WS1317: Planning for Growth | Scott Lewis

EPISODE 1317

[INTRODUCTION]

0:00:00.0 

Scott Lewis (SL): If you go through that planning process and you identify those risks, most of them can be mitigated. And those that can’t, it’s one of those things, ‘What is your plan for those risks that can’t be mitigated?’”

0:00:17

Whitney Sewell (WS): If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Most of us have heard that. But has that really sunk in? Have you taken that to your business, and really put time into planning? And we oftentimes get busy with the busywork. It could be emails, phone calls, texting, or whatever may be, those things are busy, and it helps us to feel productive oftentimes. However, it’s oftentimes not the best use or highest value of our time potentially, and planning is so important. And even planning for growth, we all want to grow our businesses, you know, in real estate as fast as we can, as big as we can, typically. But if you do not plan and I’m not sure which direction you’re planning to go, right? You’re not planning.

So our guests today, military background, so grateful for his service, and to know him and his team, they have grown so fast. He’s been on the show numerous times. You’ll hear me talk about that. Scott Lewis, he’s a co-founder and chief executive officer of Spartan Investment Group. As a CEO Scott, is responsible for the strategic direction of the company and ensuring it aligns with their mission to improve lives through real estate. Prior to Spartan, Scott held positions as a regional sales manager for a biotech firm and various positions in strategic and project management for the Federal government accumulating at the GS 15 level, and was on active duty in the US Army as an infantry officer.

So Scott’s been on the show numerous times. We talked about how the military has shaped him, and today, we didn’t talk about the military, specifically, however, it did help push him in the desire to plan, and know the importance of planning. You’re gonna hear that today.

You’re also gonna hear meeting cadences and how they structure-specific meetings inside of Spartan. I’ve known this team for 5 plus years now or more, and it’s been incredible to see their growth. And I know that’s because they have planned well, they have an incredible process, they write these things down, they are consistently improving, they have over 100 employees now, and he’s gonna go through how do they communicate with all these people. What system do they use? And how often? And even some of the things around weekly meetings that are gonna help you to have a more productive meeting and keep it short.

[INTERVIEW]

0:02:36

WS: Scott Lewis, always a pleasure to catch up with you. Welcome back to the show.

0:02:39

SL: Good morning, Whitney. Thank you again.

0:02:43

WS: Yeah, yeah, we were joking because Scott’s wearing a vest, and I’m wearing a short-sleeve shirt. I mean he’s in Colorado, he’s talking about snow one day, 80 degrees next. I just don’t think I could get used to that kind of weather.

0:02:53

SL: Twice as fast, a little warmth in the chest, nothing on the sleeves. It kind of keeps you if you open for whatever is coming your way.

0:03:00

WS: That’s right. Well Scott it’s always a pleasure like I said, and I’ve enjoyed watching just Spartans’ growth over the last number of years. I was looking back and you know you are show number 20 and now you’re 1,300, and this is 1317, I think, around there. And so it’s interesting to see, you know, where you and the business the team has come over the last 4 or 5 years and it’s so impressive and we’re gonna jump in today to some of the things that has helped condition you for that growth, right, and your team, and what is behind some of that. 

So I know you’ve learned a lot, probably over the last 4 or 5 years as well, and honestly, we just want to learn from your mistakes so we don’t make the same ones, right? So, I’m grateful to have you on the show because the listeners need to listen up, and you just love your background – the military discipline, and how you all have incorporated that in your teams as well. We did a show on that also, and I encourage the listeners to go back to shows 20, 185, and 566, which were specifically about using military planning to navigate difficult times in our business. 

So, Scott welcome back, let’s jump right in, and let’s think about the planning that needs to be done to condition our businesses for growth. And let’s talk about how you all have done that well, or maybe some lessons learned also.

