I mentioned, that there’s a distance you’re not gonna be able to get to Dale Carnegie. You’re not gonna be able to get to Dale Carnegie or people that have passed away, even though their books are amazing and they’re great audible books, you can’t get to them or some huge author that you just can’t get to because there are too many degrees of separation. It is such a crowdfunded model of information that I think Reddit has such a unique place for anyone that’s looking for unique information, absolutely so much. It’s really valuable if you’re looking for something detailed than niche. 

The third question is, What is a growth mindset look like for you?

So I think a growth mindset in its simplest form, if you just distill it down to the simplest equation is taking a look at things that you’re involved in and just always wanting to figure out a way to level it up. If you’re always looking to take things to the next level, you will naturally find the tools and the education and the resources because your goal is literally to find a way to improve those things. So when you have a growth mindset, it’s literally just thinking through those things and finding what’s the next step. What are the long-term steps? What are the steps to get to whatever level and then what are the future long-term steps? So I think the second piece of a growth mindset is to have a very long-term perspective and long-term goals associated with that. So while the short-term might be finding that next level, the long-term might be finding the level 100 or the next hundred things, or the biggest goal that you can achieve at the end of that big climb. 

So to me, the growth mindset and the short term is finding a way to level up on the things that you’re interested in and involved in, and that is important to you and then it’s also having that long-term mindset so that you can play. What’s called a game theory, an infinite game. You can look at something that’s a much longer scale. So whether it’s a competition thing and you want to beat your competitors or just achieve the most that you can, if you look at it on a long-term scale, you can put pieces in place, years down the line that compound to a really major result over a long period of time. 

The fourth question is,  why do you think growth mindset matters in business?

So I would argue actually that having a growth mindset in business is one of the single most important things for anybody involved in a company at a high level at all whatsoever because it shows that they are always improving, that who they are today is not as good as who they are tomorrow and if there’s a team of people doing that, what ends up happening is the team will just level up the business on its own because each person is putting into their skill set every single day and over a time with unified goals as a team and over time, what happens is the team levels up to major degrees and massively can take things to a really big place and reach places that they wouldn’t have imagined beforehand. Let me also talk about the opposite of a growth mindset. 

Let’s say you don’t have a growth mindset. Let’s say you’re not going backward, right? But you’re also not going forwards. You’re not looking for the next level. What happens is the world still moves fast change in the marketplace or in personal life or in anything still takes place at a super rapid pace more quickly than ever today. So if you have a stagnant perspective and you’re really not looking to grow, then you fall behind super quickly just because things move fast.

So not having a growth mindset, it’s not about that. That person gonna be the same person, they’re not. So I think there’s actually a huge risk in not being up-to-date and not educating yourself and not staying up to speed with the best things in your industry. So that you’re a high-level operator. The risk is actually massive that you’re gonna fall behind. If you’re not trying to grow 

The fifth question is, Who are your favorite educators and who do you learn from the most?

For me, when I’m looking for people to learn from, I’m essentially typically looking for the classics and I think it was actually Naval Rav who brought up the idea of, instead of hearing all the new theories and always being up to date on some things, which is super important. You need to understand the new things that are coming out, but also to understand the predecessors of those. So instead of looking at the philosophy of today, that’s the most cutting edge for today, go back and read the stoic, right? The ultra classics, instead of reading a book about somebody analyzing a religion, maybe just go to the original text and find out amazing insight and a perspective that’s in that original text, right? 

There are probably infinite books written about Jesus, but there’s nothing that you’re gonna get more than reading directly from the Bible and reading about Jesus. So I really think the ultimate value, the most distilled like beautiful core values are actually found in some of the earliest materials often and then you learn more about the new applications and the new strategies that might work more in the modern day, but there’s nothing that beats like the purity and like the best ideas of those early groundbreaking things. So what am I looking for in educators? I really want to understand the beginning and the core ideas that they’re coming from and then I’m looking for people that follow that same trend and master it in the modern day. So you might look at somebody as a grant Cardone or many other people for sales in the modern day, but also read the classic books, read the early books on sales that is just the best at that time. You might look at somebody like Alex Hermo for modern-day marketing, cause he’s doing great and he’s really marketing really good stuff, but also read the classic marketing psychology, the early books that go over that, because then you’re understanding the core foundation of that and how it looks today, even though it’s based on the same principles. 

So those were the questions for today that we thought were valuable. Just good discussions, questions covering really important topics. So check that out and I’ll see you guys soon.