Perspective
Chances are, you don't have it.
I don’t mean any disrespect when I say it - but in 99% of cases, it’s true.
As humans, we interpret the world through the lens of our own experiences, apply our knowledge, and make a decision based on that perspective.
The reality is that it’s just one perspective of many, and it’s uniquely specific to us as individuals. In our education system - as broken and dysfunctional as it may be - we learn through the stories and insights of others from a broad array of sources. For thousands of years, we’ve passed on education, laws, and religion through the telling and retelling of parables and stories to the next generation, giving them the information they need to build a perspective to make their decisions from.
In business, we fall into silos specific to our companies as they operate every day, and we don’t have unfettered access to the stories, experiences, and information from others in our industry, specifically because many of the valuable details are held close to the vest. We don’t openly share the things that give us a leg up over our competition, because we want to win. This creates blind spots and reduces our effectiveness since we don’t invite others to share what worked for them when they were in our shoes…or close to it.
We go from thousands of years of knowledge and experience at our fingertips to inform our decisions, to a few decades between ourselves and our team members. Yes, we attend conferences, go to networking events, read books & listen to podcasts. Maybe we hire someone from a competitor with different skills and experiences than we have on our team to help us. Even so, the experiences added are limited to the few companies those individuals may have worked for and the education they have received.
Get outside your bubble
This is where industry groups like CCIM, IREM, and the NAA help to fill in gaps by bringing best practices, industry standards, and a broad array of experiences and expertise to operators. The team members who take these courses and earn the certifications attached to them gain useful knowledge we can take advantage of, as well as resume-building clout to help them with their career path.
As valuable as these groups are, and as thorough as the training is, there’s a limit to how effective what they teach actually is, because they aren’t teaching a strategy. A strategy is developed to achieve a goal…the goals we have are specific to each of us and our businesses, and the goals are always changing.
I’ve realized that at the top of the mountain, there’s another mountain.
Andrew Garfield
Many of us seek coaches or mentors who have already had success with what we’re doing and achieved what we hope to in the long run. As I’ve been vocal about already in many, many other places, you don’t hire a coach or work with a mentor who hasn’t actually walked in your shoes and is now living the benefits of the fruits of those labors.
This is the largest problem with higher education in America today - in most cases, we’re learning from people who are familiar with theory but have never tested it with execution, or learned the lessons necessary to inform their perspective with the education you can only receive from experiencing failure.
Their lack of perspective from hands-on experience leaves the quality of education wanting. If the source of the information isn’t actively doing what they’re teaching to put food on their table, or putting themselves at risk of ending up in bankruptcy court if it goes wrong, then it’s second-hand information and should be weighed as such.
So, the question becomes “what can we do to expand our perspective, other than what we’ve always done?”
You might already be doing it
Chances are that you’re already doing it in some parts of your business without even realizing it. Look at who you’re using for attorneys and CPA’s…hopefully they’re specialists. You don’t use a generalist attorney for real estate closings or structuring your leases (I hope), and you aren’t using a CPA or bookkeeper without making sure they have broad experience working with owners and operators of commercial real estate.
Why? Perspective. They’re specialists because they work on dozens, hundreds, or thousands of examples of whatever they do every year, adding up to an astronomical depth of experience over their career. They don’t become experts by accident; they become experts because they’ve “seen it all” and put the necessary reps in to build the perspective they have when they’re advising you on the best course of action for your business.
They know what to avoid, what to make sure you include, and what steps to take in your specific situation to achieve a goal because they’ve already been there in the trenches with others in similar circumstances.
Likewise, mentors, advisors, and coaches add value because - if they are any good - they will dig deeper to get to the root of the issue you’re experiencing, and it may not even be what you think it is. In fact, what you initially ask for help with may just be the symptom and not a treatment for the illness, which is where strategy comes in.
Doing it versus doing it well
If you’ve spent any time in any industry, you know that just because someone passes the BAR doesn’t make them a good attorney; it just means they’re legally allowed to practice law. The same can be said for CPA’s…they can file your taxes, but there’s no guarantee they’re going to maximize your tax savings.
Real estate brokers & agents? Same story…ever deal with a residential agent while buying or selling a commercial or investment property? Save yourself the headache, and don’t.
