Have you ever caught yourself tinkering with your spreadsheet, trying to make your deal work? Your mind tells you that it’s a solid deal but that nervous feeling in your gut tells a different story. AdaPia d’Errico, today’s guest, would tell you to listen to your gut. It might save you a lot of money and grief down the line. AdaPia, Principal and VP of Strategy at Alpha Investing, has learned this the hard way. Despite her due diligence, she was defrauded out of her life savings. We talk about this experience and how she’s learned to trust her intuition over her ego. As AdaPia explains, when we think that we’re acting rationally, our judgment may be clouded by a combination of 188 cognitive biases. We discuss how we unconsciously process huge volumes of information that we express through our feelings. AdaPia then shares the science that proves the saying that you should “trust your gut.” After chatting about the value of aligning yourself with the people that you work with, AdaPia opens up about her new book, Productive Intuition: Connecting to the Subtle. We touch on her motivations for writing and what readers will get from her book before exploring the key concept of your “inner authority.” Near the end of the episode, we talk about the power of meditation and why we shouldn’t be scared of taking calculated risks. According to AdaPia, everything that has ever gone wrong in her life came down to her “not listening to my intuition.” Tune in and hear why your intuition may be your best investment advisor.
Key Points From This Episode:
- Introducing AdaPia, her background, and how she met host Kent Ritter.
- How AdaPia was defrauded of her life savings, despite the deal looking good on paper.
- Trusting your intuition and not being too proud to ask for help.
- Why you’re not always making rational decisions; we’re affected by cognitive bias.
- Hear about your enteric nervous system, the science behind “trusting your gut.”
- The importance of aligning yourself with the people that you work with.
- Paying attention to how you feel when you talk to sponsors.
- AdaPia shares details about her new book, Productive Intuition: Connecting to the Subtle.
- Sharing our painful experiences so that others can learn from them.
- Who AdaPia’s book is aimed at and the main points she wants readers to come away with.
- The danger of “falling in love with a deal”; it means that you might not be thinking clearly.
- Appealing to your “inner authority” for validation instead of an external force.
- Getting to a centered place, where you connect with who you are and trust yourself.
- Using tools like meditation to slow your thinking and clear your thoughts.
- How nothing has ever been certain and why we shouldn’t be scared of taking calculated risks.
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Productive Intuition: Connecting to the Subtle
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—Full Transcript Below—
“AD: I was defrauded for a quarter of $1 million, which was all of my life savings.”
[INTRO]
[00:00:07] KR: Welcome to Ritter on Real Estate, the show about how to passively invest like a pro. On each episode, I interview real estate experts who give their top investing advice, strategies, and tools that break down the insights and the practical steps to avoid the pitfalls and make better investments. I want to help you passively invest like a pro. This is Ritter on Real Estate, and I’m your host, Kent Ritter.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:00:30] KR: Hello, fellow investors. Welcome to Ritter on Real Estate where we teach you how to passively invest like a pro. Today, I have a very special guest. I’m extremely excited for this episode. It’s a little bit of a different tilt than the past few episodes. We’re going to focus on an individual investor’s journey to really a place of enlightenment if I could say, kind of a new path forward, and I think there are so many good lessons learned here today.
Before I get into it too much, our guest AdaPia d’Errico. She is the Principal and VP of Strategy at Alpha Investing, and Alpha offers institutional commercial real estate opportunities to its private capital network. At Alpha, she oversees growth strategy with an emphasis on investor growth and relations. Outside of that, she’s a recognized and respected woman in real estate.
I appreciate you joining today and I have to give the listeners a little bit of background, because I think it’s important to set the context of how we met and I think this just tells how powerful your story is. I actually met AdaPia at the Best Ever Conference last February when she got up and she spoke in front of a room full of people on a topic that most people don’t even want to admit to themselves. She did it in such a way that was so vulnerable but so confident that it really impacted me in that room to the point that I wanted to go introduce myself afterwards. We struck up a conversation and we’ve been talking since.
Now, I have the opportunity to have her on my show, so I just feel so blessed today to be able to share her story with all of you because I think it’s a topic that that I want to get into where, like I said, it’s uncomfortable but I think it’s important for us to learn from others, and I think there’s a lot of good lessons in this story. With that, I will turn it over. AdaPia, thank you again for being here today. Welcome to the show.
[00:02:25] AD: Hi, Kent. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for a very generous introduction as well. I really appreciate it.
[00:02:32] KR: 100%. I meant every word. So the story that you shared, it’s a story of not listening to, as you said, your intuition. That’s something you’re going to talk to us about today. So kind of set it up for us and then walk us through. I want our listeners to hear this and feel what you felt going through the process.
