The Real Con 091

Soft skills to live in a hard world. Seeking wisdom, discipline and more to leave my world a little better than I found it…

Hey everyone,

This week took me to both Phoenix and Austin. 

Once upon a time, I ran in a desert hotter than either of those Cities. I love running and I dislike running. I enjoy what running teaches me. I enjoy the challenges it brings me. I enjoy the way it helps my mind wander and yet focus at the same time.

While my running this year has been less than stellar, I am still running almost 20 years later.

Here are 3 quotes, the most interesting thing I learned this week, 1 essay, and 1 question to reflect on.

3 Quotes

“It is not enough to be a hardworking person. Think: what do you work at?”

-Henry David Thoreau

“The quality of your leisure predicts the quality of your work.” 

- Vizi Andrei, The Sovereign Artist

“Time is the ultimate currency of life.” 

- Shane Parrish, Clear Thinking

The Most Interesting Thing I Learned this Week

In 2008, there were 7,200,000 workers in the construction industry in the United States. In 2021, there were 7,200,000 workers in the construction industry in the United States. Yet as of 2024, it is estimated that the industry will increase in size over 30% to $1,850,000,000,000.

The same amount of workers, doing more work is tough. The lack of training, the lack of hiring, the lack of a winning culture will have a lasting impact. 

Just look at any other industry where the workforce is underpaid, underappreciated and overworked.

This pace of a growing workload and a shrinking workforce will have major consequences. 

Pacing & Cadence:

Lessons for Commercial Acquisitions

“We’ve been living in a lethal fantasy. We’ve lulled ourselves into believing that in an emergency, someone else will always come along to rescue us. We’ve stopped relying on our own wonderfully adaptable bodies; we’ve forgotten that we can think, climb, leap, run, throw, swim, and fight with more versatility than any other creature on the planet” - Georges Herbert, formal French Naval Officer (from Natural Born Heroes)

Running requires more skill and awareness than you might think. 

Do you run faster at the beginning or at the end? Are you aware of your feet? Are they heavy? How heavy? Are they light? Are they forced or are they free? Do you slow down when it matters and speed up when it counts?

Planning Your Run

Running is both relaxing and taxing. It’s how I work out my thoughts and push my limits. It’s voluntary suffering. It helps me get my mind right by getting my body to work. 

I have noticed that the older I get, the more complex life can be or seem.

When it comes to planning my runs, I try to keep it simple. I either care about time or distance target. When COVID shut down my gym—inconvenient, indeed, yet—this was an opportunity to run more at home. I decided to run 15 minutes every day for as many days as I could. Nothing fancy. I tried to keep it boring and simple.

On days that I did not want to run, I set up a simple goal: get out and just start running. Predictably, I always ended up running more; even if this wasn’t the case, the fact that I put on my running clothes and got out of the house was already a success in terms of discipline.

As I improved my consistency, I moved onto a distance target. One day that could be 2 miles; the next day 3 miles. Several years later, I’m able to score, on average, 5 miles and occasionally 7 miles and several sprints. How much or how far is irrelevant. The important thing is that I am out running.  

Yet here’s where it gets interesting. My ambition is to finish each run faster than how I started it. I go faster exactly when it’s getting harder. This is a rather simple exercise; but psychologically, it’s life-changing. I’m training my mind to get sharper during the most challenging moments, not when life feels like an endless parade of sunshine and unicorns. I want my mindset to be at its best when I need it most. I don’t want it to be “good enough”—in other words, I train my mind to love hardship.

Running a successful acquisition is not very different from running well.

Negotiating Letters of Intent (LOIs) or Purchase and Sale Agreements (PSAs) can be slow and tedious. But once that Due Diligence (DD) clock starts, it’s off to the races.

Gaining site access to the different assets, coordinating the third parties, or interviewing tenants can take a while to set up. By the time you start receiving and gathering more information, you are near the finish line. You need to work harder. You need to move faster. You need your teams and vendors to keep up with you.

Why? Because you have a deadline. You have a very finite amount of time to discover any hidden risks with the deal. Yes, you can always request an extension. But not all acquisitions are off-market opportunities without any other potential buyers. 

A lot of times there are multiple buyers that are competing to make it to the Best and Final Offering (BAFO). Exactly like a race.

In planning a successful acquisition, likewise, it’s important to keep it simple.

What are your major milestones?

Who is taking the lead for coordination in your team?

Who are your trusted advisors, your preferred vendors, and your potential third parties?

The Best Runs Surprise You.

It’s funny. The runs that start out where something feels off usually turn out to be some of my best runs. On one of my PRs (personal records), the total distance amounted to 5 miles; I didn’t feel I could do the same. The plan was to get in 3 miles, but my legs felt heavy. My feet felt slow. The weather was meh.

After overcoming the first hill—the first challenge—I noticed I was moving faster. My watch split at the 1-mile mark indicating that I was making a really good time. So I decided to focus more on the cadence of my feet, especially on the next uphill and downhill portion. I kept moving, as fast as I could to maintain my current pace. 

By the time I hit mile 2, I was really feeling good. Knowing that the last mile of my run is easier terrain, I decided to see what I had left. I really went for it and ran as fast as I could. Instead of stopping at my planned 3-mile run distance, I pushed more to hit that 5-mile mark.

Real estate acquisitions can be an exercise in patience. But they can also be a mad sprint. Depending on your team’s workload, the time of year, or even the type of acquisition, the demands on your time can be significant.

The best acquisitions teams know when to go fast and they know when to go slow. 

Sometimes you need to grind out long days or nights to get through the 24,000 files that the Seller’s team dumped into the data room. Other times you might need to wait a few days for your legal counsel to provide an opinion on a potential environmental risk. Or maybe you just need a key team member back from vacation. Either way, if you’re aware of how things are going with you, your team, and your vendors, you will know when to push it and when to take it easy. 

Should every acquisition feel like your hair is on fire and you are scrambling like mad to make sense of the deal? Not a chance. Exuding stress 24/7 is seldom useful. 

Sometimes you need to move fast, sometimes you need to take it slow. If you are a runner, you likely know that the runs where you learn the most are also sometimes the ones that hurt the most. The same can be said at work. 

It doesn’t matter how well you start. It matters if you and your team always try to finish stronger than when you started. There is a natural rhythm to running, to work, and to life. Speed up when you can; slow down when you need to.

1 Question to Reflect on

When was the last time you tried to finish stronger than you started?

In Closing...

Any feedback, suggestion, or critique is welcome: feel free to reply (if you got this in your inbox) or send an email to [email protected].

Now, please excuse me, but it’s time to go lace up my shoes and hit the pavement. I know that I can always think and write better after a good run.

Stay sharp,

Michael

#091

The Real Con

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