Invictus Core Values

For today’s episode, we will be discussing what the Core Values are for Invictus Capital. 

We will go over the 5 core values that we stand by day to day. 

We will talk about these things…and more in another episode of Multifamily Investing Made Simple in under 10 minutes.

Tweetable Quotes:

"We make a point to always under promise and over deliver as opposed to the inverse, which I think a lot of people do." - Dan Kreuger

"if you're interested in being a passive investor out there, is that it's all about betting on the jockeys, not the deals" - Anthony Vicino

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Transcript

Anthony Vicino: [00:00:15] Hello and welcome to multifamily investing made simple in Under Ten Minutes, this is the podcast where we take the complexity out of real estate investing so that you can take action. Today, I am your host, Anthony, the CEO of Invictus Capital, joined as always by Dan. I don't care that it's ninety-eight degrees outside. I'm always cool.

Dan Kreuger: [00:00:34] Krueger That's right. Black team. No matter what, the weather is not a good one hundred degrees shirt, I can tell you that.

Anthony Vicino: [00:00:40] No, I've, I have abandoned the team uniform today and just gone four straight beachwear tank top all day. Yep.

Dan Kreuger: [00:00:47] Makes a lot more sense.

Anthony Vicino: [00:00:49] We're in the middle of a brutal heatwave, which is a weird thing to say about Minneapolis and the Twin Cities. You wouldn't think about us being a haven of hotness, but we we're in the midst of it right now.

Dan Kreuger: [00:00:59] People, we are a haven of hotness.

Anthony Vicino: [00:01:02] And speaking of haven of hot Nessa's, let's talk about something that's near and dear to our heart here at Invictus Capital. So on this podcast, we're all about trying to take the complexity out of real estate investing. And we do that specifically at Invictus Capital by partnering with passive investors to go and acquire apartment buildings. That's what we do. That's our day job. And so we wanted to give you guys at home a little bit of a glimpse into what we do, why we do it, specifically what we stand for. Give you a little peak underneath the hood, because I always like knowing when I'm doing business with other people or businesses, like what is their reason for existence? What gets them out of bed in the morning? And maybe I'm just a weirdo like that, but I find it's it helps me connect with them better and I want to connect. So what do you think about all that time

Dan Kreuger: [00:01:52] And the same way? And I think it provides a lot of insight into what's to come if you're going to start a relationship with somebody, whether it be as a customer, as a partner, as a vendor, if you know what their moral and physical philosophical beliefs are, then you've got a good idea of what that relationship's going to be like when you're engaging with them. And so it's it's it's really good transparency into the sense of individuals that you might be transacting with.

Anthony Vicino: [00:02:19] And I'm going to make this pertinent for you guys if you if you're interested in being a passive investor out there, is that it's all about betting on the jockeys, not the deals. And so as you're out there looking at operators and betting them in and trying to decide if you want to work with one person or another, really try and get to understand their core values, what are those things that they believe, and what are their non-negotiable? Because that's going to help you understand if they're a good fit for you. If you see some things in their core values that really resonate with you, then you're like, cool, maybe we're on the same philosophical page. If not, then maybe they're not the right fit for you. So let's go through our core values. We got five of them here at Invictus capital. And let's kick it off with number one.

Dan Kreuger: [00:03:00] We lead with value.

Anthony Vicino: [00:03:03] The V-word, the dirty V, what's the value, such an overused word, I feel like these days everybody says it lead with value and be value-oriented, good value, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, for my value, though, it is kind of cliche, it's still everything and it's its core to what we try to do, which gives value without expectation. That second part is really, really hard. A lot of times I find people give value with the expectation of then making it ask right afterward. And that's for us. That's not really who we are. We're not transactional people as a company. We don't want our employees to be transactional. We want everybody to be looking at the long horizon of the relationship. How can we add value to the people around us and trust that karma will take care of us in the end?