[00:02:55] AD: Sure, yeah. I mean, if you’re listening to this, I guess maybe like in order to feel what I felt. Maybe just try to like tune in to your body I guess and see where this lands for you. I’ll keep it a short story because I can’t remember if it was like a 45-minute talk or not. But several years ago, I was defrauded or a quarter of $1 million, which was all my life savings.
[00:03:22] KR: That’s the punch in the gut.
[00:03:23] AD: That’s the punch in the gut. The other punch is that part of it was leveraged, so it hit really hard. It hit the pocketbook. It really hit my confidence. It, like, just spun me. It totally spun me. In a way, I had really good intentions for it. I was hoping to use whatever funds were going to come out of this investment to — at the time, I was really into startups and venture capital and really wanting to help other entrepreneurs with their endeavors. So that was the thing.
But the story really has everything to do with how, the whole time, when I was speaking — this with an individual. Even as I was doing my due diligence because this was years ago and I knew how to do some due diligence. Not the way I know how to do it today and it was not a real estate investment I’ll say this. But the whole time there was this nagging, nagging feeling that something was wrong. It wasn’t just “This is too good to be true.” Because as I was doing my due diligence, I was like, “Okay, no. This checks out and this checks out and this checks out.” Yet my stomach was just like, “No, no, no.” I would actually feel this like constraining around my head. It was just like these weird headache and this — all over my body was just like, “There’s something not right about this,” but nothing on paper checked out.
In the end, I’ll call it my ego because it’s really is what it is my ego, a sense of pride, a sense of independence, just totally overruled my intuition that was saying this is just no good. But I let that override it, what I wanted it to be. I kind of talked myself out of all of the things that can go wrong. Oh, this can’t happen to me. I have good intentions. I just shoved all the intuitive information to the side and just went straight with rationality. That was one sort of big mistake, if you will, in like, having this happen.
The other thing is that I didn’t ask anyone for help. Granted there were — you’re always in a certain situation, a certain point in time. I didn’t have anyone in my life that I really wanted to run this by or could run it by. So I didn’t. There was also this part of me, and I’m like totally willing to admit this, that was just like, “No, I want to do this on my own. I want to show people that I can do this. This is my thing.” Way too independent, so proud to a fault, independent to a fault. Then the crazy thing is that once I really started to realize this was not coming back, like it was not working, I really started to freak out. I still didn’t tell anyone.
My husband today was my boyfriend at the time. He didn’t know because I was so ashamed that I didn’t even ask for help when I knew I needed emotional support. And it wasn’t until I got a call from the district attorney that I was like, “Oh, no. This is actually what I think it is. It’s fraud, yeah.”
[00:06:30] KR: You had this since way before, right? That’s kind of what you’re going back to and this idea that you don’t want to admit you’re wrong. It rings really true to me that this idea that you want to be right, you want to — especially with money, right? You don’t want to make a bad decision. Then also, you don’t want to — you want to do it on your own. You want to prove that you can do it. And all these ideas have led you down this path that you kind of internally just didn’t feel right but you were — there’s momentum going down this path. I mean, you really couldn’t stop at that point, and it really took where, I mean, you actually got a district attorney calling you, and then that really brought it all home.
[00:07:14] AD: Yeah. When I had to, like, have an interview with federal agents because it ended up going to criminal trial because he defrauded a state charter school. It was like its own experience which freaks me out in its own way. Because I thought, “What if I get implicated?” There’s interesting things about that too because I could’ve been implicated if the thing had gone full-cycle, potentially. There’s really interesting kind of other subtle things that could have happened.
But, yeah, what’s interesting about it too is, like, there’s the body that has all of these signals that it’s giving you physically. Then we have all these mental biases that override. We actually have 188 cognitive biases, so it’s not like the mind. We have this idea of primacy of the mind and primacy of intellect, but it’s not to our benefit. It shouldn’t even be primacy like, and I’m not saying intuition should have primacy over intellect. I think the two things need to work closely together, but we tend to separate them out. So we have to watch those biases because there’s — our emotions play a role and our ego. There’s so much to us.
But I think the biggest takeaway I would like to give for listeners is don’t ignore your intuition. Really, really don’t ignore it. If you have mentors, if you have people, don’t let pride get in the way. It’s way easier to lose some face emotionally than it is to lose your money.
[00:08:53] KR: A lot of that stuff, I think, from my own personal experience, most of that’s in your own head even about losing face. I think that, I mean, there’s been times in my life where I have mentors who I want to impress, right? You have mentors you want to impress and you don’t want to go to them with what might seem like, I don’t know, a junior question or something that makes you seem naïve, which is exactly what they’re there for, right? That’s why they’re a good mentor because they’re there to help you steer around these things and there is an example. I guess my analogy I use with mentors is, like, I would rather have somebody tell me that the stove is hot and avoid touching the stove and get burned than have to do it myself, right? That’s why you have mentors and that’s why you get close to people who have done it before. And you can learn from. That’s why I think your story is so important because there’s a lot of lessons learned along the way.