0:04;14

SL: You know, it’s one of those things that nobody likes planning. I have yet to run into somebody other than my crazy self that likes to plan. And it’s one of those things that is so pivotal in mitigating risk, cause that’s what this really is about. When you look at growing there’s there’s the adage that you can grow too fast and top lower. So that’s definitely true. However, if you think through the kind of like what’s going to happen and we’ll talk about a technique called the pre-mortem at some point, in the next 30 minutes or so, that can really be used to identify like, “Hey, where are my risks? 

So if you go through that planning process and you identify those risks, most of them can be mitigated, and for those that can’t, it’s one of those things, “What is your plan for those risks that can’t be made mitigated?’” If you’re just starting out and you’re growing a business, and you’re in hyper-growth, the self-awareness to know that you have no idea what the heck you’re doing right, regardless of what the experience is, is a really powerful tool to accept the fact that there are things that are outside your control and how do you put things in place to mitigate those risks that you can’t see coming that could be corporate killers, and we can dig into that a little bit too.

0:05:37

WS: Yeah. I want I don’t wanna forget about the technique you were talking about, and maybe we talked about that for a minute. But I also want to think about, you mentioned the plan for things that cannot be mitigated, there are risks, you know, which I mean there’s always things that we can’t see that are coming like a pandemic right? You know, nobody would have guessed something like that. But then also the things that are just outside of your control, like that.

But what’s the technique you were talking about?

0:05:59

SL: Yeah, let’s jump into it. So, I’ll start with a quote and then walk into what’s called a pre-mortem. So, Eisenhower said in preparing for battle, I generally find that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. And what he was getting at is, that we all know that no plans survive first contact. You actually get out there and you actually start executing whatever it is you’re doing, whether it’s real estate or gardening, or a dog kennel, the operating environment is always going to act against you. The civilian term for that is Murphy’s law. Their military term is the fog of war. 

So when you look at those 2 things, what can you do? What can you do to stick Murphy in a cage and reduce the fog of war? Well, there’s a technique called the pre-mortem. A good number of people were going to be familiar with the post-mortem or the after-action review. It’s basically a look back and saying, “Hey, we did this. Here was the outcome. What do we do well? What do we do poorly? What can we learn from this?” Well, that’s after failure happens. So there’s another technique that’s called the pre mortem, before you start anything, and this can be used in your business, this can be used going to the grocery store, it may be a bit overkill to do that but could mitigate the risk if you go in there and come out with all manner of ice cream and frozen pizzas instead of broccoli, and like cucumbers, right? Ae do that, we make a list because otherwise we make a list, and we don’t go to the grocery store hungry.

Two things that could cause massive failure walking out of King Supers. Been there. 

So what the pre-mortem does is you start by listing out the failures like what we’re looking forward to.

0:07:54

WS: Like potential failures?

0:07:55

SL: Absolutely. But look at it from the perspective that it’s that the project has been completed, and you failed in this particular way. Talk about a vacation right and the potential failure is, we showed up, and we had no place to stay. Okay, So what can we do about that? What can we do to mitigate that risk? Well, let’s book a hotel in advance. Let’s make sure that we get ahead of it. Okay. Or actually, why did it fail? So it failed because we didn’t book a hotel in advance. Okay, cool. So what can we do? Well, we can book a hotel in advance.

The key then, the next step, the next step, the fourth step is very, very key. It needs to be assigned to somebody. So I’ll give you this exact instance. So I’m a part of a smaller mastermind and It’s just 4 of us we’re on our own, there are no bigger higher head headquarters so we’re logistically challenged. So we pick a city to which we all go to. Long story short, going to Boston tomorrow. Get a text yesterday, “Hey! Did anybody book the hotel?” No, they did not. The hotel we chose, sold out. So we got lucky that somebody sent the text, “Hey, what are we doing with this?” Otherwise, we would have shown up, and walked into the hotel, thinking somebody else did it, and no one did it. But the failure came, the potential failure, we mitigated it because we caught it. But the failure would have come from a lack of assigning that.

So kind of just recap for your listeners, what is the failure? Why did it happen? How do you mitigate it? Who’s responsible for those mitigation actions? And you do that right upfront before you start anything. And I don’t know, I’m just guessing here, probably 85% of the potential failures, you can probably identify upfront, and those rest of those 15%,  I want to talk about that. At the end of that process is called the pre-mortem, where you can go out and research.

