Big Fat Real Estate Checks Ep 175: Embrace the Critique: Turning Negative Feedback into Growth

Please enjoy this transcript, but please note that it may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting over 2 hours, it can be challenging to catch minor errors. Enjoy!

Marco Kozlowski
Hey everyone, welcome to big fat real estate checks. I’m your host. Francesco galluccio, and I’m no, that’s actually not me. I’m actually Gabriella ish, you

Gabriel Araish
wish, buddy. No,

Marco Kozlowski
actually, that’s not me either. Who the hell am I? Oh yeah, Marco Kozlowski, ha, ha. And we’re here today to talk about we can all improve through negative feedback loops. Making mistakes is actually a fantastic thing, and thank you for joining us today, and I enjoyed with my two compadres, brothers from another mother, the sisters I never wish I had frank. And it’s all about making mistakes and being okay with it, and that’s one of the reasons I actually love wearing the Muppets. The Muppet shirts is Muppets are always doing whatever they they can. They do what they’re passionate about. They’re terrible at it. They blow shit up. They’re okay, but it works, and they’re okay with it, and it works. They’re authentically doing what they do. And they a learn from their mistakes and get and improve and improve, just like everything else in life. And making mistakes is something that I think is we might have discussed or brushed on a previous podcast, but I would like to do today is focus on negative feedback loops, and what that means is us remembering, alright, that when we first started doing anything, we were terrible at it, like, really, really, really bad at it, right? So when you’re a baby, like, I see Freya, my granddaughter, and she’s trying to grab something, like her hand is going all over the place, like she’s trying to figure out her she’s like focusing on the muscles in order to learn how to grab something. And the number of times that she has missed has greatly exceeded the almost half a time that she’s because she’s still very young, that she’s almost got it. But every time she gets closer, her brain goes, Okay, you’re closer, you’re closer, you’re closer. And through the making of the mistakes and the negative feedback loops that we get, we are able to do the thing that we want to do. And now, if you want to grab a bottle or you want to grab something, like Frank wants to grab a beer, he doesn’t think, okay, my bicep has to move at this power. My tricep has to move at this power. My hand stabilizer muscle has to do this and this and that. I don’t know if that even exists as a muscle, so don’t, please don’t send me emails. I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but we’re doing it subconsciously. We don’t even try. It just happens because we’ve mastered that skill. It’s now in our subconscious. So we become subconsciously very good at doing things we don’t consciously get in the car and drive anymore, although when we first started driving, we’re swerving all over the place. We’re looking in the wrong direction. We want to go right. We look left like we do the we do some some things that are necessary in order for us to learn. And I find it very interesting as people learn a new skill, like real estate and buying assets that allow you to really never have to work again, which is how we all got here is we have purchased assets, hotels, mobile, mobile home parks, multi families, single families, whatever system facilities, whatever the asset class is that can be managed by other people, because I would rather be both be back with both my ex wives strapped to a chair than than managed tenants that were going to happen and and that would be the ultimate negative feedback loop, actually, where we do things right and we do things incorrectly, and that’s all we can focus on. And if you think about anything that you’re really good at, you’ve probably failed at it much more, much more, much more, many times, many more times, many more times. English is not my first language, many more times than than actually you’ve gotten exactly so we don’t call you the guy that can’t grab a rattle,

Gabriel Araish
right? Like, never been called that? No, yeah,

Marco Kozlowski
I know. We don’t call you the guy that, you know, swerved all over the place where he was learning how to drive, or the gal. We don’t call you the gal that couldn’t play that piano piece for, you know, for months so you finally could get it right. We’re not focusing on the negative, we’re focusing on the achievement, right? And in order to have the achievement, achievement, you have to not do it well 1000s of times before you do it well, perfectly, or if that’s even possible, right? So I find it fascinating that when people make a mistake, that’s all they can focus on. I did this. Many years ago, and I screwed it up. And that’s, that’s, that’s the focus. And if you’re focusing on that negative feedback mechanism, that’s vital, you have to get it wrong in order to get it right. Like, if you look at if I don’t play golf, but I know golfers are obsessed with golf. That’s why I don’t want to play golf, because I have an addictive personality. Like, if I do something and I like it, I’m addicted to it, and that’s just for the rest of my life. So I have to be very careful as to what I get into. So golf, if I started golf, I just know that the only way to get really good at golf and to actually master golf is to play the least amount of golf. Correct? Makes no sense to me, right? The person that plays the least golf is the best,

Frank
right? Yeah, it’s, it’s true,

Marco Kozlowski
but you have to get but you have to play a lot of golf to play the least about a

Gabriel Araish
golf Yes, yes, yes, the lowest score wins.

