Setting goals is easy. Setting SMART goals is a little bit harder. Setting SMART goals and adhering to a process that allows you to achieve them? Well that’s something we all wish we were better at.
Tony Cline is a property management success coach and extreme distance runner. He has seen a lot of success in his life, and he attributes a lot of it to his commitment to process when chasing goals.
Join host Andrew Smallwood as he interview Cline about his process for staying on track when he sets the big goals.
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Season 3 Episode 20 features Tony Cline
The Triple Win Property Management podcast is produced and distributed by Second Nature
Tony Cline
You give yourself 4 hours to complete a task. It takes 4 hours. You give yourself 8 hours. It takes 8 hours. 2 hours. It takes 2 hours. Like we fill the task expands to fill the time. And so what I really focus on is I determine what are my goals overall. And then I'll put that time on the calendar. And that's just blocked out. And if somebody asks, can we meet at a such and such time, you know, it's a really easy answer. I'm sorry. I've got a previous commitment. You know, I have a commitment to myself, to my family, to my goals, that I'm going to achieve these things now, now that I have time blocked that out, I have this other time that's available that we can figure out how to fit those business goals in everybody.
Andrew Smallwood
Andrew Smallwood here, If we haven't had the pleasure of connecting yet, I'm Second Nature Chief Customer Officer and involved with the Triple Win podcast and live events that we do today. I have the distinct pleasure of bringing up my friend Tony Cline. I am here today to have a conversation with Tony, and kind of to say, we want to have a dialogue together. We want to encourage you guys to be engaged here as well, and I'll be doing my best. Laura will help you out if you can bring some of your questions or curiosities into the chat. We'd love to see that as well as potentially even some of your feedback and what you're learning along the way of something really resonated with you. Yeah, that's often helpful for other people in the audience, kind of sharing those takeaways as we go. So we'd love to see that highlighted in the chat production. Depending we may, we may have an opportunity to even bring you a couple of you up. But Tony will go ahead and bring Tony up to the stage and I'll give him my insufficient introduction, but at least sufficient enough to get going here. So listen, here's what I think everybody will want to know about Tony Cline as a way of starting. And that's that Tony has been in the property management industry for, gosh, I think close to 25 years. And it ran a property there as a business for over two decades. Successful business ultimately was a part of a couple different mergers, and it was really running at the heart of the humble property that we grew up with his peers there. They were operating in seven different markets and six states, which was exciting. And shortly after selling his interest in this business started, Pam Success was a full time training and consulting business for the property manager industry from someone who's an expert in it. And I think it's worth mentioning earlier this year, Second Nature organized the triple Win awards, but the triple win awards are actually here nominated in peer judged and assessed. Right? So it's not Second Nature actually picking who the winners are through some political process or it's not just like a Facebook vote where you go get your grandma to like the post five times, right. And that's how somebody wins. We wanted to do this of like, hey, what do the leading experts in the industry think? Right? And judged by peers, who wins the award for resident experience? Investor experience. And we also added one called the Kevin Night Mentor of the Year Award as an honor to our friends who passed recently. Kevin Knight, a great story of his career and impact for another time. But Tony was recognized, nominated and ultimately awarded the Cabinet Minister of the Year award earlier this year. And I saw the response to that just like so, he's so deserving. And when I think of how people describe Tony, you know, in this industry, you'll hear things like he's a friends, you'll hear things like he's a mentor, right? Mentor of the year. You'll hear things like he's a coach, he's somebody who's in my corner. I feel like an encouraging voice for me in support of me. You'll hear things like Tony is an inspiration, and Tony recently completed a pretty incredible achievement. It's called the Triple Crown. And there's three 200 plus mile races, one in Tahoe, if I remember correctly, another one, the Big Foot. And then and then finally the Moab 240, 240 miles in a two and a half month period. Tony completed all three of these races. Obviously, very few people even complete one of these races to do all three in that time period. It's just that much more impressive and exclusive, I would say, of an achievement. And Tony, the last thing I just want to say personally, where when I think I would I would use all the same words friends mentor somebody I've learned a lot from and inspiration, somebody who has challenged my thinking in a lot of ways and opened up new ways of thinking about things, which I really appreciate. And I'm looking forward to our conversation for those reasons. And I think of you as a heart centered leader in this industry, somebody who is very people oriented, somebody who's very impact oriented, somebody who really wants to contribute. And for that, I just want to say thank you for being here today to do just that and share some stories, share some wisdom, have a good time and see. See what kind of impacts we can have, what kind of difference we can make for me as a professional. So, Tony, anything I missed in your intro, you want to add on to that bullet point.
Tony Cline
Now that was fantastic. I appreciate that. I do spend a big part of my passion is helping people succeed and figuring out where they're at now and where they want to go and just helping people come up with a plan to do that and then watch them execute. And so for you to say those kind of words are very much appreciative of that. So thank you.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, well, there's a lot of ways we start. I mean, I'm sure people you've got people's interest with some of your background, but I'm kind of curious if you can win us back a little bit. You know, probably not to just like the day after the race and if we can rewind a little bit, can you can you give us a little like the story of Tony, kind of like how did you get here to, you know, this place where you ran a successful property manager business and, you know, really an extreme athlete and, you know, a leader in this industry helping others. Can you give us like a sense of where you started there, kind of how you got here?