Dan Kreuger: [00:03:51] Yeah, 100 percent. And it usually does and sometimes it doesn't, which is perfectly fine. And the thing I love about this, this belief system or this is philosophy, is that if you just go out into the world and your goal is just to go around helping people, which is pretty much how we approach our day. Our goal is just to go out and try to help people around us in some way, shape, or form. And this is everybody, investors, vendors, wives, girlfriends, family, everybody around us. We just go out. We try to help people around us and we don't like what they said key. We don't expect anything in return. And the reason that is because worst-case scenario, if you go out and you just go try to help people. Worst case scenario, you provide value to them, you help them, and it feels good for you. And if that's all that happens, that's a win. And best-case scenario, a win is what usually happens is at some point in the future, maybe a week later, maybe 10 years later, that person's probably going to be willing to offer you something, either help you, I'll refer you to somebody. Do you a solid in some way, shape, or form, because there's a little bit of karma built up there, a little bit of goodwill built up that may come back to you. Like I said, if it doesn't, at least you still feel good about helping somebody, which is a pretty good downside to have in any scenario.

Anthony Vicino: [00:05:00] I think it's a really good metric. If you could find a way to quantify, like how much good you put out into the world versus how much good you take. If you can always come out net positive, then you're doing something right with your life. And maybe it's really sound business advice as well. But you nailed it on the head. It feels good. So that's all the justification you really need. So that's core value number one, which is we lead with value, core value number two. What is that then?

Dan Kreuger: [00:05:28] That's an excellent question. I'm glad you asked. We show quizzing him people. We were not prepared. We don't have these written down or anything. We show we're making this up as we go. That is our second core value. And I guess I don't know if it's really an order per se, but I would say it's equally important to go in on providing value, showing up. Surprisingly enough, a lot of people don't do this, whether it be a meeting, a phone call in relationships and business. A lot of people just don't know from. So what does that really mean? I think what is showing up mean for us?

Anthony Vicino: [00:05:58] You know, it's doing it. It's so simple. It's so basic. It is exactly what it sounds like. You know, Woody Allen had a great quote and this is where this came from for me, which is 80 percent success in life is just showing up. And it sounds so stupid, but it's a recurring theme in my life that just by going to that networking event or making that phone call, just putting in that little bit of effort to show up, but you so far ahead of the competition and everybody else, that just never bothers to actually show up. And so you don't have to overthink it. It is just as simple as what is that thing that maybe you're putting off you don't want to do. It could be a phone call. It could be that email. It could be, you know, just taking the time to sit and listen to the customer or to your partner, whoever. They just take the time to show up and be present. Like that's 80 percent of it right there.

Dan Kreuger: [00:06:52] Yeah, I think for me, this would be something along the lines of I was doing a smidge more than somebody might expect. So in a situation where somebody has reached out to you for something and they expect an email and you show up with a phone call that could be showing up, this could be going and meeting somebody in person, whether it be an investor or something, showing them property in person, you know, giving them that time, even though they most of the time will assume that we don't have the time nor the desire to do that, you know, allocating some of that time and that attention to people where it might not look like it makes sense on paper for you to be spending that time or that energy on that one individual. That's a small thing. And in the grand scheme of things, we make a point of doing that and it always works out. And it just relates back to that first core value, which is providing value for people. And sometimes that five, ten minutes that you allocate to somebody takes a little bit of time to your day. But it might make a huge a world of difference to that.

Anthony Vicino: [00:07:47] So, you know, a really easy one is like when things aren't going well, let's say we have a deal that's not going well and we have to make a communication to the investors and say, just saying, hey, you know, things aren't going great. That's one of those things that's really easy to put off. DeLay and just not show up and do, but it's what separates really great operators from really bad ones as people who stick their head in the sand versus people who go charging into the battle. And so that's a core value. Number two, and it ties directly to a core value. Number three, which for me, if 80 percent of success is just showing up, then it got me thinking, well, what's the other 20 percent? And for me, the other 20 percent is number three on the list. It is. You do what you say. It's that simple. Just if you keep the promises that you make to yourself and to the people around you and you are consistent and somebody that's trustworthy and reliable, you're so much further ahead than 90 percent of people that just break their promises to themselves when they say, I'm going to lose weight or I'm going to eat this way or I'm going to do this thing. And then they break that promise to weeks end to themselves or they tell other people, yep, I'm going to do this thing and they just don't follow through and execute it. Like that's why it's such low-hanging fruit. It's not easy, but it is very simple.