Frank
That’s a my, right there. Yeah,

Marco Kozlowski
not neat. It

is neat. It is, yeah,

Marco Kozlowski
I tell the story of the cheetah at one of our events. You know, this cheetah is chasing a gazelle, right? And the cheetah is running for its

Gabriel Araish
food. It’s meal, it’s

Marco Kozlowski
life, basically, right? It’s running for its life. What’s the gazelle doing? Same thing, running for its life. They’re both running for different reasons, right? Either. So one is running towards something, one’s running away and one is running away from something, right? Who has the control? The

Frank
one that’s running towards

Marco Kozlowski
exactly the person that’s, or, I say, person where Al cheat is at the end of the day, but the cheetah that’s running towards. So you want to be running towards something, not away from something, because then you’re just a gazelle that’s literally running just to save its life, just running to run, and not going where it necessarily needs to go. It’ll run in any direction, so it saves its life. And a lot of us are doing that constantly, just running, running, running, running, not realizing that there’s no cheetah behind us. Who are the cheetah? Like, what the hell’s going on here, right? So what is, what we’re going to be also, so I’m not done from there, right? We have the cheetah that’s running for its life to eat. This Gazelle because it’s starving, it needs to eat. If it doesn’t eat, it’s going to die. And if you’ve ever watched a nature show, National Geographic, or, you know, whatever is on TV, there’s 1000s of channels now, when I was growing up, it was like one, right? And I was a remote control for my dad, but that’s another story for another day, right? Hey, change the channel, son. Now, alright, so as the cheetah instantly realizes that that Gazelle is no longer going to be catchable the second that there’s a distance that’s created where they know, okay, I’m not going to catch that cheetah, that gazelle? What does the cheetah do? Instantly stops. It

Gabriel Araish
stops. Why save energy?

Marco Kozlowski
Yep. Let the fight mean it doesn’t go. It doesn’t go. Mother fucker, that was the best Gazelle I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe I missed that. That gazelle. It was the greatest Gazelle I’ve ever had. I can’t believe it. It was like that Gazelle of 76 span that was a good gazelle. Gazelle. It takes all this energy.

Gabriel Araish
Well, if it does, it’s got a good poker face,

Marco Kozlowski
and it just shits on itself about not catching that Gazelle that it almost got. Does it do that? If you look at what a if you look at what a cheetah does, what does it do? It stops immediately. Does it look like upset? No. Does it look disturbed? Does it look annoyed? What does it do? I don’t know.

Frank
I cut my National Geographic Channel A long time ago. I think it just walks away. It walks away and meets up. It’s like it’s up with the other cheetahs and sits there. It’s,

Marco Kozlowski
literally, it’s Pat. It’s patting itself, you know, on, you know, on his office says, no fucks, give it. I’m fresh out of Fox. It just doesn’t care, right? It doesn’t care. But why? Because any energy that it focuses on on what it missed is a death sentence, because it takes a lot of energy to get to that it’s hungry. It’s still hungry. It’s actually more hungry now, because it had all this energy that it used up and it doesn’t eat, it dies right? Eventually it’ll either catch something or it doesn’t. So reason I’m saying the story is it doesn’t focus and shit on itself for the negative feedback loop that it just got. What did it learn from that it probably is thinking, What could I have done better? Because it has to. It’s it’s instantly stopping, and it’s like, it puts its head down and it like its head bobs back and forth. It’s most like. Thinking, how could I have caught that gazelle? Was it the best gazelle? Was it the sickest gazelle? Was it the weakest gazelle? Did I pick the wrong gazelle? What can I learn from this moment? Because the next time I do this, I might not have the energy to catch another gazelle, and I will die. So it has to learn immediately what to do next. And if we approach life in the same way, where we’re not obsessing over all the mistakes that we’ve made. Frank isn’t the one we don’t call Frank. Hey. This is the guy that fired the government, that quit from the government we don’t call Gabe. Hey. This is the guy that you know walked away from a senior position at KPMG, in a high position that you know, a Securities Exchange Commission, Canadian version, Quebec version. We don’t talk about the things that he walked away from, right? We talk about the achievements that we’ve had, and we’re, we’re, we’re sometimes so laser focused on the negative that we lose sight as to what’s awesome and what we’re learning from that. So that’s kind of the topic of discussion for today. So that was me talking for oh, that was the intro. Yeah, that was just the intro. That’s not