Tony Cline
Sure. Yeah. So I'll start with the my position in the property management industry. So I had a small property management company here in Denver, Colorado, and, you know, I was doing a lot of things that small business operators do. And one day I was out doing an inspection on a property. We had a tenant that was moving in and some of my team was busy. And so I'm just like, I'll go out, make sure the property is ready. And while I was out there, I started getting really sick and I'd had this sickness that they couldn't figure out, couldn't diagnose. And but at the time I was at this property and the pain got so bad that I, I actually went inside one of the bedrooms, shut the door, went inside the closet of that bedroom, shut the door, turned off the lights and the light coming underneath the door was still too bright and the pain was just immense. And I remember laying there thinking, I just I don't care how, but the pain has to stop. Like it just has to go away. And and so I don't even remember how I got home that night. But the next day my wife started looking through all the different choices for doctors and things. And so I'll shortcut that. But we found somebody that could help kind of figure it out. But one of the things that they said along the way was, we don't really know what's wrong with you. Maybe you just need more exercise. And I kind of really just out of spite just to kind of check the box off the list. I started walking around this park by my house. It was a 6/10 of a mile loop around this park, and eventually those walks, I started turning into a little bit of a morning person. I started enjoying smelling the grass and watching the sunrise eyes and hearing the birds. And so I started extending that and one morning I just walked eight miles before work and I'm like, I really enjoy this. But, you know, it's taken too much of my day. And so the next day I got up and I remember distinctly I ran 5 minutes and then I walked 5 minutes, ran four walked four all the way down to one. And at the end I was exhausted. But it was those small steps of progress that started putting me on this path to eventually, as I started feeling better, I started living by this motto of No one does not find their limits until they search for them. And the more you search, the harder they are to find. And so that turned into deciding to run my first marathon to my first 5400 miler that my first 240 miler. And now it's just the limits are getting closer and closer. And my vision of what's possible and the limits become what you think is a big challenge actually becomes something super small because you start building the some of these practices that we're going to talk about. Some of these things that we've implemented actually make those big challenges just kind of disappear.
Andrew Smallwood
Well, yeah, I think it's so interesting of like, you know, when I imagine somebody who's like an ultra athlete, I'm like, they must have like, done cross-country in high school and like, just kind of like, continue that on to here, you know, where this started from then and how it evolved incrementally, I think is really, really interesting, you know, for people to hear. And I kind of like to imagine, you know, I think what we promised people, what people would be expecting coming into this conversation is like, hey, I want to get the most out of myself. I want to get the most out of the people that I that I work with. I want to get the most out of my business. And I'm curious, you know, for people who are trying to answer those kind of questions, like if it's start, does it start with a goal, you know, or where should we start? I know we're going to talk about how to set goals. We're talking about how to achieve. You know, if that's kind of like how I'm thinking or what I'm thinking about accomplishing, where might we start with that?
Tony Cline
Yeah, I think let me start with a thought and that I want to kind of frame the rest of our conversation around this. I think most of us, we dream too small and, you know, I think in general, life will give us what we ask for and what we work hard to achieve. But most of us don't start out thinking, you know, I'm going to be able to run an ultramarathon or I'm going to be able to start a successful business or whatever. We have those dreams or those wishes, but we don't really know how to get from turning it from a wish into something more concrete and so I think the number one the number one thing you can do is to come up with something that you believe is achievable and then just take action towards it and realize you're going to fail. But that's okay because success is built on the foundation of failure. And so to try to achieve something great without expecting to sell, you're just setting yourself up for misery. And so we're we'll talk a little bit more about what it means to take action and where to put your efforts. But honestly, it's you can sit around with a group of people and theorize and talk about what you're going to do, but the number one thing is to just take action and see where it takes you. You know, you can't, you know, steer a parked car. But once that car is in motion a little bit, we can kind of steer you where you want to go.
Andrew Smallwood
And so, you know, when you think about goals, Tony, when people are setting goals, you know, ones that are achievable, ones that get them into action, you know, how do you like what have you found works for you and what have you found? Kind of like works for others, right, that you've coached through this app? Like how many goals do I set or how do I even I even start like, how many do I said, What should be my criteria? I know we talked about beyond smart goals, like in the title, this, you know, can you get into that a little bit of.
Tony Cline
Sure. Well, let's start with a first let's make sure that everybody knows what smart goals are. And so to start with smart goals, you know, I'm drawing a blank on this right off the bat.
Andrew Smallwood
Specifics.
Tony Cline
Specific. There we go. Okay. All right. I don't know why I blanked specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and then time bound. And if you were to if you were to be somebody that was just analytical and format your goals in that way, you're off to a good start. But that doesn't motivate you through the hard times. I think what smart goals does is it gives you if everything went well, that's a good way to structure your goals, but without tying some sort of emotion to it, some sort of bigger desired outcome, then it's not going to help you get through the rough times. And you know, there are there are a lot of examples where, you know, I was about 100 miles into the middle of Big Sur, which was the middle of the three races, and I wanted to quit. Like, I just I my body was trashed, I was tired. I'd been probably running at that point 36 hours, maybe more. But I knew that I was going to encounter that. I knew it was going to get rusty. So rather than quitting, I had my team there that was with me that all had the same vision. We were all bought into, why we were there, what the mission was. And and so we acknowledged that we were experiencing a challenge. But then we had steps that we could take that we'd already preplanned that could move us forward and get us out of that.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, I like what you said. It's like there's smart, but it's like you're kind of missing the heart. If you like. You need, like, smart. Plus our goal, you know, coming in, it made it. Could you give an example, Tony, of like years either not a smart goal or it's missing some hard or like here's a smart plus heart kind of like goal it maybe an example of one that you've said or that you've seen somebody else set that would be relevant for the folks here.