Dan Kreuger: [00:09:04] Yeah. It's I mean, it's really easy to say you're going to do something anybody could say. They're going to do anything. Actually following through and doing it is similar to the core value before this. Like not that many people actually show up at the end of the day and a lot of people say they're going to do X, Y, and Z and never actually do it. So I'd say we do what we say is basically like, yeah, we actually do the work. We don't just say things. We actually walk the walk. We do it. We say we're going to do it. We make a point to always under promise and over deliver as opposed to the inverse, which I think a lot of people do.

Anthony Vicino: [00:09:35] And that's a really important aspect of it. Right. There is just if you are going to do what you say, then you need to be very careful about what you say. Right. Because if you're committing yourself to something, then you better be sure that you can follow through and execute on it. If you can't shut your mouth, keep working in silence. That's OK. That's a perfectly viable strategy, too. But as soon as you open your mouth, you say something, you better follow through with it.

Dan Kreuger: [00:09:59] Exactly. Exactly.

Anthony Vicino: [00:10:01] All right. So that leads us into core value number four, which is we own everything we do. So what does that Dan, what's that about?

Dan Kreuger: [00:10:12] You know, for me personally, I would say this is us taking responsibility, regardless of if we are the ones who are technically responsible for a thing, we take ownership over that thing regardless if it has our name on it. If we're at all involved in it, we take ownership over that thing. Even if someone is technically someone else is technically the owner of that thing. And a good example that I would use for this so people could wrap their heads around it is any parents of children you will take ownership over any silly, destructive thing your child does, even if they're the ones that did it. And it's their fault that the thing got destroyed. You as the adult are the one who needs to step up and take responsibility because a five-year-old isn't going to be responsible for a broken window. They're going to go pay for it to be fixed. You got to step up. And so that's the way we approach everything in business, are we don't allow anyone else to screw something else, screw something up on our behalf. We take ownership. It might mean that we do more work and we do things we don't actually need to be responsible for. But we guarantee that we we can guarantee our success, that we're not letting anyone else screw things up for us.

Anthony Vicino: [00:11:18] Mm. And this one's for one of my favorite ones and they're all I like them all, but this one's interesting because it's supposed to philosophy like you just touched on, which is a philosophy of extreme accountability. But it's also core to our business plan, which is we try to control as many aspects of our business as possible. We built our in-house property management. We handle as many of our investor relations and capital raising components as possible. We try to keep this all in-house, our asset management, all of it because at the end of the day, if we control it, then we can take ownership of it and we can be held responsible for the delivery of what I will say is our fifth core value. So what is the fifth core value we deliver?

Dan Kreuger: [00:11:59] Premium results are going to it.

Anthony Vicino: [00:12:03] It does. It sounds good. And it's core to who we are and everything that we do, not just when you know, not just in the championship game at the buzzer. We're not just trying to deliver a premier result there. We're doing it in the locker room in pre-season. And everything that we do is how are we delivering premium results. And this is for us to create a credo that kind of trickles down into every daily action that you take. How can I send that email and make it a premium result? How can I respond to that? D.M. or send the social media post or talk to this investor or talk to this broker and deliver premium results? So it's all-encompassing. And when all these core values start working together, you're left with what we have here, Invictus, which is a pretty cool little thing.

Dan Kreuger: [00:12:48] Yeah. Yeah. I got a little back to something I mentioned before, which is doing a little bit more than what's expected. I think that's really it is not just doing the baseline expectation, but trying to always exceed. Haitians whenever possible, and just do that extra little thing that might take a little bit more time, a little bit more effort, but it's that extra little bit that I think could make a big difference in the long run. And so we strive to do that. Like Anthony said from the top-down, whether it's acquiring a new building down to the person that's going in and sweeping the floors like we want everything from the top to the bottom to be just above what expectations are.

Anthony Vicino: [00:13:27] Yeah, one of my favorite lines is that good is the enemy of great and good enough. If you settle for that, then you'll never achieve excellence. And so for us, it's like never settling for good enough. Good enough is not good enough.

Dan Kreuger: [00:13:41] We were proud but never satisfied.

Anthony Vicino: [00:13:44] There you go. So those are our five core values here at Invictus capital with lead, with value. We show up, we do what we say, we own everything we do and we deliver a premium result. And that is our guiding North Star. Hopefully, that gives you a little bit of insight into how we think, how we operate, who we are as people and as a company. Hopefully, that was entertaining. That's going to do it for us, though, at this juncture. We appreciate you guys for taking some time to join us this week.

[00:14:08] We'll see you next time.