So looking back on that experience now, like, what are some of the red flags that you may be picked up on more internally in your intuition that you weren’t picking up in the numbers let’s say?
[00:10:01] AD: I would say, like, the number one and everyone’s heard of, like, “Trust your gut.” It literally is in your gut. I’ll get into a little bit of biology because I think it’s fascinating to relate the biology or the science to our intuition. Our gut is called the enteric nervous system, and it has hundreds of thousands of neural cells, so brain cells. It’s amazing. It’s considered by biologists a second brain. That’s how powerful your gut is, right? We’re just like, “Oh, it digests some food.”
[00:10:35] KR: Yeah. I had no idea. That’s fascinating.
[00:10:38] AD: It’s such a wormhole to get into but really like there are so many like basically brain cells in your stomach, as well as these things called neuropeptides which are called the molecules of emotion. Plus like there are so many functions. If you’ve heard, like if anyone’s into like biohacking or this kind of stuff, you’ve heard of the gut-brain barrier and like using nootropics and like making sure that your gut and your gut flora is really healthy because there’s a direct connection between your gut you’re your brain. And it’s biological, so it’s sending information back and forth.
Anyway, your gut feels like — it literally is like a feeling center. So when you’re being really aware of it and what it’s telling you, like, whether it’s a stomachache or whether it clenches or whether it’s like this punch or whatever that is, trust your gut is like actually legitimately literally a real thing.
[00:11:36] KR: That’s awesome. I mean, I know exactly the feeling you’re talking about, right? I mean, you feel that. Maybe whether there’s a sinking feeling or kind of a tightening, I get it. I’ve been on properties doing property tours and have had that feeling, right? Just like something seems — something is off. Something is going on, right? I think as investors, we’re very cerebral and we’re very focused on the numbers and this, and this all has to make sense. What you’re saying is there’s a whole other level that we need to be really tapping into to really make the best decisions that we can make. If we’re not focusing on kind of the neck down, we’re missing out on a lot.
[00:12:24] AD: Yup, definitely. Especially with people, right? You’re going to walk a property and all of your body is actually taking in information. The whole human body, it takes in like — It’s like 11,000 bits of data per second, and our conscious mind or like the prefrontal cortex, however you want to call it, is only capable of registering seven. Just seven compared to 11,000. The body is this like a transmitter-receiver transducer of information, and the unconscious mind is like processing and it’s comparing to past experiences, all these processes that are completely unconscious to us.
Your gut isn’t an underwriter, right? Your gut isn’t underwriting, but like that’s what the head is for specifically. But if you have a feeling, it’s worth following up on it and really understanding that feeling. Especially if it’s an instance, like intuitively just instant, as opposed to you have a thought that creates a doubt, which might register. Which is a little different. When we’re working with our intuition, we’re trying to understand, is it my intuition first? Or was it, like, a fearful thought or a cognitive bias that might register somewhere in my body. When we get really good at working with our body, we know the difference. It literally feels different.
[00:13:50] KR: So trusting your gut, I mean, that’s a big one. Were there other things that kind of came along the way that you can look back on now?
[00:13:58] AD: I would say the other big one is trusting people in an alignment, like aligning with someone. One of the big things for me that came out of all of this was, it really forced me — and I’m a very maybe naïve, if you will. I’m a trusting person. I will give you the benefit of the doubt. That’s who I am and that hasn’t changed. That’s just who I am, but it did change my ability to understand and actually take a stand for myself when it came to partnerships or relationships in business. Because that’s another thing. Maybe it’s more prevalent for women to be a little bit like, “Oh, I have to prove myself.” It’s a little bit different but it really is like, who do I want to work with and do I feel good around that person?
All of this really led me to reevaluate the way — and who I want to work with. It took a few years of refining and working all through it, but where I am now with Alpha is, I’m with people that I’m totally aligned with. Like completely aligned; ethics, morals, integrity, goals. We’re completely aligned. There’s no drama. There’s like disagreements — they are healthy. But there’s none of the sense of dissonance. There’s total resonance, and that came out of that as well. Because there was a feeling of inadequacy and shame and like all these feelings that kind of make you feel like you can’t say what you want to say because someone is going to like put you down.
I’ll give you an example. There were times with this individual where I express some doubt. “I’m not really sure if I want to do this. I’m not sure if I’m ready.” He shamed me. He made me feel like I’m not important enough. I’m not good enough like, “Maybe you don’t really want this.” Afraid of success or whatever you want to call it, right? That’s a big deal. So how you feel around somebody and how they treat you is foundational.