0:09:59

WS: When are you all doing that? And who’s involved in that process? What team members? How do you think about that? And just the timing? Or is this is like, “Okay, we’re fixing to start this new thing, or maybe a new deal or a new process internally.” What do you apply this to? I know you said. I know we talked about how it could be applied to anything but like maybe some specific examples inside your business?

0:10:20

SL: The best time to do a pre-mortem is when you’re going after something new. If it’s your standard due diligence process, it’s your standard due diligence process. So if you’re buying another 250 multifamily, or another storage facility, like, “Okay, there’s a process for this.” But if you’re going in and you’re developing  a project in a new jurisdiction, okay maybe that’s a time to kick this off, or if you’re launching a new service. Say you’re building your company and I don’t know you want to offer property management services as a third party, that’s a good time to do it whenever you’re doing something new. That you’re unaware of or that is an unfamiliar environment.

The other, as far as who does it, it depends at what level of the organization are you committing strategic resources? Well, then, it’s probably your leadership team all the way down.Is is an internal to the team? Is the finance department kicking the tires on a new way out in a new set of books or something? I probably don’t have to be in that meeting but our finance team should probably be in there. So it really depends on what level is the project kicking off in the organization.

0:11:36

WS: Okay, No, that’s helpful. It’s helpful is planning right? I mean it is planning but being so intentional in thinking through, man, what’s could happen? And how are we gonna respond? ut then, I like you said it’s like it already happened. Well, then, “Okay,” you know, I love the example of “Well, we don’t have a room. Well, okay, we can fix that.” But then the assignment it’s so important. it’s like somebody’s choking right? If you don’t know what you point to somebody, and say, call 911 like you right, you don’t just yell it out there, cause nobody knows for sure if they should do it or not as you point at someone, and you assign that thing, and then they’re responsible. I mean like this. They know they’ve been assigned to do that thing, whatever it is, no doubt about it. Okay, let’s move forward. 

0:12:17

SL: Yeah let’s talk about a saying. Failing to plan is planning to fail. We’ve all heard that. Well, if you haven’t then, you’re welcome. So, let’s talk about why people fail to plan. Whitney and I, were army dudes, like planning or not planning isn’t a thing. Why? Because make mistakes, we don’t come home, our soldiers don’t come home. But in most people’s world, what class did you take in college that taught you how to plan? Most people don’t. Maybe if you did a master’s degree, took a strategic planning class that’s at a strategic level, that’s about talking about a very, very high level. We don’t get much education or training on how to actually build a plan which for the most of us, were not a huge fan of doing something that we have no idea what to do. But, I’ll encourage the listeners that if you take cram and you go over to a wall and you write some notes on that wall for your plan, if your businessman literally is cran on a wall that might be the 20% solution. But that’s going to be better than just starting.

Most people, when something new comes in, they’re super excited and there’s nothing to get started. And there’s nothing sexy about planning whatsoever. In your brain, takes a lot of time. The only results at produces immediately piece paper generally or an ideology that you share across your organization. So it’s not sexy You can’t show your buddies down at the Country Club your plan, cause nobody cares they’re not gonna read it other than you. So most people don’t want to do it because it’s not sexy.

Most people then end up failing. 9 out of 10 businesses fail. Period. And a big part of it that people think is because it’s undercapitalized. I disagree. Don’t get me wrong, failing to capitalize on your business correctly, will make you make bad decisions. But generally those decisions come because you don’t have a plan so when tough times come, you have nothing to fall back on to tell you what to do, so you make a decision at the moment that turns out to be stupid.

So if you’ve gone through that planning, even if your plan goes to heck in a handbasket, you still had all of the experience of planning, and that experience, 50% of it, 60% of it, 30% of it will be thrown away and won’t make it, into the final plan but it’s still there. So that when you get out there and you start doing what you’re trying to do, and it turns out to be wrong, you still have some experience to fall back on, and kind of adjust course and pick it different direction.

