Podcast Transcript
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Real Wealth Real Health, the show that empowers you with insights, information, and inspiration to achieve your version of financial wellness. Learn how to balance living a full life today with planning for the future. This podcast is brought to you by Alpha Investing, a real estate-centric private capital network that provides exclusive investment opportunities to its members. And now here are your hosts, AdaPia d’Errico and Daniel Cocca.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Real Wealth Real Health. Today, we are speaking with Steven Pesavento. And the episode is all about mindset and how mindset can either turbocharge or hamper your financial success. Steven is a former management consultant in business process improvement who decided to chase fulfillment over financial gain by venturing into the world of real estate investing. He got his start renovating and flipping houses actively and experienced incredible growth in his first few years. And then he realized he was looking for even more personal freedom, transitioned into passive investing, launched his own podcast all about investor mindset. Has been meeting with other leaders in commercial real estate and really building some incredible skills and network that is really needed to find financial freedom through CRE investing.
AdaPia d’Errico:
We’re going to touch on Steven’s journey of professional development, the motivation behind his career journey, and how he thinks about investing today. We especially focus on the importance of harnessing your mindset and your emotions to maximize your own productivity and increase your chances for success in any activity. Steven shares some of the lessons he’s learned throughout his career, and we pick his brain about some of the most helpful techniques that he employs to optimize his mindset for success. Hi Steven, welcome to the podcast.
Steven Pesavento:
I’m excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah, it’s fantastic to finally have you on the show. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for such a long time. And I think to me the conversation started at the Best Ever Conference in February of 2020 at a lunch table. And it was real estate, it was mindset, it was metaphysical, it was energy. It was so many things. It was like a two and a half hour lunch, it was the best panel of the conference. So I’m really excited just to have the conversation with you. So to get started, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Steven Pesavento:
Yeah. So my name is Steven Pesavento, I’m founder of VonFinch Capital, I also host The Investor Mindset podcast. And what I really focus on is I help investors make breakthroughs to be able to create life on their terms. And I really do that through either working with folks who are looking to create a career out of real estate or with those people who are just like me and you who have capital and were looking to invest because we found something we’re already passionate about. We’re doing it right now and all the people who have a career doing that and place that capital into real estate investments so they can get the benefits that only real estate can offer. I’ve been in this journey for a little while, I started my career in management consulting many years back and moved into technology and continued to go on this path of searching for an answer of how can we create a life that is both meaningful, fulfilling as well as financially fulfilling as well?
Steven Pesavento:
And so obviously created some great income working in that space, but there was something that was missing. And when I ended up getting into real estate, I started first flipping houses, flipped over 200 houses, raised tens of millions of dollars in that space and now focus specifically on multifamily. And the funny thing is when I was a kid growing up, I wanted to be one of two things. I either want to be a chef like Emeril Lagasse or I wanted to renovate properties like Bob Vila. And all that Food Network and HGTV definitely paid off. I didn’t go the cooking route, even though I’m great in the kitchen, but definitely real has become a big passion of mine.
AdaPia d’Errico:
I love it. Thank you. That’s funny, it made me think about two things I wanted to do as a kid. One was a marine biologist, and the other was a lawyer once I got past the marine biologists part, ish. That’s why we have Daniel at Alpha-
Daniel Cocca:
If you ask me when I was 10 years old what I wanted to be, I would have told you a lawyer. And that in a lot of ways defines how I’ve approached my life until we started Alpha.
Steven Pesavento:
It’s so fitting.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, here’s the thing … I think this is an amazing way to start the conversation because we have these ideas even what’s drilled into our head. And I know for me, real estate investor was just never in the conversation. Not just real estate investing, but I went into finance, I went into banking, I went into financial services, I went into investing. It just never came into my sphere. As we know, we’re all building wealth using real estate as a foundation. Once you learn about it, once you get into it, it can feel overwhelming. So Steven, when you’re looking at it from, going back a little bit in time and getting into this, your approach was very active to passive. And how did that evolve for you? How did your thinking around the role evolve or was it naturally part of the evolution from where you started to where you are today?
Steven Pesavento:
Yeah. So if I think back when I was first getting started in the space, when I was first looking at real estate, I was 17. I’d read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I was determined to create financial independence for myself because I grew up with two amazing parents. But as a child of multiple divorces, we moved every seven years. And there was one thing that always was painful, and it was money. It was the conversation about money, all those feelings. When I read that book, it just seemed like, wow, there’s a path forward, I understand why so many people in my life think this way. And I also see another example and some people in my life that think this other way, that think the entrepreneur or the investor route. And so I had this planted in my head early, but it took me 10 years before I actually bought my first piece of property.