Tony Cline
Well, for me, the first time I completed my marathon, So back in 2014, I didn't start running until like an hour 2011. So I was, what, 41 years old. And at some point I'm like, I don't want to be known as the sick guy anymore. I want to be known as the guy who could run a marathon. And at that time, I didn't know anybody who had ever completed a marathon. And so by tying that to the finish line, tiny tying that transition, a personal transformation to the finish line helped me cross the finish line. And I didn't know what I was doing. I ran out the gate way too hard, way too fast. My legs were absolutely on fire when I crossed the finish line. I remember crossing the finish line and laying down in the grass and my legs were burning literally like they were on fire. But that's not the thing that stuck in my mind. The thing that stuck in my mind was I did something that meant a lot to me personally because it was tied to more than just that goal of running 26.2 miles. And so if we were to relate that to business, if you were to tie that back into your business goals, I really believe that your business goals, your business exists to be able to provide certain resources for you in your personal life. So if you're building your business and you're setting business goals, what I try to do is tie those business goals back to how does that impact my life personally? How does that move me forward and get me closer to my personal goals? By having those things tied together, it allows me to really be better. I don't know if Mark Brower is joining us today, but when I first met Mark, I met him at the PM House five K at one of the national conferences, and he's a lot faster than me. And we were joking around a little bit at the start of that and, you know, I told him that I'll be anybody here. And it wasn't like an ego or a cocky thing. It was I, I will be anybody here as long as I get to pick the distance because I am willing to suffer a long time because I've tied something meaningful to the end of that goal. And so just having that personal attachment to the results is going to get you through those things when things get tough, because we will have to know going into it that it's going to get tough.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, I'm curious, you know, bringing this to more recent, that was great, by the way. I'm thinking about this like Triple Crown thing, right? Like you obviously don't, like, just stumble, you know, on a path and, like, find yourself inside of a 200 mile. Like, obviously that's something you prepare for and commit to and register for it. And so I'm curious like, okay, if early on there was this kind of I didn't trace Richard, can you speak a little bit to like what was the motivation to say, I'm going to do something this big, this extreme over a short period of time, I'm going to have to do the training and prep. I remember seeing you in July, you know, as you were getting ready to go for this. I remember you being on a Zoom call, like right after right after one either side of one. Like what? What was that for you?
Tony Cline
What do you mean, what was what?
Andrew Smallwood
Can you talk about like here the decision process to commit to doing the Triple Crown? What was what was motivating you and how you thought about it?
Tony Cline
Well, I talked a little bit earlier about, you know, you don't know your limits until you search for them. And the more you search, the harder they are to find. And once you are experiencing some momentum, it just becomes what's the next thing? What's what? I didn't know I was capable of this, but now that I see that I'm about to achieve this, it makes me believe that the next thing is possible. And part of that training was getting into the right community, being around the right kind of people. One of the things that I learned early on is if you want to learn to run 50 miles, you start hanging around people that run 100 miles because 50 is only half as far. It's not even half the effort. Like, that's the easy, that's the easy half, but it's getting around the people that have that mindset of being able to achieve and help you believe, change that mindset of what's possible. Like, I didn't even know that these type of races existed until I started being able to perform better and better. I never would have gone into this and said, I'm going to go from running a marathon to running 240 miles or 654 miles over three races. That was one of the there were only nine people because of the way that the races fell. There was only 17 days between the first and second races. And the second one was the hardest of the three. There were only nine people on the planet. These people came in from all over, all over the globe to compete in this. There were only nine people that saw that as a goal, that nine people crazy enough to finish. There were 62 people or something that signed up in nine of us. I'm sorry, 18 of us finished and I finished ninth. But there's a small group of people that the farther you go into becoming an expert in something, the fewer and fewer there are that are out there. And one of the things that I learned is those other 18 people weren't necessarily my competitors. Somebody was going to win, somebody was going to come in first place. But everybody out there was going to achieve some life changing achievement, and we were all there to help each other better or get better. And so one of the things that I learned is that the more you dive into something, the more you focus on it, the more you start finding your peers to have the same goals. And by attaching yourself to other people with similar goals and ideas, it makes things just that much easier than trying to figure out how to do it all on your own. Well.
Andrew Smallwood
You know, I, I there's a friend of mine, Tony, who actually ran long distances and was sharing with me some of the lessons that he learned. And one that he talked about, I remember was he was on the path and there was another person there and they were interacting a little bit. And he was kind of like going at this person's pace. And then after a little bit, he realized this person share with them that they had participated in this race like 12 years in a row, and they had never finished out of any of the 12 years. And he suddenly realized, like, maybe this is not this isn't the person I should be engaging, right. Engaging with at this time or not aligned to my goals. And and I've seen you do this in your business of surrounding yourself with a with a peer group. Right. And others that are have similar goals, have similar intentions, have a similar attitude about growth. Can you share like a couple of examples of that and where that's work for you in your business career?