[00:15:58] KR: Right. We’ve spent a lot of time on this show talking about — “How do you pick a good sponsor?” Right? That it starts with the sponsor before the market, before the deal. It starts with do you trust the person that’s going to invest money with, right? I think this is another level just of that. I mean, a lot of things that we’ve talked about have been, “What questions do you need to ask.” Right? But regardless of the answer that they give, pay attention to how you feel when you talk to them, how they make you feel, and are they willing. That shaming thing, I mean, I can 100% see how that would work. I think that would work on me at a time, especially when I was first starting and knew I didn’t understand everything and felt.
— I think there’s a time where investors feel appreciative of being able to participate in the deal, right? You’re like, “Oh, I don’t want to rock the boat. I don’t want to be the new guy and ask a bunch of questions and things like that.” I totally can relate to that, and so I think that that’s really important when you’re talking with a sponsor, right? When you’re picking someone to invest, they need to be willing to, one — I mean, there’s no stupid questions out there. Everybody is on a different place and everybody is learning different things, so they should, one, be willing to answer their question. If they value you as an investor, I think they will. But, two, just pay attention with everybody. How do you feel when you’re talking with them? I think that’s a really interesting thing to pay attention to.
[00:17:32] AD: Yeah, and that’s the alignment too. At Alpha, like we say, like, we have a process for new investors where if you want to basically sort of be part of a network, if you will or, on the deal distribution list, you have to have a phone call with one of the principals. Because we really run — and all of us are the ones speaking to investors. It’s not because we’re snooty and we’re going to like screen somebody out and not let them in. But it’s because we want to get to know you and build a relationship with you and make ourselves available. We’re very high touch. It’s a lot of work for us but it’s worth it in the end.
I always say — and I’ve always said this. There are no stupid questions because in my whole life I would get in trouble all the time for asking too many questions or, like, pointing something out. So it’s hard not to internalize that, but really, I encourage people. We don’t expect you to know what we know. So your questions are valid because if you want to know, that’s valid. What I think of your question is completely irrelevant.
[00:18:37] KR: I think that’s empowering for investors. I hope it’s empowering for investors because —
[00:18:40] AD: — I think so.
[00:18:42] KR: That’s exactly the right attitude and I hope that that’s how most people approach it because, I mean, it is a complicated thing that we do. These investments are complicated and they can be made overly-complicated. But in general, they are complicated and there’s a lot of moving parts and it’s new for a lot of people. So I think that you have to have that level of education built in and you have to be willing to spend that time I think to do right by the investors as well.
So I really appreciate your story and sharing that. I know it’s not easy to talk about at any time, losing a quarter of $1 million. That’s a chunk of change, but you’ve obviously rebounded back and then some. I mean, it shows your resiliency and you’ve learned from that, which I think is all we’re trying to do is learn from our mistakes and move on. In doing that, you’ve kind of built this framework, I think, around your way of thinking and you’ve brought this into a book, and the book is coming out soon and it’s called Productive Intuition: Connecting to the Subtle, right? AdaPia, let me read a couple excerpts from it. It’s really powerful. I’m excited to get my hands on a few copies and I think we’ll have to figure out a way to do, like, a fun raffle with it. With a few copies because I think it’s really good for people.
But I want to give you a chance to talk about the book and kind of how that experience evolved into this broader thinking. And what has that kind of done for you in investing, but just generally in life as well. Tell us a little bit about the book.
[00:20:25] AD: Yeah, thank you. I mean, this experience with this loss was one of several that really have shaped my life, and I call these defining moments, and they are these moments in our lives that kind of feel like lightning — where you get hit and you make a decision in one way or another. And it’s two very distinct paths that you take these defining moments. At a certain point around 2017, I had this moment where I basically committed career suicide. I left my big fintech career and tried to like go into sort of online entrepreneurship. I was going to be a blogger. I was going to like coach women. I had, again, all these great intentions.
This time though, just nothing worked. Everything I knew how to do — and I know what I’m doing just wasn’t working. And so this was just this process that I was going through of just kind of waking up to what mattered to me and what was meaningful to me. For about six months, I was basically freaking out because I lost all my income. We were in the middle of renovating our home.
[00:21:40] KR: Just not stressful at all, right?
[00:21:42] AD: Just all of it. Then I had a couple coaching clients and then they weren’t paying and then I was like, “This is not at all what I was looking for.” Again, it was this mind that was like, “You have to do this and you said you left this career. You can’t go back to corporate.” Blah, blah, blah. It never even occurred to me that there was another way, and so what happens is I get this phone call, and it was one of the partners at Alpha. I had known him for a couple years and I was informally advising them. I was helping them out when I could. I always loved what they were doing. He said, “Hey, I’m going to come to LA. I would love to just catch up.”