Steven Pesavento:
It took me 10 years before I took action and believed that I could do it. And it wasn’t until I finally made that decision, I decided to go all in and that real estate was going to be a path I was going to step in. And it was because I was at this moment of clarity. I had gotten clear on what I wanted, I knew that that was something that was there. And these ideas, I just couldn’t get rid of them. Sometimes that’s a lesson, things don’t always have to happen exactly when we want them to or the way that we want them to. But eventually if you stick with it and you get to that point when you’re emotionally ready and you decide. And then you can step into that, and these things can really start to begin. For me getting active was the only option that I saw at the time.
Steven Pesavento:
I was making great income, but I wasn’t necessarily saving it. I wasn’t necessarily stashing it away and investing early in my career. But when I stepped into real estate, I saw myself wanting to create that flexibility and that freedom that real estate investing and the income from it can offer. But I thought, well, I need to create as much income as I possibly can. And flipping houses was a pretty clear path towards being able to do that. It was accessible, it’s easy to get started regardless of what your experience level is. And it’s something that any individual can really go out and do. It’s harder to go buy 3 or 4 or 500 units or a $30 million building on your own, but I could go and do this. And I just happened to have found mentors and other people around me who were already on this path.
Steven Pesavento:
In the back of my mind, I remember reading a book ABCs of Investing from Ken McElroy on apartment investing. And I thought, “Man, I want to do that, but I.” Again, that belief thing crept in, and I thought I couldn’t do that, I can’t do that now. And so once I had already gone down this path of being very active, flipping tons of houses, building a team, doing this all out of state remote and really built around great partnerships, I realized like, “Okay. Well, I’ve just put myself into a new job. It’s a job that I tactically have more flexibility, but I’m not choosing to be more flexible. I’m making more money than I was making before, but I’m not creating that income or net worth creation that is so possible when you move into larger assets.” And that’s one of the many things that ended up attracting me to the commercial side and moving away, away from only focusing on flipping. Now, in my business, I’m still quite active, but I actually have that income working for me now as well.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you were speaking, I was really trying to think through this because you’re saying it’s easy to get into buying one home, flipping a home, and that’s how a lot of people start. It’s far more difficult to buy a 3, 400, 500-unit. And yet at the end of the day, it sounds like on the commercial passive syndication, you’re potentially making more money depending because you would need quite a few homes to do the same building volume, and you don’t have that true flexibility. Because I was going to say, at what point did you realize you can’t hold down a corporate job and do this? And you talked about it, but what was that moment? Was it overwhelm? What was that moment for you?
Steven Pesavento:
Yeah. I can remember exactly where I was and what I was thinking about. And I was at this point where I was in my business. And it was yet again, we had closed another 75 houses, we had flipped 150 in the past two years. And I was looking, and I thought, “Okay. well, we’re making a lot of money on paper, but I don’t have income if something happens. I don’t have income if I stopped focusing on working on this and hustling and doing those things even though I have a team and they’re executing and they’re doing great. If we don’t keep doing these transactions, we’re not going to keep getting paid.” And so I thought, “Okay. Well, I’m going to go down that path of owning some of these single-family rentals.”
Steven Pesavento:
And I spent about six months looking at all of the properties that we had access to. We were buying off market 60 to 70% below market value. And even with those numbers, it was difficult to be able to justify holding onto something and making $100 a month versus selling it and making 30 or 40,000. And so it was very difficult to actually enter that space. And I was in the best space anybody could be when they’re going to think about owning and holding onto single family rentals because I had this huge team that was executing and finding properties off market.
Steven Pesavento:
And that’s when I started opening my eyes and I looked around and I saw that multi-family was some of the same things that I was doing in single family, it was just on a much larger scale. And I thought, “Well, if we’re going to spend this much time looking to buy one property, it’s actually more secure for me because I can do more due diligence. I can fly out and see every single property instead of banking on my team to make decisions that they’re not financially aligned with.” And that’s really the driver that pushed me towards going this path.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah. So tell us a little bit, this is really interesting because you made that decision when you already had a big business. It wasn’t that you were either just trying to manage all of this on your own, you actually built a really big business around this. Talk a little bit, because I know that this is really a passion of yours too, I would love to talk about the mindset stuff. The mindset work that is … It is work, it’s like a form of personal due diligence on yourself where you really want to get to know yourself and understand this. How important has that been in your career generally? And when did you start working with it? How important has that been in your career?
