Stewart Hsu

I had the opportunity to hear Bruce Norris speak yesterday. He’s relatively well known in California real estate investor circles as being a very reputable guy, with an uncanny ability to predict market cycles (at least in California). He has over 25 years of experience buying homes at significant discounts, i.e. at least 30% below “market” value. Bruce also has tons of stories of both his successes & mistakes which he candidly shares.

If you’re like me, I always wonder what alterior motives these speakers have, and typically they do have some product or service to upsell you on. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as there are lots of people out there whom deliver a lot of value — and for you to learn from them should be considered an investment in you and can often expedite your rate of success. Unfortunately, there are also some speakers out there whom are not as straight shooting, so just be aware of this as the person on the receiving end, and do your own gut check if you believe they are indeed worthy of your trust, your time and your money. (For the record, my take is Bruce falls into the former category.)

Bruce covered a lot of the basics, such as why invest in real estate, common imagined barriers that make most people quit, early lessons learned, favorite books, some basic formulas, etc. — typical stuff for what you’d get in an intro. real estate investing class. He’s not the best speaker I’ve heard, but he was good at telling his stories and you could tell he was genuinely speaking from experience. On top of all of it and despite his significant accomplishments, his humility and continued willingness to learn were readily apparent; these are two traits I admire and will always want to be a part of me.

There were a number of good ideas Bruce shared, which I will cover in a separate post, but one key idea really solidified something for me that I had felt intuitively before. When you hear it, it’s going to sound obvious to some of you (that’s how truth is sometimes), but I want to focus on it as a “first principle” that I suggest you seek to cultivate in yourself, whether you’re currently investing only for yourself or if you’re looking to grow your business to positively impact many people.

Briefly, a “first principle” is something I just thought of, but the idea is it’s a quality you need to have present from the start in order to ensure your own success long term. And, as a very succcessful investor recently advised me “Never sacrifice the long term for the short term.” Take this “first principle” as something to ponder, digest, and incorporate within youself.

Bruce asked the audience yesterday ‘Why are you in this business?’ The obvious reason, as you can probably figure out, is to make a profit. All business really boils down to making a profit (unless you’re a non-profit organization). The not as obvious, but equally important, reason which clicked for me is to be of service to people.

Yeah, I know some of you may be thinking that’s so cliché. I remember going to real estate seminars in the past and hearing the speaker say something like their purpose is “to serve people”, and I thought, yeah whatever, nice marketing/sales line. (Am I too skeptical?) But the idea stuck with me and I have given it more consideration since. When you think about it, every successful business out there usually excels at deliverying great service to their customers.

For me, what made this shift permanent is I recently put together a deal, a 60-unit apartment building in Dallas, where I raised money from investors to purchase it. When I was crunching the numbers and trying to figure out how to compensate them vs. myself, I kept putting myself in the investors shoes, asking what would make me comfortable if I was investing in this opportunity? As a result, I structured a partnership that has my personal interests directly and significantly aligned with those of my investors. At the end of the day, I would be very comfortable being in the investor’s shoes.

This is a very important idea I want to share with all entrepreneurs or soon-to-be entreprenuers, which is the more you focus on being of service and solving other people’s problems, the better you’ll do in the long run. With the apartment investment, I see myself as providing an extremely valuable service in finding, acquiring and successfully managing an asset for cash flow and for profit. At the same time, I see myself as the apartment “operator” as providing all of my tenants a safe, clean, functional place to live. When I put the people I’m impacting first, it’s followed by a shift within how I feel — and the more I think about them and focused on delivering value to them, the better I feel. Simple as that.

I should also disclose that I do hold the belief that those whom do well financially are those that have been able to deliver large amounts of value to others. (This is not to say that if you’re not well off financially that you haven’t delivered value to people… just the prior statement as it stands.) So, one way of looking at business is to figure out how you can add massive amounts of value to massive amounts of people, and then massive amounts of money will be a natural result of your actions and efforts.

On the back of my business card, I put a quote that to date, sums up life the best I’ve heard or read anywhere. It’s a quote by Buckminster Fuller, who was one of the most remarkable, intelligent, thoughtful, ingenious, giving people in recent history.

Bucky Fuller said, “The purpose of our lives is to add value to the people of this generation and those that follow.”

The more you seek to create and add value to others, the more success you’ll see in your business and in your life. It’s a law of nature; it’s how the universe works. Consider my perspective as just one data point among all of your experiences.  I can tell you candidly I’m finding the idea shared here to be true more and more with each passing day.

Sit quietly and see if this idea resonates with you as well. And if you feel so compelled, post a comment with your thoughts and/or stories.