In the military, we have a saying, start moving, it’s better than standing still because even the wrong direction will give you an experience that you can adjust that direction later.

0:15:15

WS: Love that, no doubt about it. I try to tell my boys all the time like no decision, is still a decision. No doubt about it. So you know, I was thinking through this in our businesses as well as we plan, how often would you say you know you or your team you know completes this task or this process and then determines, we don’t want to do this at all? Like things come up, or you know your business partner, or some other somebody else in the department said, “You know what about this thing?” It’s like, “Oh, my goodness, you thought of that?” So how often would you say that happens?

0:15:51

SL: Iit hasn’t been very often. We’ve done some adjustments, trying to think of anything we’ve just outright scrapped. We’ve delayed, you know, our strategic plan cause calls for 3 asset classes, and we’ve delayed. Yes, we have our RV parks and yes, we have all manner of stuff that’s coming with these storage portfolios that we’re buying but it’s not a focus it’s more tangent than anything.

We’ve delayed offering external services that’s probably one of them that comes to mind the most. We’ve been talking about offering external services for 5 years. And we’ve consumed all of our own internal services such that we have no time. So we’ve kind of scrapped that. And just saying, “Hey, we’re not doing that just because we are our team is overworked as it is trying to just service our own internal stuff versus trying to go and help somebody else outside of Spartan.” But it’s not very often if you do if you really put some dot into your plan, and you don’t like, come at it half-cocked, and you really understand your operating environment, and you understand your mission, vision, and values, those 3 things will really guide a plan. Very much so, and not allow you to I guess,  I’m not gonna say it won’t allow you to get distracted by the shiny (inaudible) syndrome, but most people get distracted by that because they haven’t written the plan and then they get impatient.

It takes a long time to execute a plan so kind of going back when you’re looking at it, f you’re looking at the strategic level of your organization, a 30,000 40,000-foot view, that plan should be a couple of years. It should be big enough. Maybe not your big hairy audacious goal if you’re a Jim Collins fan, but definitely a three-year goal that should take some, take real effort to achieve and don’t abandon that just because you didn’t do it tomorrow. 

0:17:40

WS: You know you’ve implemented numerous things internally, that helped you all maybe do some structuring to even help you to plan right or help you to work together better, more efficiently. The listeners are gonna be familiar, you know, with EOS traction, scaling up some of those things. I know you all have taken a few of those things like you and our time before we start recording.

But would you elaborate a little bit on how even those systems have helped your team, you know, in planning, but then just also just functioning so in a way that you’re prepared for growth, you know, like we were talking about?

0:18:07

SL: Yeah. So all of those different systems have their advantages right? And it doesn’t matter which one you use use something. If you have a background in planning then build your own. There’s a bunch of stuff you can buy right off the shelf. The EOSs, you know, from traction, the entrepreneur operating system, I’ll say (inaudible) is usually for smaller places. Whatever your operating system is. it doesn’t matter.

The key thing is getting it written down, and in a place where multiple people can see it. There are systems you can buy that have that collaboration. We have our strategic plan, which is a written document, and then we have a smart sheet for our operational plans and our performance and enhancement plans, which is basically a tactical level plan for the individual contributor on the team that kind of nests, everything going down, and everything going back up. And what I mean by that, and this is where a lot of organizations stunt their growth because there’s a lot there’s a lack of integration amongst individuals, departments, and overall the organization. And that lack of interest that lack of integration causes friction. And what do we know about friction? It slows everything down.

So when you nest everybody’s planned with not only the higher-level plan, but then, you look at the top and the high-level plan nests with the lower level plan, you reduce friction, which allows you to go a lot faster because you’re not wasting resources. And resources are not only money and I don’t know if you’re if you’re up widget-maker right, you’ve got raw materials that could be wasted. But if you’re in the knowledge game people’s time right like that’s the currency that you trade-in, and the more all of your team is completely aligned with one another and rowing the boat and the same direction, every single one of those oars hits the water and goes in the right direction, you’re going to be able to grow a lot faster and a lot safer.