You also do it when you hire specialty mechanical contractors like electricians, plumbers, and HVAC technicians. Outside of having the correct licenses and insurance to operate legally, they bring a specific set of skills and experience to the table to diagnose and resolve problems or to do things the right way to avoid the problems from ever happening…because they’ve done it so many times in so many situations.
This kind of perspective - the perspective of service providers - grows in an exponential and outsized way because where you and your team may have seen it done several to many times, they’ve seen it done way more, across way more operations in way more places and different circumstances than you or your team.
That’s the power of REAL perspective, and you need to find ways to keep leveraging it into your business so it can work for you.
Leverage the perspective of others
The best operators I have ever had the pleasure of working with regularly bring their advisors together into one room to address changes and challenges across the business as it applies to their goals. Everything is covered - from regulatory and legal changes to insurance costs and coverage levels to tax planning and more.
They pay their attorneys, CPA’s, brokers, and advisors to spend the day (or two) breaking down the risks and opportunities while developing a plan to address and take advantage of the changes coming down the road. Key vendors have a set time to meet with the entire team to address changes in costs, terms, and service levels, as well as to suggest changes in how they work together to help them both hit their goals.
Specialized, outside perspectives built upon niche information and depth of experience will always win when compared with perspectives from inside your organization. It’s like having blinders on while you walk down a road, while the other person has a drone flying overhead, scanning and capturing intelligence.
You can’t see broader patterns unfolding, witness an operational turnaround inside a competitor’s office, or realize you’re paying thirty percent more for a product or service than you should be when all you can see is what’s in front of you.
Thinking you have a good team that negotiated a good deal is great - and it might be better when compared to what you had before - but is it as good as it should be, given what’s in the industry for businesses with a similar profile to yours?
How would you even know?
Just because it was the best that they could get at the time doesn’t make it the best - or even competitive - in the market.
Thinking is not knowing
“I get a 10% discount with Lowes” was a pretty common refrain when I was at the big orange box. I used to counter by asking for a list of items they bought regularly and then running it through our pricing system to compare. That widget? 10% off saves you fifty cents, my program cuts the price by over three dollars, and then you get an additional rebate on the final price six months later.
“I get contractor pricing at Sherwin-Williams on my paint”. Cool, where you’re paying $35 a gallon with your “contractor discount” for ProMar 200, my customers are paying under $25.
“That gallon of bleach from HD Supply is $12 bucks, and they give me an 8% rebate when I hit $1M in spend.” Cool, you can get that same gallon of bleach shipped from a few dozen places for $4 and not worry about chasing an 8% rebate in exchange for overpaying for everything by 50%.
Ken Pinto breaks down this issue in depth in his book “How Much Is The Milk”, where he details his decades working for big 20 builders who didn’t know what they were paying at a sku-detail level for product, and how it negatively impacts the bottom line.
What’s good based on your perspective may not be good compared to the market…and you have no way to accurately gauge that without leveraging someone with a broader set of information.
The point of this article isn’t to fire shots, chuck grenades, or call anyone out - we only have the information and resources we’re given and have access to - but what you think is “good” is an opinion based on your perspective, and it may not actually be good at all.
It can be a blow to your ego (or your team’s ego) to find out in writing that they’ve spent an extra six or seven figures over the last year because they didn’t know what they didn’t know.
Those six or seven figures expand exponentially when you consider the opportunity cost of what that money could have been doing for your business had it been applied strategically.
See, the reality is that what you don’t know actually CAN hurt you. What could that money have done to improve NOI and asset value before a refi or sale? Could you have hired that extra person, given an “A” player a raise to keep them from leaving, or invested in teaching, training & improving your team?
Opportunity cost is real, once you know it’s there
Alex Hormozi asked a small business owner attending one of his meetups how much per year they make today, and how much they want to make to feel successful. The answer to the first part was $150k, and the second part was $1M.
The opportunity cost for NOT knowing how to make the $1M is the delta between the two…$850k per year. So if you could pay for the skills and knowledge - the perspective that allowed you to make $1M per year - how much would you pay?
In opportunity cost terms, you’re paying $850k every year you don’t get the skills to do it, so you should be willing to spend whatever it takes to get there (unless it’s more than $1M per year), because the benefit isn’t just $1M in income, it’s $1M in income per year for the rest of your life.
Not having the advisors and perspectives you need working for your team is costing you money, scale, and time.
My advice? Get perspective and be willing to pay for it, or you’ll keep paying for it without realizing what it’s actually costing you.
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