#38 - Life lessons from a military commander turned property CEO

What I’m Reading

Sapiens has been on my to-read list for as long as I remember but never got around to. I got this as a birthday present from my brother so happy days. So far it’s living up to expectations, it’s a fascinating look at what makes us human and how we live from first principles, and how to relate to our ancestors and the world.

Resource of the week

I finally caved into my rowing buddies’ recommendation and bought a heart rate monitor chest strap, and I’m surprised how much it has helped me improve my rowing training. It has this nifty feature that breaks your heart rate into certain zones. It’s simple but really helps you pace yourself by staying in certain bands (eg blue for warmup, green/yellow for longer sessions and red for all out). So you can learn to pace yourself and improve times without running out of steam. Recommended if you like to do cardio.

Quote

If you’re aiming for the moon, don’t get sidetracked by the stars.

David Johnstone

Thoughts

This week was a fascinating one. I had the pleasure to sit down and record a podcast with David Johnstone, CEO of LEO Crowdfunding in a conversation covering topics from property investing, the market, the wider economy, goalsetting and habits. David has a varied background, prior to property he served 20 years in the military rising to second in command in his division.

I wanted to know what key attributes from that experience he attributes his success to. And he puts it down to discipline, which is something that a lot of people seem to overlook nowadays. There’s a lot of talk about finding things you’re passionate about which is important, but without discipline and that grit to stay consistent and build your skill set and overcome adversity, being passionate matters little.

This is something I’ll take away as our attention spans are shrinking, people crave results on a shorter and shorter timeframe and from my experience and observations, this has counterproductive results. It’s an all too common cycle, people try something new, put in the effort to learn it but once the novelty wears off and they realise it’s a lot of grind with little to show for it, they generally will give up too early. Few things worth having are easy or quick. One lesson I’d love to give my younger self is to stop taking shortcuts, just accept things take time and be realistic with goals.

Now on goals, it’s a topic we delved deeply into. We talked about the role of goalsetting and success, this is something I have seesawed with in terms of my opinion. I had a period where I was following the self-help books and visualisation stuff that was all the rave when I was younger and writing down goals religiously. But it ended up being quite depressing when they would get missed. Then I discovered that not caring about goals and enjoying the process was better for happiness in general. These days I have a hybrid approach, I have a relaxed attitude with stuff like social media but a goal-oriented approach for property. More specifically setting goals that are directly in my control. Earning a million next year isn’t directly something I can control, but I can carry out 10 property viewings a month for example for properties that fit my criteria. Unsurprisingly, David has a hyper-goal-oriented approach. David is an avid journaler and instead of annual goals, he likes to split things into quarters. He says this gives enough time to make impactful changes but also short enough so there’s a sense of urgency to actions.

On goals and life directions, I asked David what key attributes he looks for in business partners. He puts it down to transparency and making sure everybody is aligned on the same path in life. A big cause of friction was when there were expectations for example one partner looking to cash out and others wanting to aggressively grow. It ties back into goals and being focused on the direction.

I asked what advice he would give to himself at 20 and 30 and in short he would tell himself to dream big, and be passionate at 20 and not be afraid o making mistakes. At 30, he would make sure he's accountable.

I’m in the process of editing the clips and posting them to TikTok. Well worth a watch as I don't do his answers justice here. It was actually a very enjoyable experience for me and I have another guest lined up. I’m still working out where I can post the full thing, and may start a separate full-blown podcast channel. Will keep you guys updated.

Stay tuned, the clips will be going out on TikTok next week, I’m sure you’ll find some value from them.

Have a good week!

Hans