0:20:13

WS: Love that – how you brought in the strategic plan and the smart sheets, how you all do some of that. Any anything else internally you all use it to ensure everybody’s on the same page or to encourage the integration right so there’s less friction?

0:20:24

SL: Yeah, so one of the things we just did is we implemented Microsoft Teams. That’s a really good program to integrate a bunch of different stuff. There’s Slack, there’s zoom, and there’s a a million different ways to do this. 

We chose the Microsoft environment because our emails are hosted there. We actually don’t use Zoom anymore. We use Microsoft Teams for everything, for our video calls, and everything, And it integrates with our kind of our holistic atmosphere and is that it is that interface as good as something like that Slack, I don’t know, but it was one of those things with the integrations across all the teams. It’s a really good platform to make sure information is being shared across multiple mediums.

So Spartan, between our headquarters and our property teams, we’re approaching a 100 people, email doesn’t work, and neither does text. That neither one of those things are a way to share information. It doesn’t work. It’s too hard, it’s too hard to search. So if you’re if you’re getting to 10-15 people in your business, you should probably look at some sort of communication system. Slack, Zoom does have channels on it. MS Teams, something that’s outside of email.

0:21:35

WS: Yeah, no doubt about it and we use Slack. And yeah, it’s a most. It’s something like that, like you’re talking about. Speak to also like meeting cadences, how you all, you know, communicate really internally? But even how often? Maybe types of meetings. I know some of that. Some of this stuff, scaling up goes into some different types of meetings as well. What types of meetings are you focused on Scott? You know, as the CEO versus even some departmental type meetings that are happening throughout the organization. 

0:22:02

SL: Yeah. So our meeting cadence is similar to EOS. We have a monthly meeting where it’s about 4 hours, and then we have a weekly hour and a half meetings for our leadership team. One, during that second half of that monthly meeting,, we bring our next-level leaders in so that all of the leaders are kind engaging quarterly. We do a 2-day planning session, and annually we do a 3-day planning session at the strategic level. Then, as it goes down to the operational teams, they meet as teams every week to kinda last 7, next 7 as far as like, “Hey. What have we accomplished in the last 7 days? What’s the next 7 days?

And then as leaders, we try to make sure that through the reporting structure our subordinates we meet with them once per week. That’s where that’s a little bit different than a lot of companies. We have a 30 min meeting once, or I do with all of my direct reports, and it cascades down all the way through the organization that even like our teams are meeting on a fairly regular basis.

It’s one of those things, it’s probably a little bit arduous in that regards, but if you’re gonna grow really fast, you can get a lack of understanding really quick. And as long as you have structured meetings, and that’s as simple as having an agenda and kind of the desired end state, they can be really productive and they don’t need to be very long.

I automatically have a mindset to my standard time is 30 min. And then the other thing I do, that I found with a really stacked calendar with, we use Outlook. And with Outlook, you can tell it toend 5 min early for a 30 min meeting and 10 min early for a 1 h meeting. That way like you at least, have 10 min at the end of an hour meeting instead of having them stacked, and then your day gets late. So I use that very much so. That’s a little bit of a time management hack to make sure I’m not late for other stuff.

0:24:03

WS: Awesome. I appreciate you laying out all the different types of meetings. I will go back and listen to that myself, I I didn’t get all that down, but it’s so important. But I wanted you to because oftentimes you will say, “What do you talk about during those meetings, or what do you know to focus on?” Or maybe you can help the listener and myself. Think about even let’s focus on say that 30 min meeting every week, and maybe the listener is hiring their first person or maybe they have 5 people on their team and they’re all reporting directly to them. I do the same thing so I meet with the majority of our team individually every week at some point, and some of them more than once.

But, you know, during that 30 min, how do you keep focused? Who brings the agenda, and who leads that conversation?

0:24:40

WS: So for the 30 min., 3 questions – how are you doing? What’s a hurdle? And what resources do you need from me? 3 things.