Tony Cline
Yeah, well, you mentioned in business I do the same thing. You know, when we went through our merger, we looked for people who had no prior to our merger, I was operating in Colorado, running my business. Honestly, I had things where it was fairly streamlined. I was working ten or 15 hours a week, but it was too small. What I was achieving was too small, and that's why we decided we would do this merger. John Johnson and I got together actually on a I know, like a rock crawling incident or we were out at Moab actually on some of these four wheel drive razor things and we just got this idea of what could we do to transform the industry and have a platform. And this was before some of the big players and we're just like, what can we do to create resources for people to plug into? And so that was one of the examples of he and I came together. We brought in a few other people and we tried to accomplish something really big. And what you learn is your challenges or your obstacles kind of define the goal. And so sometimes if we get caught up on a certain obstacle, if we change the thinking and change the goal, if we tense what the goal is, then we start thinking about what would we have to do to not solve this tiny little obstacle, but to overcome this much bigger obstacle. And you come up with bigger and better solutions. And and so we tried to roll on board out and expand into different markets. And then COVID hit, you know, and kind of changed our marketing plans and things. But I think the key is surround yourself with people who have the right vision and who aren't afraid to go out and take risks. And one of the core values for my company is to be courageous and courageous doesn't mean to enter into something without being afraid. That's being brave. And you need to be brave sometimes, too, but really being courageous, facing things that you, you know, scare you or that might be a challenge. But you know what's on the other side. To me, I think that is so impactful. And other people watch you do that and you watch other people do it, and all of the sudden you have this community of people who are moving faster and faster towards their goals. But we're all doing it together.
Andrew Smallwood
How would you describe kind of like the like do you think of these folks as these are accountability buddies? These are you know, how do you like how do you think about the relationship and what are the interactions look like that you found have led to, you know, success and kind of enjoy it more along the way?
Tony Cline
Sure. I think there's a there's a few things. The first thing is you mentioned accountability. I think that's absolutely crucial. I'll give you an example of that. You know, here in Colorado, the winter mornings can be down in the teens or single digits as you're going out. But yet when you're set up to go out and do your training, it's much easier to say it's cold, it's icy, whatever when it's just me. But I had training partners that were meeting me at the trailhead at 530 in the morning before the sun came up. I knew I couldn't let myself down, but I sure wasn't going to let down the rest of my team. I was going to let down the people that I was holding them accountable and they were holding me accountable. So I think it's really crucial to find that community. But also, once you're inside that community, find that accountability partner that you can get really vulnerable with and share. These are the these are the deep secrets. These are my goals that I have and these are the fears that I have around that. And and then you can help each other through, you know, some of those obstacles. And then you have somebody to celebrate your wins with. Yeah.
Andrew Smallwood
I can talk ask about like, you know, setting a big goal this like 650 plus miles. Right. The Triple Crown, you know, I'm sure there was training preparation. You mentioned the first race. The second one, which I think you said was like the toughest one was 17 days later. I mean, I don't imagine somewhere in here there were like a couple of really challenging moments or experiences. And can you share, you know, one or two of those that you feel like kind of illuminate a lesson that would be would be relevant for others?
Tony Cline
Yeah. So to start with to be bold enough to say I'm going to do something like running 654 miles in three races over two and a half months. I get that. That's not everybody's thing like, but everybody has something that they're willing to put an immense amount of effort into. If you could figure out a path, a plan, what the steps are. And so if you look at those 654 miles, they were broke down into three races, but then each one of those races were broken down into segments where you had maybe 15, 10 to 20 miles in between aid stations. And so each one of those you could study and say, what do I need to do to get through this section? And then who can I have helped me along the way in each section? And so we took a really big goal and we broke it down into our intermediate goals and we broke it down into our small goals where we could realize achievements and incremental achievements that would keep us going. One of the things that comes to mind, though, to answer your question, was in Tahoe, the first race, the first day was super hot, a lot of carnage. A lot of people wound up dropping out because the heat was just too much. People were getting heat exhaustion and so I made it through the first day. But by the middle of the second day that he had taken a toll on me as well. But because we had a plan, my whole team was committed to the mission and they knew what the vision was. There was a point where and I won't get into the details of it, but I had a blister on my foot, on my pinky. So that was causing a lot of problems. I mean, it was basically the whole toe. And after dealing with that for a while, you know, it became where it became the focus. It became it took my mental energy away. And so we decided we would step off the course and we would go to there was a lake that was probably 100 yards off the course. And I just decided I'm going for a swim like I'm going to reset my brain, I'm going to refocus on things that are important, that are that matter to me. And in that moment, I just I went into a deep session of gratitude. And of course, I popped the blister. I took care of that. But I just got in the lake and just laid back and kind of did a back float and really thought about why am I out here? What am I working on? And while I was doing that, Brandon was, you know, making sure that my equipment was dried out. He was checking my nutrition, making sure that I had all the right foods. So, you know, a key is just having people that buy into your vision and your mission and then having the right team members that are there that can pick you up, having your accountability partners that can keep you going and know even when you say you want to quit or that things are dark, you're just in a moment, Right? That's not where the goal is. That's not where the mission ends.
Andrew Smallwood
Tony And I did ask if there were like a couple challenging moments and lessons, but I want to ask more about this for a second. So what I'm taking away a little bit from your story and tell me, yeah, I would love your feedback on this sub. Like, hey, there's going to be, you know, you set a big goal, like you're going to be working at it, there's going to be blisters using that. It's kind of like a metaphor that popped up and they're challenging processes and it can take a lot of your focus, almost your focus off the goal, right? And it's like, I've got this like this distraction, you know, in addition to how I how it's how it's affecting you. Right. The reality of it and it sounds like a recognizing that not just ignoring it, it really, really you engage that you enlisted other people's help, but were able to get yourself back to a place of I continue to make forward and make progress from here and that that's really your strategy by hey, not ignore it but engage it. Get yourself comfortable to a place where you can continue to make progress. Is that right?