Steven Pesavento:
It’s probably the most important piece for me because, like I said, I grew up in an environment that was quite chaotic, lot of change happening. And I had some good mentors, I had some good examples of people in my life who were living well, and I had a lot of examples of lives that I wouldn’t want to emulate, I wouldn’t want to live the life they’re living. And so I started looking around and trying to find mentors, any place I could, from books to podcasts, to events and conferences and college and university and all these different things. And so when it really hit for me, obviously I talked about reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad at 17. That’s pretty young to get involved and get that mindset shift. But I ended up getting gifted the four-hour work week from Tim Ferriss when I was just a freshman in college. My uncle gave it to me as a young guy as well.
Steven Pesavento:
And that book is really all about lifestyle design, it’s all about working more effectively. It’s actually not about working less, it’s just about working more effectively and doing 40 hours of work in four hours and being able to do that full-time all the time. And so that opened up my mind. And then through this process of continuing to listen and seek out people is what brought me to actually launching The Investor Mindset podcast. Because I’ve just been spending my whole life with this curious drive to understand just about everything like how can I learn from the experience that you, and you and all of you guys who are listening have been through in your life? Everyone has something to share. In the show, we really dive into the way successful people think. And what I’ve found is that there’s some core principles, some things that are similar between the mindsets of nearly everyone that I talk to. Everyone’s unique, but there’s a lot that’s similar.
Steven Pesavento:
And just to give a little definition too about what mindset is and what it means to me, I see mindset as the thoughts and beliefs that end up leading you to the actions that you take in your life and therefore the outcomes that you experience. And therefore by changing those thoughts and beliefs, by changing the stories you tell yourself, you can actually directly change what you do and then what you experience. And so a lot of people want to figure out, how do I do this? What’s the strategy? What are the exact steps I need to do? And that’s great. But if you don’t have the foundation in place for you to actually consistently move forward or believe that it’s possible, you won’t go or do anything successful. And so it all starts with mindset.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah. I so agree, I so agree about the … It’s the principle of your thought dictates your action and your action will dictate your results. And working with thoughts can be, it can also be really challenging because how does one … What’s a thought? Is it fear? Is it a thought? And there’s so much science around it too nowadays that it really helps us. So what are some of your preferred techniques and maybe some tools and tips for how you do it? Because what I love is that you do this in the space of investing. So as investors who are listening who are like, “Okay, where’s the deal? Where’s the sponsor? Where am I going to allocate my portfolio?” We’re already in a different place mentally. And so I think we’re working with different thoughts and thought patterns and beliefs. So we’d love to hear the tools that you use because there’s this perspective of having done this and spoken to investors specifically. So can you talk about those?
Steven Pesavento:
Yeah, absolutely. There’s so many tools, and a lot of it is intuitive, a lot of it is in understanding of feeling of what’s happening based on all these different lessons I’ve learned that end up coming out when I’m working with clients, when I’m working on myself, when I’m sharing or talking to other people. It’s something that I’ve naturally become really good at, and then I’ve obviously worked at it. But some of these things at the core, it’s first getting conscious of what is actually going on within your head. So some ways people do that is they ask themselves a question, is that true? When you have a belief, when you have something come across your desk, when you have something that says, “I’m not sure if I should invest in this deal because I don’t have the qualifications to be able to make this decision.”
Steven Pesavento:
Well, is that true? Are you 100% positive? Even that challenging yourself is a great way to all of a sudden realize like, “Oh, well, maybe I’m not, maybe I could figure this out. Maybe there’s somebody who could help me go down that path.” And so a lot of what ends up being the biggest change maker for people is that when they start to realize and recognize that these beliefs and thoughts are happening all the time and that all of the experiences that we’ve had throughout our whole life are guiding us towards the feelings and experiences and emotions that we’re experiencing in this moment right now. And so what happened to me when I was five has influenced how I’m speaking in this conversation today. What I’m focusing my effort and energy on is based on what recently I’ve been investing or putting into my own mind.