Frank
the end. No, it was. It’s a good story. And it’s, it’s, it’s, really, it’s, it is a little bit of a mindfuck too. But I know you always say, again, our failures, we learn from our failures. And that’s the course correction that you’re doing. And I know you always say you had that same, you know, shoot, then aim. And I had a privilege to talk to someone that was in the military, and I forgot to tell you this, this is at one of the events, and he was saying he was in charge of the itinerary. And every time it shoots a round of 20, right? So just say they have a target in mind. They shoot a round of 20. The 20th shot is not actually a shot. It’s a marker, so they know where they’re shoot, where they’re missing. So they’re shooting, shooting, shooting. The 20th shot every time is a marker, so it adjusts to hit the target. So every, every shot it takes, right? Every missile, or whatever, it shoots, bullets, whatever, every 20th is a marker. So it’s shooting in the air. Shootings for its target is shooting, shooting, shooting at the 20th is saying, Okay, I’m over here. Let me course adjust, because the target’s over here. That makes any sense? So interesting. It goes back to what you’re saying. You always said, shoot their name, right? It’s always about shoot, and then you aim. So you keep shooting, looking at your failures on your shots, you’re like, Alright, let me course correct the same thing with your granddaughter. She’s calibrating. She’s missing Exactly, yeah, calibrating. That’s it. So, yeah, it makes sense, but people don’t think of it that way, because people just think of the negative, right? And bringing something from your conscious mind to, eventually, your subconscious, where it’s second nature that you’re doing things is that’s a good thing, right? When it comes second nature ugly things,

Marco Kozlowski
being being aware of us focusing on the negative, because we’re all these species that focuses that, that punishes themselves more than one time for a mistake,

Gabriel Araish
and we’re all guilty of it like, I mean, it’s you know, the more you were talking about that story, the more I started thinking or looking back at things. But even when you know, you get upset in general, whether it’s with the you know situation, whether it’s with your children, whether it’s with your friends, it’s all expended energy that’s not going to solve anything anyways. In fact, it’s probably making things worse. But weirdly, it’s kind of what we default to, if it makes any sense here, you know, it’s your kind of, your default option, which you have to start, I guess, reverse engineering it. You got to remove that then make your default something else, which is, you know, becoming the cheetah. We’re just, oh, well, next time, what’d you learn? Yeah,

Marco Kozlowski
right, what’d you learn? I want to touch on the missile thing for a second. So when a missile is launched, a heat seeking missile that’s intercepting another missile, that one missile is moving right and the other missile is also moving. There’s wind rotation of the Earth, unless you’re a flat earther, you know, then there’s no rotation another conversation for another day, right? Where there’s constantly shifts that are happening, right? So do you know how many times there’s a course correction on a heat seeking missile to intercept another missile before it hits its target. Because there’s two functions. There’s two servos that are happening, right? There’s one that’s, this is where you’re going, that’s and there’s laser focus, because we, our brain, can only focus on one thing at a time. It’s either looking for something or solving a problem. That’s it. It can’t do two it can’t look for something and solve a problem at the same time. So there’s one mechanism in this heat seeking missile that’s this is always on the target, that’s telling the other person, the other person, the other servo, you know, adjust, adjust, adjust. So do you think it when it launches, it’s immediately going in the right direction. It’s never going to course correct. Any idea. How many times it has to course correct before it hits a start,

Gabriel Araish
tons it has to, I mean, it’s heat seeking, right? 10s of

Marco Kozlowski
1000s. 10s of 1000s.

Frank
I never counted, but, yeah, right. And

Marco Kozlowski
you know what? I mean, like, it’ll, it’ll go back, like, it’s always, like, it’s all over the place it so do we call the heat seeking missile, the missile that misses most of the time until it hits. It’s like, and it’s like, this is the course correct. You did 196,000 course corrections. What the hell? But I hit my target, but you did 196 course corrections? Do that less? No, you have to do it that way. You’re always course correcting. In fact, if you’re not off course, you can’t get back on course. Think about that. Because if it’s not on course, it has to do a better course. Because if it was on the same course and there was a movement, it would miss 100% of the time. You have to course correct, right? You have to go through these, these learning curves, these learning opportunities of wobbling on a bicycle, like when you were on a bike when you were a kid, wanting to learn a bike, ride a bike. Do you know anybody that hopped on a bike and did it perfect the first time? I don’t know you fell. You scraped your knee. All your friends are riding around and like, you’re like, Fuck this. I’m going to ride a bicycle if I fall, I don’t care. I don’t cry if it hurts, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to get up because I’m so focused on not not riding a bicycle like I am going to ride this bike if it kills me. And you’ll do that, and you’ll be so focused as a kid, you won’t give a shit what happens around you, because that’s the goal, and you achieve it. So if you can ride a bicycle, you can do anything for the record that correct, in fact. Oh, okay, that’s because your friend, you cry when you don’t eat every three hours. All right.