As we’re catching up, he’s like, “What are you up to?” I’m like, “I’m so busy.” I have to look successful — “I’m so busy.” Then literally he goes like this. He’s like, “Oh. Well, that’s a problem because I was sent to hire you.” I was like, “Wait a second. No. You’re kidding. No.” Because at the time, I realized, like, I was forcing myself through a burnout really to only take this one singular path that I had completely eschewed any idea of going back to the business world.” He is like, “Well, we want you to be a partner.” Long story short, within a few months, I joined and it’s just been the perfect match.
All of this — and that experience there with intuition and the experience of Fark, our CEO, is, that how I felt around people — and it was so clear and so aligned and just so, I want to say easy. Because there was no friction. All these experiences over time because through that burnout, I realized like I needed to — I felt like I really wanted to share my story.
This book is kind of a culmination of that. I started writing in 2018, and it’s kind of finally culminated into a series of lessons around, when I finally woke up to what was meaningful, to how everything that had gone “wrong” in my life really came down to me not listening to my intuition. This book kind of started to shape and form. I’m really surprised by what it is, to be honest. When I read it, I’m like, “Man, that’s not” — it’s so remarkable what came through. And I say it in a way that it’s like — it’s not me and my mind and my ego that wrote this book. It’s something so much bigger that wants to share some concepts and some wisdom that I’ve gained. I feel that in life, our lessons and our stories, as painful as they are for us, are meant to be shared so that someone else can learn from them too.
[00:24:34] KR: That’s great. I love that concept. I mean, I think that’s exactly right. I mean, it’s why I do this podcast that it’s a similar thing. It’s — I’m trying to help people make better decisions, and one of the best ways to do that is by hearing what didn’t work for others, right? So I totally get what you’re saying there. I mean, even in the pages that you sent me, it was just packed with good information. So what are some of the key takeaways from the book or what are some of the things that folks get excited about hearing more from?
[00:25:10] AD: My real hope is to reach an audience, let’s say, of professionals. We’re all professionals and we all have a personal life. For a really long time, we’ve been told that the two things don’t go together. Intuition doesn’t belong in business, for example. So my hope is that this book reaches an audience of really everyone who’s trying to make sense of what’s going on in the world and in their lives right now. It would be an understatement to say that things are different, no. We’re actually being asked to approach life differently. So really this book is my way of sharing everything that I’ve learned when I had — we’ll call it an awakening. You can take it spiritually. You can call it burnout, whatever you want to call it.
But my concept when I was first going through it was, “Do I have to go be a hippie or go live in a monastery?” Because everything about my life was like, “This is wrong. I’ve done everything wrong.” Then what happened is I came back. I kept coming back and peeling away, peeling away, and realizing like, “No. A, that’s not appealing to me to just exit life.” I think that we get hit by so much, like corporate is bad and money is bad and all the bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. No, it’s not bad. Oh, my God. You can do so much good if you stay in your life as a professional and realize that there’s all these processes happening to you, and you don’t have to separate yourself into all these little boxes of who you should be with your family and who you should be professionally and who you should be like. We’re one holistic being that’s trying to figure out how to feel safe, how to feel successful, how to give back.
So my real hope is that this book helps anyone who feels a little lost and confused about whatever they’re feeling, and they might not be able to give word to it. I feel very humbly I am able to articulate these processes that are so foreign without making them super mysterious or like ‘woo woo’ or any of that. I would say that about my book.
[00:27:26] KR: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of science behind this, right? There is supporting material and I think that helps the skeptics. I mean, I think what you’re talking about is really powerful. It’s like, to me, again, I guess it’s much broader than investing but even just thinking about this. I guess I’m looking at a lot of deals right now, so I kind of take everything back to like making these decisions. It’s just this idea that there’s so much more to tune into to be able to make good decisions than just what you’re looking at on the screen and kind of everything that’s going through your head, right?
When I work with new investors, one very common thing I see is folks — just what I call is, like ‘falling in love with the deal.’ Which, it’s like, they’ve sucked so much time into it that it’s like, “Well, I spent four hours underwriting this deal. It has to work,” and like, “Okay, I’m tweaking this here and I’m tweaking that there.” They just don’t want to write off the sunk cost of all that time and effort they’ve put into it. I’m always quick to just be like, “Look, if you’re at that point, it’s not a good deal.”
In their gut, I think they know that because I went through that too. When I was a newer investor, I will just like — you’re just tweaking. What if rent growth is 3.2%, instead of 3%? Does this deal not now work? In my gut, I was like it’s not a good deal but emotion or like logically — you know what I’m saying.