Steven Pesavento:
A great example is that one of my clients, somebody I work with one-on-one, his name’s Jason. And he has done a phenomenal job, because he works in the real estate space as well, and he buys property direct. And he was thinking about his business, and he was thinking, “I’m building this business and I’m making all this income, but I’m not creating any kind of consistency.” And so he was really frustrated, he was upset, he was beating himself up. And this is normal, right? We have people who do this. If you’re an overachiever like me, you probably do this to yourself, you probably do this to other people. We’ll address that maybe another time. But the truth is in that moment what ended up making that shift happen for him was to look at that from a different perspective. Rather than being upset about what one hasn’t done up until this moment, it was realizing that that emotion that we’re feeling when we’re upset about something is actually the catalyst, is that motivation for us to then turn the corner.
Steven Pesavento:
And now he is creating a plan of what actions he’s actually going to take to be able to start placing money that he’s making actively into some of these deals passively. And it’s something that, I can say from personal experience, it’s really easy to get caught up on. And you might cycle on something for quite a long time. But that’s why it’s great to be able to talk to other people, mentors, friends, spouses about what’s going on because sometimes they can ask you a question that’s going to shift your mindset, shift the way you think about it. And then you’re actually able to move forward towards making the decision and then taking the action that you want to take.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah, that’s such a rich explanation. That little piece right there I’m going to listen to two or three times because it’s very clear. And in a way, it’s linear. But you started by saying it was intuitive. And you pulled in the emotions, which everybody wants to believe they’re very rational when they’re investing. We’re all like, “Oh, look how smart I am, look at my brain.” But actually, we’re always making decisions based on our emotions. I definitely have like a high degree of just emotional awareness, but just knowing when they come in. And I tend to be very optimistic, which is why I’m not the underwriter at Alpha. I’m just like, “Oh yes, no, let’s do every deal.” And of course, that’s why I do what I do. And Anne and Fark and Dan do what they do. But I know this about myself.
AdaPia d’Errico:
And like you said, it’s that awareness piece. I know my strengths, I know my weaknesses, if you will. And in a way, I didn’t think this was going to go there, but when we build a team, and I’m sure you have this with the team around you, really building a team that plays off of each other’s strengths and weaknesses so it’s well-rounded.
Steven Pesavento:
Yeah. It’s so very important that the more time we can spend understanding ourselves, it actually allows us to interact better with other people around us and understand who we need to fill in around us. I’m a big picture, visionary, great speaker, good at connecting, good at building trust, good at taking very complex ideas and making them simple. But I’m not the person to be in the trenches executing every single day, I’m not the analytical person. That’s the reason why I hire and bring on and partner with great people who have that experience who they thrive there, and it’s so key. But the more that you can know about yourself, the more that you can understand that it’s okay for you to be exactly who you are, exactly how you are and all of these things, and that you can focus on those strengths and bring other team members, other experts, other people around you to be able to do that.
Steven Pesavento:
And that’s exactly true, that’s exactly what we do on the real estate side with VonFinch, my firm. That’s exactly what Alpha does. You guys go out and partner with experts, you bring experts into your company to be able to do kind of the work that we do. And it’s exactly what passive investors and LPs do when they join up with us and dive into the trenches to be able to get deals done. It goes full circle. But as the LP, you might not be in a position to make the same determination that someone from Alpha is on what operator is going to best execute and be able to do the same level of due diligence. So there’s value everywhere along the chain. And the more you can know about yourself, the more that you can know, “Hey, I need to have these weaknesses covered, and I need to look for other people who can help me do that.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. And you’re right, there’s … When we’re building trust, when we’re connecting with other people, whether that’s the relationships we’ve built with our sponsors or with our investors, having that level of awareness. Also, I’ve found for me, there’s trust that needs to be built in all of these relationships. And so having that self-awareness is such an important piece of being able to build that trust and therefore a relationship over a certain period of time.
AdaPia d’Errico:
I’m sure you’ve experienced this yourself. There’s been at least in my mind maybe since the 80s, because I’m an 80s child, but this idea of wealth being riches, being money, just being all about money. And I feel there’s been a shift, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this with your clients and people too, there’s this huge shift, yes, we want to make money because we need it to live, and it’s not a bad thing. There’s been a big shift around the meaning. And I know you mentioned this in the beginning too is like making meaningful investment decisions. What have you noticed just in the past few years about the way that people are thinking about building wealth and what that means to them?