Tony Cline
Yeah. I mean, I could have hid the fact that I was I could have tried to hide the fact that was going on. I mean, eventually the Olympus so bad that, you know, people would see something was happening, but they wouldn't know. But they wouldn't have been able to help me, Right? I couldn't if I wouldn't have been open and vulnerable. This is what I've got going on. I would have been dealing with that on my own. I wouldn't have had the help. The other thing that by recognizing it, you can kind of recognize it, put it in a box and separate yourself from it and say, okay, this is the issue that we need to overcome, not this is my performance or this is this is me. Like I'm separate from the issue. The other thing is when you're doing these chasing these big goals and I could go on this for way longer than we have, but I want to hit on a couple of things. A lot of what we do in our life is we do subconsciously. You know, there's research that shows up to 95% of our daily activity has already been predetermined by our previous habits. And so what we really try to focus on is the. RAZ Or reticular activating system. It's a part of your brain that I think there's something like your brain receives like 11 million bits of information per second. But you're you can only consciously, if you were to close your eyes, open your eyes for one second, close them again. You could document about 40 things that you saw that made it through your filter. And so it's really important to free determine what you're going to allow through that filter. And it's kind of like when you buy a new car, all of the sudden you see that same kind of car or, you know, you ladies at a party, you go to a party and you wear a dress and all of a sudden you see somebody that's wearing that same dress like you that made it through the filter, because that's important to you. Can't probably remember what most of the other people were wearing. But you remember with that one person was wearing because that made it through your filter. And so by pre determining what your goals are and focusing on those, all of the sudden your brain goes to work subconsciously and starts filtering out the things that are not important for you to hit that goal. But it starts identifying and recognizing solutions that you may not have consciously been pursuing. And all of a sudden you start putting these pieces together of what works to help you achieve these bigger goals that you put out in front. So I think it's really important to identify the challenges but not dwell on them, be super grateful in the moment for your opportunity to even pursue your goals and have a team that can help you achieve them, but always stay focused on what you're going to achieve. Like I've already said, I'm going to win because I'm just willing to suffer longer until I get to what I'm about to achieve because the suffering is separate from my myself. That's not who I am. That's what I'm going through.
Andrew Smallwood
What I love about what you're saying to me, like it reminds me of, you know, people talk about comfort zones, right? And like getting out of your comfort zone and recognizing, hey, that the more you can push yourself and do that and expand your capacity and continue to push those limits and again, using your quota, like you'll be surprised, you know, sometimes how far how far out that can be. And as you do that, there's a lot of rewards, right, both in like personal gratification, but also in the further you push out, like the fewer and fewer until you get down to like 18 people in the world, right, that are doing it. Or you think about Michael Jordan pushing himself in his own way. Right. And mastering kind of his journey. Right. And a lot of people relate to that And what championship results are they why that feeling of I've really applied myself and excel. And I'm just curious like, you know, you were mentioning before, like day one of this race and it's occurring to me like to go 200 plus miles. This is not a you're not done in 15 hours or, you know, how long does it take to actually like from start to finish of a4a 240 mile race?
Tony Cline
The my fastest performance in a 200 miler was just over 80 hours. So, you know, three days and 6 hours or 8 hours, the longest it's taken me was just shy of 100 hours, like 99 hours and 42 minutes.
Andrew Smallwood
Okay. So like 80 to 100 hours, multiple days. And and can you, like, explain how much how many hours of the day are you actually, like putting one foot in front of the other? Like, what does that look like?
Tony Cline
So for whatever reason and all the 200 mile races I've done, I've slept an average of about 4 hours total. So whether I ran for 80 hours or 100 hours, it just works out where when you're tired, you're tired and you can try to plan it. But it doesn't always work out that way. And so outside of that, those 4 hours where I'm getting sleep, there's also time where I'll stop in an aid station and, you know, I try not to spend a lot of time at an aid station. And it's kind of like that when you're when you're doing these little mid-level goals, these midterm goals. If you haven't crossed that finish line yet of the big goal, it's really dangerous to celebrate too much. When you hit the aid station or the mid-level goal. What I like to do is I celebrate when I leave the aid station because the only place you can quit on a trail running is a little different in business, but the only place you can quit on a trail run is at an aid station. Because if you're five miles in between aid stations, you can quit. But nobody cares. You stop to walk forward or backward to get to a place where you can tell somebody you quit. And so I kind of equate that same thing to business. I don't like to celebrate when I hit a goal. I like to celebrate when I surpass it or move past it. And I'm on my way to the next thing. I'm on my way to the next goal or incremental checkpoint along the way that gets me to my final destination.
Andrew Smallwood
So, I mean, I'm getting the picture better here of 80 to 100 hours. There's like a few of these hours where you're sleeping or you're pausing. I like changing a shoe out or like, you know, whatever it might be. But this is like a like what's interesting to me about this is it's really like a sustained focus effort. And so I'm just curious, like training your attention as like a skill, like the ability to focus and like, stay focused. Can you tell me like, dear, do your thoughts like wander during your race? Right? And it's like, you know, is that your experience or is it me? There's there's a consistent focus. I'm just curious, like what that's like for you and where your attention goes over an extended period of time like that.