I think that’s one great example of where you can really tune into this. If you’re going through the spreadsheet and just in your gut you’re like, “Ah, this probably isn’t going to pencil out,” don’t make it pencil out because just because you don’t want to admit you’re wrong or you’ve spent all this time on something that’s not going to work out because — like that. It’s way worse to do a bad deal than it is to admit to yourself that maybe you were wrong.
[00:29:41] AD: Well, that’s a hilarious example. Just to like speak to that a little bit more. If you’re, like, constantly playing with your spreadsheet, that’s almost like a neurotic tick. That should be a sign that there is like — stop, just stop.
[00:29:58] KR: Something going on, right?
[00:30:00] AD: Something. If you’re constantly going back to it, there is something else that you should just stop and maybe go meditate and just chill out, like stop it. Some of the things — you mentioned the science in the book. For me, it’s really important to marry the science with things that have largely been considered like — I’ll call it spiritual and I have a very deep spiritual nature that I didn’t realize I had. But without the science, without the linear left mind, I’m not just going to believe, like, the subtle. I’ve really had to experience it and then I realized, like, the only way for me to help anyone that’s in that very linear — like, in the west, we’re very linear and rational — is to show them the signs. You need to bring your left brain on board so that you can open up the rest of you.
So part of the book really is, like, it’s tools about the mind, about our emotions, about the body, about the heart. There’s incredible science about the heart, and all of it really is meant to give you some tools, so you quite honestly trust yourself. Trust your capacity, including how to best use your mind and not just let your biases or your emotional rationalization, which is a real thing, get the better of you.
[00:31:19] KR: Yeah, and recognizing. Well, you said there’s 180 something, right?
[00:31:24] AD: Yeah. 188.
[00:31:25] KR: Biases. 188. Just in your head floating around all the time. Those are the things that we run into that make us make poor decisions, right? The thing about trusting your gut is — that is so true, right? Everybody knows, I think, intuitively, like, it’s true. But without the science and the fact that it has been made to be like this kind of woo woo thing, like you said, I think a lot of us don’t listen to it. So I think that’s so powerful.
There was something else that you said that’s in the book that really struck me and it was — You just said it about the confidence in yourself or the ability to kind of stay centered with all the chaos around you. I think that idea of — I want you to talk about that a little bit more if you can about this idea of — because that really struck me of, “We are searching constantly externally for validation or for something else.” In reality, it’s in you already and you just have to be willing to search it out a little bit. But when you can find it, that confidence in yourself that doesn’t come from anyone else, it’s so powerful. I’ve experienced that personally, so like, I don’t know, expand on that a little more if you can. I just think that’s such a cool idea.
[00:32:45] AD: Yeah. It’s the central concept. It’s called the inner authority. I call it our inner authority. We have been conditioned to go outside of ourselves for everything for validation. Everything is an external authority. That’s how we’ve been taught. I think the world today is showing us that that’s a fallacy and that we’re happy to trust ourselves because it’s really hard to trust very much out there. People or institutions or anything that’s been considered an authority, a lot of its shadow, it’s nefarious in some cases, comes out. You think, “Wait a second. I thought that they were good or that they had my best interests at heart,” all this kind of stuff. We are constantly giving our power away by giving somebody else the authority to tell us what to think and do and believe about ourselves, first and foremost.
If nothing else, what’s going on in the world today is a call back to yourself and that’s why developing your intuition helps you develop this confidence that — it’s not about right or wrong, but at least you take a stand for yourself. Your validation needs to come from inside. You understanding who you are authentically, what you want, what you desire, how you want to show up in the world is of more import than what anyone else thinks of you. I don’t care who it is that thinks anything of you. That’s their business, not yours, and so to get to that centered place. I include a lot of practices in the book. Then everybody has a different path. But it really begins with connecting to your inner authority, which is you. You can call it a soul. You can call it whatever you want, but it’s power, and your intuition plays a huge role in that because without your connection to your intuition, you can’t trust yourself. So it’s pulling yourself back in. Pull yourself back in, back in, back in.
In my experience, when you find that inner center and your authentic essence, you stop trying to control other people. So this isn’t about me over anyone else. This is not individuation at the extreme. It’s actually the opposite. You are so confident in yourself that all you want to do is give. You want to connect with other people. It’s such an incredible shift.
[00:35:12] KR: Yeah. It goes along the lines of, like, an abundance mentality, a similar concept of, you’re so secure that the idea of scarcity kind of leaves you. I guess this idea that you need to be grabbing everything and that you can start to give, right? When you do that, the whole world opens up, right? I mean, when you do that, when you start with the idea that you want to give to others, I think it reciprocates a hundredfold. This really came ahead for me, personally this idea of kind of this confidence in yourself, inner authority.