Steven Pesavento:
Well, it goes back to the story I started out with talking about my own development going after a career that’s an earning career, that’s going to be able to create that kind of wealth, that kind of money, that kind of financial peace and all of the associations that go along with it. But I think there’s been a big movement to recognize that wealth is both personal internal wealth as well as the financial piece. And that you can have millions or billions or hundreds of billions of dollars. But if you don’t have fulfillment, if you don’t have good relationships, if you are not in a good mental, emotional space, if you don’t have great health, none of it’s going to matter because any of those places are your weak points. And so we want to focus on wealth across the board.
Steven Pesavento:
It’s something we talk a lot about with the folks that we work with as clients, the folks that we have on The Investor Mindset podcast. It’s interesting because when I asked this question, what is success to you, the most successful people never say money. And it’s not because they don’t care about money. Money is a scorecard, money allows you to create impact. But it’s what’s behind the money, it’s what the money allows you to do, that impact you can create, that feeling, emotion that you’re going to have and the relationships. And to be able to do things, to really take care of yourself on a whole nother level, that’s what wealth is.
AdaPia d’Errico:
I love it. And do you think that that is one of the signs of, let’s say, a successful investor? Does that drive success, do you think?
Steven Pesavento:
I think it does, absolutely. And the reason why I think that it drives success is that when you stop focusing just on that one piece and you’re able to see the bigger picture, you’re able to appreciate that you’re already so much closer to where you want to be even if the financial piece isn’t exactly where you want it to. Because one of the things that always happens is that you set that number I want to make $40,000 a year, I want to make $80,000 a year, I want to make $200,000 a year, I want to make a million dollars a year. That number keeps moving up because as you experience that new place in your life, the desire to grow, you’ve created a habit to want to keep being able to grow with it.
Steven Pesavento:
And so when you first come from a place of, hey, I’m going to be focused on growth as a person, I’m going to go and do things that are going to make my life and the life of other people better, you’re actually experiencing that success all the way along the journey regardless of where you’re at financially along that journey.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah, I love getting into this, some of the ways that our, we’ll call it mindset beliefs are influencing us as investors. I would love to go through just a few more with you, I know we talked about on our pre-call. So as it relates to mindset, talking about how that impacts how we make investment decisions. And we touched on it can be emotional, irrational versus making sure that things are done analytically. How does mindset affect this understanding that we need about our risk profile, our inner needs? All of these pieces put together, let’s talk about those especially with how to make an investment decision as the umbrella.
Steven Pesavento:
Yeah. So again, mindset is just the thoughts and beliefs that you have and how that ends up coming out into the world. So if you understand where you’re starting from, if you understand how those thoughts and beliefs, how the things that you have experienced in your life are going to play into those decisions, it’s going to be easier for you to understand how you’re actually ending up at that investment decision. So where I always recommend everybody start out is figuring out what it is that you actually want. What is it? What’s that vision, what does that look like? And why is that important to you? Because when you understand that what, now you can actually go find the who that can help you get there. And then you can create the plan of actually going through that process.
Steven Pesavento:
But by psychologically understanding where you’re starting from and what’s important to you and why you’re driven to be able to make these decisions, you’re able to put yourself into a place where it’s more likely that you’re actually going to follow through. We talk with investors every single day. Lots of people have the interest of creating financial freedom and flexibility, creating real wealth. But one of the things that ends up holding most people back is they feel like they get stuck in analysis paralysis or they get stuck in this feeling of I’m not 100% sure, so I’m just not going to do anything. But every time you don’t make a decision, you’ve made a decision. But a lot of people forget that. And so when we can be more intentional and understand that most of the decisions we make are going to be emotional and then we’re going to try to justify those logically, we’re going to look for all the logical reasons why this was the right decision.
Steven Pesavento:
If we know that going into it, we can catch ourselves when we’re about to make a decision that’s not going to serve us or our investment needs. And we can be intentional about putting ourselves into a position that we can get into the right state of mind to be ready to make a decision. So for example, if you’re an investor and you’re interested in passive investing and you’re receiving these opportunities and you’re looking at these deals, and you’ve gotten comfortable with the sponsors, you’ve gotten comfortable with the team, but you keep finding yourself not moving forward, you got to ask yourself the question, why? What is it that you really wanted in the first place, and does this get you there? Because there’s something that’s unclear that’s fogging you from moving forward and making that decision. And sometimes you just have to take the leap and know that if we make small decisions, that gives us an opportunity to build that confidence. So you got to get into the deal, you’ve got to be able to move forward, but you’ve also got to understand what’s holding you back from doing that.