0:24:51

WS: And they know that ahead of time and bring that and then?

0:24:54

SL: If there is a performance issue, we’ll talk about it. We don’t wait for the annual stuff. I encourage everybody to not do that, it’s silly. It’s absolutely ridiculous to make somebody wait a year doing something stupid that they may not know. Talk about it every week. Do on the spot corrections. I mean that that usually happens in there too if needed.Otherwise it’s those 3 questions.

0:25:13

WS: It’s so helpful. I hope the listener will think about that. But it’s helpful to you that this person that’s reporting to you, they’re thinking about this ahead of time. They’re coming up with this. I’m sure it’d even be helpful if they would send maybe some notes to you ahead of time or something before the meeting if it’s something you need to talk about in-depth right?

0:25:31

SL: The most important thing out of that meeting is that your team feels like they’re supported by their leader. That’s those 3 questions.

0:25:37

WS: Love that. All right, Scott, a few quick questions here at the end. I wonder you know where Spartan is as far you know where you’re thinking as far as you know, predicting the market right, the next 6 to 12 months in the real estate business. You know, you’re all buying and selling, how are you all looking at the next 6 to 12 months? 

0:25:53

SL: I mean we’re still buying right? The self-storage industry is a little bit different than the multifamily industry, different than the office. We have the ability to move our prices every 30 days. So, we have very elastic pricing, so we can track inflation, and we can track with the interest rates movements. It’s definitely getting difficult for sure so we’re constantly monitoring it, And our deal flow is slowing down for sure, not by choice, just because it’s getting harder to make the deals work. I think we’re we’re not special snowflakes in that regards but there’s still a lot of things that are trading right, and there are more capsule coming into the space, and there’s a lot of opportunities.

Our plan is to buy 400 million this year right now in various states, this single launch in 30 days.

So hopefully this has changed. But as of right now, we’re under Contractor LOI with about 100 million dollars worth of stuff. So it’s a little slower than what we thought of a kind of out of the gate but that’s just the changing operating environment, you know, kind of going back to you know, something I said, be prepared, you gotta have it. It just depends on how you create value in your particular deals. We’re gonna look more towards building since we have a construction company inside of Spartan. Development’s gonna be a big thing for us, because there are a little bit more margins, there more risk, but more margins and that’s we’re just gonna kind of keep adapting and adjust as we need to.

0:27:16

WS: That’s awesome. What about your best source for meeting new investors right now?

027:21

SL: It’s still the in-person meetups whether it’s at a conference or whatever. Those have the fastest flash to bang. Somebody meets you, they go on and then they do whatever. That’s a faster kind of cycle decision cycle than say, on a podcast or something like that, because it’s the podcasts and the digital medium and all that are definitely 100% kind of shaping operations. But the decisive operation is meeting somebody in person because there’s just like the video is great. But we all know that there’s no replacement for sitting down and having a coffee with somebody.

0:27:57

WS: What are the most important metrics that you track?

0:28:00

SL: So for what level of the organization?

0:28:02

WS: I ask that way on purpose, and so I would just say like for Scott, you know, for your position, CEO, like what are you tracking? And you could relate it to personal or business.

0:28:13

WS: Yup. So one of the key kind of property metrics I track is the gap between physical and economic occupancy. That gives me some pretty good insight as to how we’re doing with our collections. Conversions, for how many leads we actually convert to active customers that’s on the property management side. Cash on hand, from our finance team, don’t run out of money, period. None of the other metrics really matter as much as cash. Don’t run out of money. That’s basically my main thing. How you’re doing as far as the other financial metrics. those are really good metrics.

If you’re growing super fast, they’re always going to be changing so as long as you know that you have cash in the bank, and you can make payroll, then you’ll be safe. Acquisitions, number of contracts is one of the things I track. I’ll be honest I don’t care how many deals they review.

That’s not relevant to me, it’s the number of contracts. Not LOI, none of that enough stuff. It’s the number of contracts.

And then from the construction side number of on-time completions, on-time, on budget completions because that shows me how we’re doing and planning for our construction team. 