I didn’t have a lot of support when I decided I was going to leave my six-figure executive position to become a real estate investor. Not a lot of people understood that like, “Wait, what? You’re going to give up this income?” I mean, there were supportive folks, and my wife especially is extremely supportive. Without her, I wouldn’t have the confidence to do it. But just the idea of that inner, really have a look inside yourself and say, “Okay, is this something you really believe in and you’re going to do it and you’re going to do it no matter what other people think.” Having a lot of people that I really respect saying, “You’re crazy,” was something difficult to go against, but it really was having to say, “Okay, find that confidence internally to believe in what I was doing, right?”
I know you said you share some practices in the book. I mean, one thing that I’ve really adopted in the past couple years has been meditation. It’s something I try to do every day, just mindfulness meditation. That has been a huge part of kind of finding a better understanding of myself and just opening myself up I think to that intuition I guess it would be. I guess the way I picture it is like when I meditate things, slow down. I don’t just mean like when I’m meditating. I mean the rest of the day. Everything just moves slower. It seems like I’m able to just see things more clearly and kind of judge the situation in whatever it is. I don’t get as emotionally agitated. I think in doing those things, what that’s allowing me to do is stay in tune with that intuition and kind of pay attention there. That’s one practice for me that’s been extremely helpful.
[00:37:25] AD: Yeah. Meditation is a foundational practice. It’s not a wonder that it’s been used for millennia. It comes down to centering oneself and also slowing down your brain waves.If we want to take it down to the biology. If our brain wave is constantly in this very erratic state, just if you picture that, like it doesn’t feel good, and that’s our minds. So we can’t have clarity if we have all of this like electricity constantly vying for our attention. We can’t be productive if our mind is erratic. We won’t notice things if we’re distracted. There is actually a mechanism in the brain called the ‘default mode network,’ which is where you do your best sort of thinking, but it’s not really thinking. It’s where your mind must slow down in order for you to actually connect with deeper states of mind or higher states of mind and not just surface mind because there’s these different levels.
So meditation, it changes your neural pathways permanently so that you’re not taken away by those like crazy beta waves, let’s say. You can also stay very centered in disturbing situations. So everything you said about, like, even your emotional state because you start to bring this level of awareness where you can notice things, rather than just be dragged around by them.
[00:39:04] KR: Yeah. You can notice it without reacting.
[00:39:08] AD: That’s right.
[00:39:09] KR: Right, yeah. No, I definitely understand what you’re saying. So going back to the brain waves, my thought is, is that why like all the good ideas come in the shower because that way you’re just —
[00:39:18] AD: That’s exactly right.
[00:39:19] KR: Right? I mean, it makes sense. It always seems like you’re in the shower. I mean, it’s like, “I need like a piece of paper that I could start writing things down.”
[00:39:28] AD: Yeah, because you stopped purposely thinking. You stopped purposely thinking. Actually, something you can do when you go to sleep is you can set an intention for something that you want to process. Then your unconscious will process that kind of like overnight and like in the morning. When you’re in that — I’m not good at this because when I wake up I’m like awake. But a lot of people — my husband does this. He sometimes sits for like an hour in bed and he’s like, “Yeah, I can kind of play with my dreams.” I’m like, “How do you even do that?” He is like a super linear architect. This man is not this, like, spiritual guru.
That’s actually your alpha state where you can also have like lucid dreams and you can actually program your mind. I’m like, “Andrew, you should use that.” Right? I’m all like, “Go, go, go.” He’s like, “I just like it.”
[00:40:22] KR: It’s like a superpower.
[00:40:23] AD: Yeah, it’s a superpower. It’s really amazing when we start to connect the science with the story, with the senses, with our lives, and realize we have so many tools at our disposal to help us be more discerning. To help us make better decisions, to help us in a way be better people because we’re less reactionary. I think in life, it’s too short and it’s too long to, like, live in constant fear and anxiety that’s created from the outside.
[00:40:56] KR: Right. And that’s the environment that we live in right now, right, whether you’re on social media or the news. I mean, there’s a lot of a lot of stuff going on in the world. If you’re only taking in that external information, a lot of it is negative, right? You’re not getting a lot of positive external reinforcement. No, I totally agree. I mean, this is awesome. I think that you’re opening up this idea and I think you framed it in a really nice way. I mean, it’s not — here’s the thing I want people to understand too. It’s like these are not new ideas or concepts. I think the framing that you’ve made is different, is a different way of approaching it. But this idea of, like you said, meditation has been around for thousands of years and there’s a reason, because it works.