Frank
But, yeah. But while people are stuck in that loop, that’s the thing they they do more of what’s wrong thinking that that’s what the solution is, doing more of what’s not working is, is is not going to help you.

Marco Kozlowski
So I’m unhappy in my life, for example, so I’m going to keep doing what I’m unhappy with. That makes a lot of sense.

Frank
Yeah, that was the government. No shit. That was the government. Everybody. When I got out of it, I got out of it, but that’s every morning I walked in elevator, you know, just say Gabe was there. He then worked for the government. But hey, Gabe, how’s it going? I’ll this place. Man, another, whatever, six years, two weeks and 55, hours to go, whatever. They’re miserable, but they’re doing it, right? They’re just doing the same, but

Gabriel Araish
they’re, yeah, because they got comfortable doing that as a uncomfortable, right? They it’s,

Marco Kozlowski
I think it’s, it’s also fear. Well, that’s

Gabriel Araish
it. That’s Wow, that is, that’s being comfortable. Is, is the right relationship to fear of change, right? Yeah,

Marco Kozlowski
people don’t like Who Moved My Cheese. Highly recommend that Who Moved My Cheese. If you haven’t read Who Moved My Cheese, it’s, it talks about fear, being comfortable, being you know, being comfortable, being comfortable is a terrible place to be, right, dangerous, and it’s going to kill you, because the world is constantly changing. And are you really changing as fast as the world is? Think about that. And also, what? What kind of raises were you getting in the government? Frank, like,

Frank
I’ve never worked somebody else. That’s a valid question. You know? What? On average, I already dictated what you would earn in 10 years if I was still there. It’s about two, between two and every year, every three years, no, no, every year is about every time we do a collective agreement, every three years, they give about a 2% a modest increase, so 6% over three years. Oh, sometimes, hold on. So it was a few times they gave us zero and they said, you’re going to

Marco Kozlowski
like it. Of course they did zero, because you’re going to keep so

Frank
two would be on on the high point. If they do two, two and two, sometimes they’ll do like, 1.5 1.5 and then a two, right? But pretty much, what’s

Marco Kozlowski
inflation? Is it more than 1.5 and two? Oh yeah,

Frank
you’re not meeting up inflation. You

Marco Kozlowski
never, you will never your your paycheck will never catch up to inflation, because if you look at what a minimum wage job was when my parents were around, you could actually buy a house, right on minimum wage, right? That’s right. You could have a family on minimum wage. You could earn a living and take care

Gabriel Araish
of your kids. One minimum wage with Yeah, one

Marco Kozlowski
family, because you have someone has to stay home and take care of the kids. It’s the most important job in the world, whether it’s man or woman. It’s man or woman, it’s not about that conversation. Someone should take care of the kids. It’s important to be there for your children, right? Okay, so one person working at minimum wage can take care of their family, buy a house, have a car, have savings and retire on the minimum wage. Yeah. How about now? Can you do that now? Now you

Gabriel Araish
need both people working with six with two jobs each.

Frank
That’s four combined.

Marco Kozlowski
You need your kids to work in order. You know, it’s crazy. And, and only and, and only fans on the side. You know, you got to have all this crap going on. All right,

Gabriel Araish
so you guys are not the only ones who did this. All right, just want to make sure wasn’t, no,

Marco Kozlowski
I didn’t want to let Frank know that I knew about his only fans. He has a he has a foot. That’s right, showing you the hairy feet. Yeah, it’s like, Bilbo,

Frank
but to that point, precious. To that point, I think, I think there’s more people realizing that. They’re like, hold on a second. I can’t get that. I can’t get that house. Basically staying where I’m at, getting that job is no longer their first option, and most default to it because they don’t they feel they have no other options, or they’re fearful of again, the unknown being uncomfortable. But yeah, if you wanted to take that plunge, like you said before, you got one life, make the best out of it. Now’s the best time to do it, and I’m glad I did a 10 year 10 years ago, buddy, 10 years ago,