Tony Cline
Yeah, great question. So one of the things that I try to focus on when I'm when I'm out there is I want to be in the moment. I don't listen to there. I carry some headphones, but it's only because about 45 minutes out of every race I'm in just a really low spot, dark spot, and I need something to some music to get me to the next aid station where I can refill water bottles or whatever. So but for the rest of it, I'm generally in the moment. There's been, you know, the 654 miles sounds like a lot. And it is. But there were way more miles that went into the training to get me to that point. So the race is kind of the pursuit of the goal is kind of the celebration is not actually crossing the finish line. The finish line pulls you forward, but, you know, the enjoyment is actually being out there. And, you know, one of the things that I see people do when they try to achieve a goal and this is something that said quite often, but people overestimate what they can do in a year and they underestimate what they can do in a lifetime or something to that effect. And so, you know, think about if, you know, January 1st is coming up and I know New Year's resolutions get a lot of you know, a lot of flack anymore about people not achieving their New Year's resolutions. But I'd rather somebody try to achieve a New Year's resolutions ten years in a row and fail than to not try it. All right. So even if New Year's resolutions, I think it's like 12% of the people can continue their resolution through March or something like that. I want to celebrate those 12 people or 12% of people. And so it's not about how fast can I achieved something, it's how much achievement can I make over time that sticks? How much progress can I make? And so it's you know, a lot of people go out on the first day way too fast, and then they blow up. And then when a block walking or dropping out because they tried to do accomplish too much too fast where for me, I'm going to start slow. I fall back into the middle of the pack. But then slowly but surely, it's just that consistent effort. And one of the things that we used more out on the course is for our motto for one of our mottos for the Triple Crown this year was zero unproductive time. Now, that didn't mean I was running the whole time. It meant if I'm at an aid station, I need to be refilling my bladder. I need to be selling my water bottles, getting some nutrition, checking my electrolytes like all of these things. And the way that relates to business is sometimes we go out way too fast and we work days and nights without giving ourselves a chance to rest, but taking a rest in business, making sure you shut your phone off at night or taking the weekends to spend with your family allows you to recover. I could not have run any of those races without at least 4 hours of sleep, right? I mean, you have to take time at the aid station, but then don't linger there, right? Get recharged. I would see a lot of people come in to an aid station and they would fill up a big plate of food and they would sit there and eat it while I get my stuff ready and I fill the water bottles, do things I have to do there. But then I would I would take my food and I would walk the next 45 minutes while I was eating because it's more enjoyable. Plus I can digest it faster, which makes me able to continue forward. So the way that applies to business is it's not about how much can I cram in now until I crash and then have to rebuild my team as they fall apart because I'm running them ragged. Let's build in rest and recovery for ourselves and for our team.
Andrew Smallwood
So I'm curious, Tony, like there's this aspect of thinking about setting goals and achievement where it's like, okay, I'm setting a really big goal and I'm bringing a lot of focus to it for an extended period of time and making progress on that. You know, it's maybe a little bit different context to think about like something I, you know, observed about your that I believed to be true is yeah I've seen the way you talk about and the way you seem to value, you know your family and those relationships. Right. You know great achievements in business. Right. There's also this is the Triple Crown is something you really just start or, you know, running long distances isn't something that only started very recently right. Been doing that for four years and something like I think a lot of property matters can relate to me. And I've got a business that's demanding and challenging. I've got other goals, other goals that I'm also trying to achieve. At the same time, I'm curious like what? What have you found kind of to work for you and for others of thinking about those competing priorities and being able to, you know, make progress in a way that's fulfilling?
Tony Cline
Sure. I can't remember the name of the law, but there's something about, you know, if you give yourself 4 hours to complete a task, it takes 4 hours. You give yourself 8 hours, it takes 8 hours, 2 hours. It takes 2 hours like we feel the task expands to fill the time. And so what I really focus on is I determine what are my goals overall. And then I'll put that time on the calendar and that's just blocked out. And if somebody asks, can we meet at a such and such a time, you know, it's a really easy answer. I'm sorry. I've got a previous commitment. You know, I have a commitment to myself, to my family, to my goals, that I'm going to achieve these things now, now that I have time blocked, that out, I have this other time that's available that we can figure out how to fit those business goals in. I think tying it to the calendar and then sharing your goals with the people who matter, telling the story and creating the vision of what you're trying to accomplish, giving people the opportunity to support you in that to be a part of the story. I truly believe everybody longs to be a part of something great, right? So if you can give them a role in the story, if you can give them a place where they can contribute, if they know the story, they'll buy into it and I'll figure out a way to add value. So I storytelling and setting the vision is super important. Then opening up space for people to add value on your team is super important. You know, time blocking is super important and adding it to the calendar I think is it gives a way for people to participate. Something else that's also true, though, is sharing your goals. There's some stuff that happens in your brain when you share your goal with somebody. Your brain can't tell whether or not you've actually achieved it. It just gets excited and gives you a dopamine hit because you're talking about something in the future that you want to hit. So you've got to be really careful about sharing your goal with people who can help you along the way and not sharing it with people who either are going to give you negative feedback or won't actually contribute because there is some danger in talking about it too much with people who can actually have impact study.
Andrew Smallwood
I'm curious like if you set a smart plus our goals and I'm hearing you to like have these big goals, you start to chunk them down into incremental goals, right, over a period of time. You know, can you can you talk a little bit about like how you think about the role of habits, you know, playing into achieving your goals as opposed to, hey, here's this thing and I'm going to make a plan and I'm going to start, you know, checking down my list, start like, what are the routines or the rhythms or the habits that you've found? Yeah, I've been in service to achieving your goals and just kind of the relationship between your goals and your habits.