AdaPia d’Errico:
That makes a lot of sense. The other piece that came up for me as you were speaking was the idea of abundance and scarcity and understanding that part of ourselves, understanding where we sit along that spectrum and maybe where it started, usually in childhood. And I wonder in your experience working with your clients, how much of that plays a role? For example, in my life, I’ve really done a lot of work around that scarcity mindset and redefining abundance. But I understood at one point when I started to do the reflection and the self-inquiry that I came from a place of scarcity. And therefore, I was often driven by fear and looking back and seeing how that influenced my life. And so I’m curious to get your perspective on that.
Steven Pesavento:
Yeah, absolutely. And this is part of that part of really getting to know yourself and what has driven you to be where you are today and what experiences you’ve gone through. So if you’re living in a place of scarcity as you’re talking about, and I grew up in a place of scarcity around money, and I’ll sometimes catch myself falling back into that place. When we’re there, one, we have to give ourselves a little grace and understand that, hey, this is part of the process, we’re going to continuously be tested as we’re growing as people. And we’re not computers as much as we want to be sometimes, we’re human beings. As we start understanding that fear can be a big driver, we can use it in our favor. We can actually use it to flip things on their head because what might be causing you not to take action if you were to ask a different question or think about it slightly different, the same fear or that same emotion of fear could actually drive you towards that feeling.
Steven Pesavento:
Here’s a great example. You might hear somebody say, “I can’t invest in real estate because I have two kids, and I’m very busy. And I don’t have time to get to know these things or to be able to focus on looking at the investment opportunities. I know I can’t be an operator, I can’t go and look at these deals myself, but I don’t even have time to look at the investment memorandums and be able to make a decision.” Well, the fear that you’re feeling is that you don’t have enough time. That’s a fear of time that you might be experiencing.
Steven Pesavento:
Now, if we were to just change the focus to because you have two kids, because you’re currently so busy in your work, what would life be like if you were no longer here for your kids, and what would that experience be like for the people that you love and care about to be able to continue moving forward in life and to be supported and to know that they’re taken care of? And how would that actually feel emotionally to know that you were able to do that for them or that you weren’t?
Steven Pesavento:
And when you can experience that, I’m experiencing now as I’m asking. And I’m curious if you think about that to yourself. It can really drive you towards another direction. It can make you prioritize the things that you think are important in your life so you take the time to be able to sit down and say, “You know what, I’ve decided that because I have kids, I have to do this. I have to make the time to invest because I want to be able to spend more time with them because I never know what is going to happen. I don’t know if this is my last moment of the day. And I want to enjoy every moment that I have, so I’m going to spend as much time getting myself in a position to get there.” It’s the same exact feeling, same exact situation, but all we’ve done is we’ve focused on something different. And that’s just a little trick that you can do yourself to be able to move forward past something that might be holding you back.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah, that’s a really powerful reframe. It’s the same information. It’s a very simple, but a very powerful reframe. And it also made me think about how much more powerful that approach is than let’s say new year’s resolutions? I mean, there’s so much power in words and how we frame things for our brains that this … And you also talked about emotion and that emotion is really the power behind getting the thought out there. It’s not going to stick without emotion. You wrap that all up really well. And especially when the purpose is towards something of deep meaning, that emotion is naturally generated. The results are also very different than when it comes from a cold calculated, potentially fear-based place. And your experience of the results are different. Maybe you get the same financial monetary result, but your experience between the two things is going to be night and day.
Steven Pesavento:
Yeah. It’s very easy. A lot of engineers, a lot of people who are really data-driven have been trained to not be emotional at all, but that emotion is in there. And so when you can embrace it and recognize that it’s there, you can use it on your behalf instead of it driving you without having any influence about what the impact of that is.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Yeah. So I would love to ask you, I know you talked a little bit generally about wealth and wealth building, what it means with the clients that you’ve worked with. And I’m going to go back to the 10-year-old right that knew he was either going to be, that basically is going to be Bob Vila and was going to be in real estate. Did you understand back then the wealth aspect of it from the meaning perspective? And just like a super 40,000 foot, that evolution from there to now as it relates to wealth and meaning for you, what’s that journey been like?
Steven Pesavento:
If I think back when I was 10 and I was watching a lot of HGTV and Food Network, and I was dreaming about living the life of these people that I was seeing out in the world, I was thinking to myself, “This just looks really interesting. This looks like something that’s fun, I like that idea of taking something from what it is and being able to improve it, being able to make an impact. And the emotion, the feeling that all of the people experience when they walk into these places, when see these things.” And same one in the kitchen when someone sits down and they eat this meal and they have this amazing experience, that was something that got me really excited.