Marco Kozlowski
you made a decision for your future, and here we are today, right? Yeah, and, and just one more comment on this, and then we both have to go. We have classes coming up. If you’re driving, it’s perfect example. You have a rear view mirror to look at your past. If you focus on your very mirror going 100 kilometers, 100 miles an hour. What’s going to happen your crash. You have your windshield so you can see what’s cooking. You got your GPS to tell you if you’re on or off track, but hang on a second. You also have a speedometer to tell you how fast you’re going and what the speed limit is. Slow down over here, buddy. It’s dangerous. You could hurt other people yourself. Okay, you can go fast now. Now what if we took the speedometer out of there? Now, what? Hey, you got to get to where you’re going within a certain period of time. But if you go too fast, you’re going to kill yourself or other people. That’s going to happen without the negative feedback loop. You have to know if you’re going too fast, you’re going too slow, the GPS wrong direction, right direction. All those are feedback loops to see if you’re going on the right path. And they’re necessary in order for you to go to your future, your future destination. So if you’re thinking that everything has to be easy, no, if you think everything has to you have to earn something in order to get something. That’s how God made it. If it’s on the last podcast that we just did, if you’re making a human being, you wanted to go through hard, difficult things in order for it to be strong, for it to have the negative feedback loop repetitions, for it to know what to do next. The only reason you’re good at something is because you failed at it more than you got good at it. You’re playing less golf than everyone else because you played more golf than everyone else. Wrong, right? You did you did it more incorrectly than you did correctly, and that’s why you’re good at it. Why I’m here today is because I’ve screwed up, lost more money and made more mistakes, and had tenants that said, Nope, I’m going to stay now that it’s I’ve been here for 30 days in my hotel room, like I told Frank, don’t go past 30 days, because it’s going to happen, because I’ve already made this mistake. Yeah, remember those days? I

Frank
remember that. I remember it’s like you talked it’s like, wait. It’s like, it happened to me. It happened immediately. I was it was in within that same week, or two weeks, because

Marco Kozlowski
I told you this is what’s going to because I’ve already seen I’ve made more mistakes anyone else. So I have the ability to share my mistakes with others where you don’t have to learn the lesson yourself. That’s the Wiz. That’s called wisdom, right? So listen to wise people that are are wanting to give you what you should have earned to begin with? So you can earn it with experience, or you can earn it with a check. What’s faster

Gabriel Araish
money’s always what’s better?

Marco Kozlowski
School of hard knocks. School of Hard Knocks is the most expensive school of all time. 100% it took him. It took him less than 10 years. So you took you six years to do a 25 three years to get my first hotel. Yeah? Well, three years to achieve what it took me. 2027 years. Yeah, you did, as with Gabe and everyone else that actually listens and follows the steps and just so you guys understand, if you know where you’re going and you behave in the right direction, there’s absolutely no possibility, no chance, impossible to fail, to not achieve where you want to be, because your behavior creates a byproduct or a consequence of the result. So if I behave a certain way, the behavior is going to result in a certain thing. So if you behave some way, you’re going to result in either success, which is measured in how many times you failed, right, with the experience that you got, right? And I find it interesting the word behavior by itself, right, or consequence by itself. I’m gonna say consequence. The only time I’ve heard the word consequence used in a positive way, which I use constantly, because there’s consequences to our behaviors, but not in a bad way. The good way is in prison. What’s, what’s the consequence of having good behavior for 25 years? What’s good consequence? Good Behavior, if you’re sense for 25 years, yeah, you’re early what’s,

Gabriel Araish
what’s the consequence? Early Retirement, you

Marco Kozlowski
get to live you have a better life by behaving well. You. A better life. It’s the only example in in that I can find where there’s a consequence that’s used in a positive way, because it’s been designed to be negative, but they can’t get away from that one, whoever they are, right? Yeah, remember that your result is a consequence of a certain behavior, and that could be good, it could be bad. That’s your choice. Well, put alright. Well, thanks. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you both. Yeah, good, really, really, do. It was fun. And thank you. Listener again, the big fat real estate checks. Like us, love us, share us. Comment. Tell us what we could do better. Tell us what we can do worse. I don’t know. Just tell us something we want to hear from somebody, please. Is anyone here? Please listen, actually, we’ve very blessed with some phenomenal reviews. Appreciate you very much. And yeah, keep on tuning in. Keep on doing what you got to do in order to have the be the best version of yourself and screw up. Have fun doing it. Be authentic when life. Make it count. Appreciate you guys. Thanks so much. Have a fantastic day and a fantastic life. Bye for now.