Insights from Vez Meas on Mastering a Growth Mindset

Insights from Vez Meas on Mastering a Growth Mindset

Sean: Hey, guys! Welcome back to the show. It’s me again, Sean Si, your host aka Mr. CEO at 22. And today, we have a guest who is a guy that is doing real estate. He is an investor and a property developer with more than $210 million in assets under his management and an additional 200 million in the pipeline.

And I’m so excited to bring him here into the show because I want to learn from him. I’m sure you will learn a lot from him. His name is Vez Meas. Vez, thank you so much for being here.

Vez: Thank you for having me.

Sean: Awesome! So Vez I’m wondering, and this is the question I usually ask at the get go. What brought you to where you are right now doing real estate investment and development at the same time? Have you ever worked for a company? Were you ever employed and now you’re running your own business? What’s the journey like?

Vez: Real estate. I started when I was working for a mortgage broker. Before that, my parents owned gas stations, several of them across Washington State. So that’s where I got my hands-on experience with business and a couple of those we built from ground up. So that’s actually when I started to get my interest.

And then when I graduated from college, you know, we sold the business, I got into the mortgage business, learned the ins and outs of lending, which led me to real estate, which, you know, from there on got me into development.

Sean: That’s awesome. So what are the things that you have learned along the way as an entrepreneur now that really helps you out? You know, from day to day, we entrepreneurs, the problem is we got a slate. And that slate is full of things that we must do for the day. And there are things that also we have no idea what to do with, and we got to be creative and we got to think ahead and we got to be intentional about the growth of our business.

What things can you share with us that you learned along the way on your journey to lead yourself to become more disciplined? What are some principles that you have right now that you carry with you?

Vez: One of the main things is you expect to fall. If you haven’t fallen yet, you have to expect it because to me that’s where all the lessons were. All this hardship, you know, all those times when you’re just dealing with difficulties and stress, how you navigate through it is going to help you with future projects.

You know, for example, when I started with real estate, it’s just flipping single family residences. Now we’re doing condominium developments but I would not be able to jump right into it without going starting small, learning the ins and outs and all the pains that come with it.

So expect to fall. But when you fall, you just learn from it and know that it’s not the end of the world. Things can be fixed and just keep that positive attitude and mentality to carry through.

And another thing is to always keep learning. You know, I’ve been doing this for years but I cannot say I’m the expert or I know everything like you’re learning every day. There’s new technology, new strategies, just new ways of doing things. So it’s also important just to be open minded, be aware and just keep learning every day.

Sean: That’s awesome. And how do you do that, Vez? There’s a lot of people today who are wired but not wired correctly. They’re wired on TikTok and Facebook. Whatever Facebook and TikTok throws their way, they’re wired into that and they’re not that intentional.

And I wonder what’s a guy like you to do to make sure you’re wired into the right things? Because you mentioned growth, learning – these are very important things. I agree. But where should someone who right now is lost in the mire of Facebook and TikTok, where should they start?

Vez: Well, they should start by getting offline and actually interact with people in the field that they’re interested in. So, like, if you want to own a restaurant, hang out with a chef, you want to build some nice houses or some buildings, hang out with real estate developers because you are going to be who you hang out with.

And you won’t get that online. Online won’t give you all the facts. And even so, you have to really know how to vet the information. But, you know, like right now we’re in a world of work from home, working remotely, and where people aren’t interacting with each other.

For me, I’m very old school where I like to meet people. I don’t really like these online meeting things because, you know, you get to interact, you get to see how people react to what you’re saying. If you’re saying the right thing and the wrong things or if it’s positive or whatnot, you get that from people’s body language.

You know, to me, I was like, get offline. Spend time with the people, especially people that are doing things that you’re interested in because you know their experience, they would have insights to share with you and that will help you in your growth and pursue what you want to accomplish with your career.

Sean: Yeah, if it was up to me, we’d be doing this face to face. But plane tickets are also expensive, right? I completely agree. I love doing things face to face. And if I could do it face to face, I’d rather do it face to face. There’s just some magic in there that you can’t replace

Vez: Yeah.

Sean: I want to tee you up, get a little bit of our hands dirty. How do you approach someone? So let’s just say there’s one person who wants to be better in the area of selling rubber, for example. I’m just pulling this thing out of my head right now, and it’s very random.

I want to sell rubber to the car industry because it’s a lucrative business selling rubber to the car vehicles industry. What’s the first thing that you do? Do you just go online, search who’s in the car industry and get to set a meeting with them using their PA or secretary? How would you do it?

Vez: Well, I mean, that’s one way to approach it. For me, I would actually go online and research it first. Rubber. How does it relate to the car industry? You know, I’ll go on YouTube not to watch just mindless videos, but things about rubber, how it’s made, how it’s manufactured.

And then go to, let’s say, who is the biggest producer of rubber, for example, I’m in Cambodia. So I would see, okay, who owns the most land that produces this? Who do they sell to, export to?

Just learn their business and of course, try and get in touch with them. And if not, then anyone in the industry related big or small. As long as they’re in it, you approach them. Sometimes the bigger companies are hard to get into, but the medium or small ones might be an easier access.

So, you know, just find the resources. Find people that are available. There’s always someone willing to teach. So you just gotta keep digging until you find that one person. So for me, that’s how I would approach it. It’s a numbers game. Not everyone would talk to you, but the more people you talk to, the more you will learn.

Sean: Yeah, completely agree. And would you say that a good method is just to drop them a message on LinkedIn or send them an email?

Vez: Yeah, you can LinkedIn, email, phone calls, any way possible. But you don’t want to bombard people because you have to be considerate like saying, “Hey, this guy is just coming at me too hard. “

But think of your approach saying, “Hey, look, I want to get into the industry. You know, you’re very well established. I would love to just have a chance to speak from you, learn from you. If not you, who would you recommend?” So, you know, always ask for that.

Sean: Right. And what is going to be the rate of failure acceptable when people start doing that and they send out to, let’s say, 20 people? Let’s just say they customize the email or the phone call to really try to get a meeting. And they’ve been rejected by 20 of those people. Because you talked about failure earlier, what’s an acceptable failure rate for you before you say, Oh, maybe, you know, this is not the way to go?

Vez: You can expect 70%, 80%, 90% failure. It’s just knowing that you just gotta keep trying and not everyone’s going to be so open. You have to keep in mind that they are busy and they’re doing their business, running their business. If they have reached a place in their career that they have time, then yeah, those are the guys that you want to speak to because they can probably run their business with their eyes closed. So they want to teach, they want to share their knowledge.

But until you find that one person, there’s guys that are building their business so they won’t share that much or they won’t have the time. That’s why I’m saying that you just got to weed through it, try to meet people in person so you can understand them. You know, it’s the same thing as fundraising. Let’s say you’re doing a startup, talking to hedge funds and VCs and whatnot. You can expect like a 98%, 99% failure – No’s until you get that one.

Sean: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.