Steven Pesavento:
At first subconsciously, I didn’t know that money was such a core piece of it. But what I did know was that all of those people had a lot more wealth, a lot more money than we had. And I thought, “Well, I would definitely want to be more like them than the blue collar life that I’m living.” And I was really driven towards that idea, and then that really was able to connect the dots when I had read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And the idea of real estate investing and those ideas coming together, it just seems so possible. It was like, “Now, I understand what this is all about.” And before, I hadn’t really been introduced.
AdaPia d’Errico:
I love speaking to somebody that’s as self-reflective as I am. There’s so much richness. And I hope for those listening top that some of this is bringing up elements of self-reflection for you as well. It is a journey to get to this level and to continue. I feel as we all still in our striving at certain levels, we’re always striving but towards a place of improvement or betterment. There’s pieces that change, but we’re always trying to go on a forward trajectory. For me, the more I know myself, the more I feel I’m successful. And I can celebrate that as success instead of success being identified as the object of attainment. It’s actually becoming more of the process. That’s been my ongoing experience as I do my personal work.
Steven Pesavento:
Yeah. And it’s interesting because I was talking about how I’ve interviewed hundreds of very successful investors, entrepreneurs, authors, people from Joe Fairless all the way to Chris Voss the author of Never Split the Difference, to Mark Manson, The Subtle Art. And tons of other really successful people and philosophers and people who really dive in. There’s these key principles that seem to come up almost all the time. We talked a little bit about some of them, getting clear on what you want, understanding why it’s important. We talked about seeing challenges and opportunities. But there’s these core beliefs that people have that are different. And a lot of you if you’re listening to this show, you’re probably already on that path. If you’re curious to learn about what some of the other five are, you guys can grab a quick resource we put together called The Five Success Principles of a Successful Investor. And you can grab that at theinvestormindset.com/success.
Steven Pesavento:
And so we put that together because after interviewing all these folks, we were able to pull out, these are those center pieces that seemed to be true across the board regardless of what background or experience somebody is coming from. And it’s good to just reflect and remember those because it’s just the same ideas that we were talking about before, that when we can subconsciously understand that these things make a difference, they make an impact. Even if we’re not consciously focused on that habit, unconsciously, we’re going to start to recognize those things. And it goes back to really getting to know yourself, but it’s putting in the right inputs on a regular basis.
AdaPia d’Errico:
It makes so much sense, it makes a ton of sense. And we’ll include a link to that resource too. It’s so great that that’s available, we’ll make sure that that’s in the show notes. Steven, so last quick question, what does wealth mean to you?
Steven Pesavento:
Wealth to me is about making an impact both in other people’s lives, your lives, your families’ lives. And financial is only one piece of the greater impact that you can make, but you need the financial piece to be able to fuel that impact on a greater level. And so to me, wealth is all about being able to go and have the means to be able to have that impact in the world.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Oh, so good. Thank you so much, what a wonderful answer. And thank you for coming on the show, it’s a great conversation. I know that our listeners are going to get so much out of it. And just really appreciate you taking the time and just sharing your story, sharing these insights. It’s been wonderful, thank you.
Steven Pesavento:
Yeah. It’s been really great diving in with you as well. And if anyone’s interested in reaching out, you can always follow me on any of the social medias out there and just send a direct message, myself or someone from my team will respond to. Otherwise, you can just head to vonfinch.com and learn a little bit more about what we do.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Perfect. All right. That’s also going to be on the show notes. Thank you so much, Steven.
Steven Pesavento:
Thank you.
AdaPia d’Errico:
Thanks for tuning in to Real Wealth Real Health. We hope that you’ve enjoyed today’s episode and found it both informative and insightful. We welcome all your questions and your feedback about today’s episode. And especially, we welcome your questions about specific topics that you would like us to cover. So shoot us an email at [email protected]. And if you have a moment, we really appreciate ratings and reviews as it helps us grow our online community and our interactions with you. And we’ll also be linking to a number of relevant articles on topics that we might’ve touched on during our conversations. Some of them are broad, some of them are technical, but we’re always aiming to provide information that helps you better understand the mechanics of building this healthy financial foundation especially if you’re looking to do this with real estate.
Speaker 5:
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