Tony Cline
There's a book out there and I'm drawing a blank on who wrote it, but it's called Atomic Habits. And essentially one of the main themes in that book is to break your habits when you're trying to accomplish something, breaking those habits down into the smallest possible. Yeah, thanks. Just. Yeah, Was James Clair breaking those habits down into the smallest possible actionable step in the beginning? So one of the things that I do in my training, there are days where I don't feel like training, and sometimes it takes me 2 hours to get out of the house where I'm like 2 hours behind schedule because I just I don't want to go like, I know I need to go. I know the benefits of it, but in that moment I don't want to go. But one of the things that helps me finally get out of the house is when I'm having those moments. If I have a couple in a row, I put my shoes by the front door. I'm like, I'm I grab my shoes, I'm ready to go. And then my commitment to myself is I don't have to do this whole training. I just got to put on my shoes, step out into the cold, shut the door and make it to the end of the driveway. If at the end of the driveway I decided I want to quit, I can quit. I can turn around, figure out how to adjust my training. But just getting that in action, once you have that momentum, it's like, Well, I'm already dressed, I'm already out here, I've already got my running gloves on or whatever. I might as well just go ahead and complete.
Andrew Smallwood
It is like that. Did it without getting enough momentum where it's almost harder not to do the thing. Yeah, it's just like, go ahead and do it. Get past that point.
Tony Cline
So Andrew, on with these habits. Let me I want to just ask an off the wall question. Are you a Sox shoo guy or us Sox shoo Sox shoo guy?
Andrew Smallwood
Good question. Well, frankly, right now I'm wearing my allbirds with no socks, so I'm just a shoe guy today when I'm putting on my socks, I'm a Sox. Are you sure that is. That's hyperbole.
Tony Cline
Okay. There's a lot of you people out there and I just don't understand it. Like you. You switch, you. You already have that foot up. Like, go ahead and put the shoe on top of that sock. Plus, if your house got on fire, like you'd have one shoe on, you wouldn't be running through the streets with two socks. But anyway, it doesn't really matter if I were to say, I'll give you $1,000, if for the next 30 days you can reverse it, you can be the other way around. You can be a sock shoe sock shoe guy. But if you mess up once you, you don't get that thousand bucks or whatever the reward was, you would the best way to succeed with that is not to think, okay, well, I'm going to remember in the morning, I'll get up and I'll change my socks. So what you do is you move it as far to the beginning of the process to determine what changes can I make as early as possible in the process to get me on the right track, to get my subconscious mind thinking about the right direction. So, yeah, I love it. I get some participation in the initiative. Socks, Nazi socks, shoes, socks, shoe. I knew I liked you, Vicki, but so for me, I started thinking about how would I change that? And and I would take it all the way back to putting a sign above the dryer or the clothes dryer. And I would put a sign that says, Turn your socks inside out. So that way, every day when I went to put on a pair of socks, they would be inside out and it would break me from that habit and create this point in my day where I'm actually now making a conscious decision to turn those socks inside out and then put them on the right foot. So anyway, the point of that is in order to change your habits, you have to do something intentional to break your subconscious mind for just going through the routine.
Andrew Smallwood
Yeah, I you know, in business, I think like sometimes is the purpose of meetings, right? A recurring meeting or hey, we've got a format or certain things that we're going to look at and say, Hey, how do we, how do we address that? I love the example of like, this is just a simple one with the socks, but thinking about, hey, the night before doing this, because that's going to be a trigger or a cue to stop my kind of self unconscious routine, right? If I need to change my routine to get a different result. Since you think about it, Tony, I've heard you say there's this like, quote, floating around for like many years. And actually I read I think it was a blog post that you wrote or maybe it was a social post. I can't recall specifics of it, but the quote was like, how you do one thing is how you do everything. And I've heard this quote like, you know that the fortune cookie version of it kind of like share it right over the years. And I'm curious like what your opinion kind of point of view is that.
Tony Cline
Yeah you just my blurb I felt my body get warmer. I told my blood like boil a little bit. I really dislike that and I get the intent behind it. If you're you know, if you're doing something, you should put your effort behind it. But I really dislike how you do every one thing is how you do everything, because that's it's simply not true. You know, if you looked at me and you said, okay, I can run 650 miles. So I'm good at that. So I must be really good at cooking, baking, souffles. I don't even know what you do with the souffle. That's how good I am at that. Right? But the reverse is also true. Just because I. I don't know how to do something or I don't put a lot of effort into one thing doesn't mean that I don't have the ability to put effort in and be great at something else. So I think it really you know, one of the things David put in the chat about some obstacles and failure of holding him back, you know, I think that adds to that, that adds to I've got to be good at everything. Or if I'm not good at one thing, I must not be good at that. Anything. And you know, I really failure sucks. I mean, let's just say what it is, right? Nobody likes to fail, but I already said it. You know, success is built on the foundation of failure. And if you're not willing to fail and learn from it, you're never going to expand. And to tie that back to what you said earlier about the comfort zone, you know, getting out of your comfort zone, that's another one. I don't like you. Now, Michael Jordan didn't get out of his comfort zone when he won all those championships. What he did was he expanded his comfort zone. He continued to push the edge of his comfort zone. He stayed in there and did what he was willing to do to make his comfort zone bigger. But he never left. Well, I won't speak about him, but in general, for me, I don't have to completely leave my comfort zone to push the limits of what I'm capable of. And by doing something that's just slightly at the edge of my comfort zone, it'll expand my comfort zone and make it possible for me to participate in things at a higher level. And and the more you do that, I think, the more you get comfortable with. I tried something new and I failed, and I'm okay with that. I don't want to stay here in that failure, but I want to learn from that and continue to move on.