But even going back to like Napoleon Hill and like Think and Grow Rich, which is one of the books I — every investor, every person should read. But he goes into a lot of similar concepts about the idea that you’re this transmitter and receiver. And there’s all this going on around you that you need to be tuned into and in tune to. So I think it’s grounded in a lot of history as well, these concepts. I think people, if you’re not paying attention to this stuff, I think you’re missing out on a big part of decision-making, right? As investors, you never have perfect information.
Every pro forma is wrong, right? No pro forma has ever been right. It’s impossible. It’s just — you’re just trying to figure out your best, your most likely scenario, right? So you’re never going to have perfect information. In an absence of perfect information, we have to rely on things like your intuition to guide you in the right directions. I think this is really powerful for life but with the tilt to this podcast for investing too. So I really appreciate you sharing the message with us today.
So how do folks get a hold of you? How can they find the book? Share that info with us.
[00:43:04] AD: Thank you. One thing I wanted to say because what you’re saying is really powerful too, before I tell people about the book and [inaudible 00:43:09] — that there is always uncertainty, right? When we talk to a lot of investors, they’re like, “Oh, is it a good time? What about rents? What about stimulus?” What about, what about, what about. You’re going to sit on the sidelines. I’m not saying you should invest right now. I’m just saying, like, examine that fear and then examine the facts and then talk to your mentors. Talk to your partners. You can’t time anything. Nothing is going to get more certain. I really —
For me, I just think like everything has always been uncertain. If we allow ourselves to be lulled into a sense of false security, that’s more dangerous than taking a calculated risk at any point in time. Because we can’t just sideline ourselves from life, and I think that’s what a lot of people might be doing right now in everything. So just like, in a way, like, ask yourself intuitively like, “What is right for me right now,” and it might be waiting for an investment. But it might be like, “Well, I’ll put a small amount and I’ll try. I’m going to diversify.”
It also allows a sense of personal safety in these times that are increasingly turbulent. And so it was really amazing when I started writing this book before COVID clearly, and then COVID just really — it almost gave me the exact frame for what this is all about and why it’s so important for us to continue to show up. That was just the last thing that I wanted to say about that.
[00:44:45] KR: I think that that’s so important, right? I mean, I think we’re going way broad here in a social message. But the idea that like more than ever we need people to show up in a positive, thoughtful way. And make a positive impact because there just is so negativity out there and there’s a lot of triggering. There’s a lot of people that are acting kind of in a highly emotional and irrational way. There’s a lot of things underlying that. I think the more that we can all center ourselves and find confidence internally and focus on that, I think we’ll be in a much better place.
I hope that folks go out and read your book. I’m sure that they will. I know I can’t wait to get my hands on the full copy. Yes. So how do folks get a hold of it?
[00:45:35] AD: It’s going to be out in mid to late September, and you can go to adapiaderrico.com. That’s my website and you can sign up. I have an e-book there. People want an e-book about getting unstuck, and that will put you in the newsletter. You can just sign up. The site for productiveintuition.com will be up by the time the book is out as well, so you can get it directly there. Luckily, I’m pretty easy to find because of my name. If you just like Google AdaPia, I come up, kind of first thing. You can find me on LinkedIn or Instagram. That’s where I’m most active. Just reach out too. I love to connect with people and just hear their stories and their insights. But the book will be on Amazon. It will be everywhere that you would expect to find it. So I would say productiveintuition.com.
[00:46:23] KR: Awesome, awesome, and we’ll make sure we put all that in the show notes, so folks can find it. We’ll work together on this. I’d love to do some sort of a raffle for our listeners.
[00:46:33] AD: Let’s do it, yeah. I can do some signed copies and things like that.
[00:46:36] KR: Hey, look at that. You get an autograph.
[00:46:39] AD: Yeah. I’ll ship them out.
[00:46:40] KR: Very cool, very cool. Well, AdaPia, thank you so much for, again, just sharing your story with us, and I’m sure helping some people avoid bad situations and tuning in to make a decision and just feel generally more centered. I think that’s good for everybody, so thank you so much today.
[00:46:59] AD: Thank you, Kent. Thanks so much for having me. I’m really grateful and so appreciative of our connections, so thank you so much. This has been an honor.
[00:47:07] KR: Absolutely. All right, guys. With that, we wrap up the show. Take this information and go out and invest like a pro. Till next time.
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[00:47:15] KR: Thanks for listening to another great episode of Ritter on Real Estate. Hit the subscribe button to make sure you don’t miss out on the content that will make you a better investor. Also, visit kentritter.com for articles, videos, and tools curated just for passive investors. Until next time, this is Kent Ritter with Ritter on Real Estate. Now, go out and invest like a pro.
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