0:29:23

WS: Nice, I heard a guy say the other day without cash, you crash.

0:29:31

SL: There’s a million other metrics but it’s just, those are kind of the from around the business. right?

0:29:36

SL: What about a daily discipline or numerous that has produced the highest return for you?

0:29:41

SL: Using a full focus planner. That’s a brand, if you wanna strike that from the record, fine, but using a planner every day. I choose the full focus. It’s one that’s most in line with me. There’s a gazillion of them out there, but I started that I don’t know maybe 3 years now. And it’s a game-changer.

I don’t care how smart you are, you’re not gonna remember everything, period.Just not gonna happen. So just using that planner and having the discipline of having that thing with you, like that’s huge.

0:30:16

WS: Love that. Do you do that digitally, or do you do it all in manual handwriting? 

0:30:18

SL: I don’t like the digital planners, and this is why. Number one I’m one-eyed. Let’s just put that out there. And then number 2, anything digital has the means to distract you away from your primary cost. Some people are like I take phone, no it’s on my phone. I’m gonna call you out and say that’s garbage because I bet you 50% of the time when you’re taking notes on your phone some red dot or a text message distracts you away from what you’re doing at least 50% of the time. So shenanigans. Some of our team is using the Remarkables. That’s a digital means that that is that is less distracting of say, your phone or whatever. So I think that would probably be all right.

0:30:57

WS: Yeah. Remarkable. I have a thing called a Super Note, it’s very similar to that. But it’s not connected right to the Internet, there are no notifications, no things like that popping up. I appreciate that recommendation. And what about the number one thing that’s contributed to your success?

0:31:11

SL: Discipline. So, Jacko (inaudible), discipline equals freedom. And he’s right in that regards. If you have discipline and kind of where you’re going, you have a lot more freedom and that’s it. I’m a creature of habit. I get up at 4:30, I get into the gym at 5:30-ish, or whatever. Most days, I’m really disciplined in what I eat, so that I sleep really, really well, and just having that discipline allows me to get up and really kind of get after it and not be tired and not be foggy.

0:31:40

WS: How do you like to give back?

0:31:40

SL: Coaching and mentoring. I’m not really a believer in giving money, just doesn’t do it for me. I like to look in the eyes of somebody that I’m helping. So that’s it. I do, I don’t know maybe one or 2 calls a week from transitioning military members that are asking like, “Hey, how do I get into real estate or whatever?” And I try to mentor. And I’ve got a thing that’s Pets kids the only thing I focus on every everybody else like, “Sorry. Just those are my 3 things.”

0:32:09

WS: Scott, always a pleasure to catch up with you. Again, it’s incredible to see you all’s growth and I know so much of that goes back to the discipline and planning that man, you know, you just pushed so hard on and have been trained in military. I think that does to so many of us. I’m thankful for that part, you know, it’s like how they instill that in you.

But just the discipline of planning and how you’ve stressed that to us today. But you know, conditioning for growth. It’s interesting how we have grown and man, you got to learn a lot more about planning and business as you gro. There’s more people reporting to you. I mean that things change right, and you have to be thinking ahead of those changes, if at all possible. And you’ve helped us with that today in so many ways, even love how you know we got into the meeting cadences and how you all structure, those it’s so helpful. I think many of the listeners if you if they don’t have somebody working for them yet, they need a virtual assistant of some kind, right? Most likely to get some of these things off their plate. And even just that 30 min weekly meeting, where you know, you laid out those 3 questions, so helpful. Oftentimes you get started to think, “man, what does this meeting even look like?” Right?

So thank you again. Tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about you?

0:33:17

SL: Again, head on our website, spartan-investors.com. My email [email protected].

[END OF INTERVIEW]

OUTRO]

0:33:26

WS: Thank you for being a loyal listener of the Real Estate Syndication Show. Please subscribe and like the show, and share it with your friends so we can help them as well. Don’t forget, to go to LifeBridgeCapital.com where you can sign up and start investing in real estate today. Have a blessed day.

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