Andrew Smallwood
Tony I see we're coming up on time, but I do want to and it was a really quickly for everybody, all our friends who are here with us, as you can tell, we're taking a look at the chart here. I'd love in the chat if you'd like to just express some appreciation for what Tony shared with you, some things that have been resonating with you today, things that you find helpful. They think you could be taking action on. That would be great. We'd love to have that here. And for Tony to be able to see that and Tony, I'll open it up to what's something that we didn't talk about today, but you feel like would be really valuable for people like, we didn't hit this. You know, we would have missed something and something big and valuable for folks about setting or achieving their goals.
Tony Cline
Well, I, I had kind of coming into this. I had, you know, thinking going beyond smart goals. If I were to try to figure out the top ten things that people could take away from doing something beyond smart goals, to really have that high level of success, you know, really getting clear on your goal setting process and how you tie your emotions to it and family and make things that are bigger than just simple, simply hitting a number on a spreadsheet or whatever. And then we talked about goals sharing, you know, the right to share your goal and get support and protect it when it's vulnerable and fragile and in its infancy to protect that from other I won't say predators, but things that could harm it. You know, keeping score getting really clear. A lot of companies that I work with, we go in and we work with them on their scoreboard or scorecard, if you will, changing your environment. That's something we didn't touch on. But really getting clear on what you want to achieve and creating your environment that supports that, you know, hiring a coach. One of the things that I didn't talk about was the first year I did MOAB 240, I finished 92nd out of 168. I hired a coach that knew had done what I was wanting to do. I knew what I needed to improve on and I went back and finished the following year in the top ten, getting an accountability partner, finding your community, putting your success goals on the calendar, habit stacking, verifying your vision for your business and your personal life. And then the very last thing and I got to 11. I couldn't get rid of this last one celebrating your successes along the way. I think some of us are better at that than others. But to look, you know, there's that book, The Gap in the game, you know, looking how far I've come, not just how far I have to go, I think it's super important. Supercritical.
Andrew Smallwood
Awesome. Hey, Tony, thanks for sharing that. And listen, I would like to give a plug here because I'm not sure that Tony would on his own, but I referenced earlier PM success is the name of the company and I remember that right. Tony Yeah. Okay. So was it Wheelchair link, Laura Mac or somebody? You can drop it here in the zoom job. We'll have it emailed out to folks, but success dot com. Right. You can go there and you can put slash t w for triple when we second team just had a link we wanted to share with folks if they're interested in learning more about this. And I think people Tony, are you know at the end of this hour there again seeing there's a lot of inspiration. There's a lot of wisdom here. They can certainly talk to you about practical issues they may be facing in their property management business. And you've got a wealth of experience and knowledge there. But I love that we had this conversation kind of in a way where it's really universal, even beyond just the business and personal goal setting, really building a life that people are excited about. And, and listen, I couldn't recommend if you loved what you got today, I can't recommend more getting into a conversation with Tony or finding and finding more resources to connect with him as it serves you. So, Tony, any final words before we let people go here?
Tony Cline
I think I'll close with this New Year's Day is coming up. We've got the New Year's resolutions out there. I would encourage you not necessarily to set a New Year's resolution, but to set what your 2024 is going to look like, set it with intention, reach out to the people, whether it's myself or anybody that you've got in your sphere. Figure out how you can support a bigger. I can't remember if I said this with Andrew and we were just preparing to open up the doors or if I said it once we started. But, you know, I really feel like life will prepare a path for us to achieve and have the things that we really want if we're willing to work hard for it. Most of us just dream too small. And so I do encourage you to spend some time over these holiday seasons and before the first year to really just dream big and then figure out how to put a plan in place to accomplish those things.
Andrew Smallwood
Hey, we'll leave it there, everybody. Happy triple Wednesday. I hope you're feeling encouraged, energized, inspired, invigorated and dreaming big between now and January 1st. Tony, thank you again for being so generous with your time or thoughts, sharing your experiences, sharing personal stories with us today. I really appreciate you and what which offered to us today. Thank you very much. Take care, everybody. Have a good one.
Laura Mac & Carol Housel
And that wraps up another episode of the Triple-Win Property Management podcast. Thank you for pressing play. We hope you've gained valuable insights and inspiration. The Triple-Win Property Management Podcast is proudly produced and distributed by Second Nature, where we believe in a Triple-Win, building winning experiences for your residents, investors and your teams with the only fully managed resident benefits package. Visit SecondNature.com to learn more and talk to an RBP expert in your area. If you have any questions or comments or want to weigh in on the conversation, we'd love to hear from you. Email TripleWin@SecondNature.com. That's TripleWin@SecondNature.com. Stay connected with us beyond the podcast. Visit our website at SecondNature.com to stay updated with upcoming property management events and articles. And don't forget, you can keep the conversation going in the Triple-Win Property Management Facebook group. It's exclusively for property managers. To receive even more valuable insights and updates, subscribe to our newsletter. You can find the link to that and much more in the show notes. On behalf of the Triple-Win community, this is Laura Mac, thanking you for tuning. And on behalf of Second Nature, this is Carol Housel. Check back soon for another exciting episode. Until then, keep striving for that Triple-Win.