The thought with this section is that Vic/Granddude has a lot for all of us to learn, and he also would have appreciated me/us taking the time to write things out for his grandson Lyle and any other grandkids because he didn’t get to teach them as much as he would have liked to in person (intent is for this tribute to be here when they can read it). There will be an area where you can share anything you think he would have appreciated one of his grandkids knowing, since he had no problem borrowing good ideas (and giving attribution to the author). Sidenote, you read that correctly: “Granddude” (that’s what he chose to be called by Lyle because if it’s good enough for Paul McCartney, it’s good enough for him).
It’s not about what you can’t do, it’s about what you can do.
Vic was an excellent teacher for me and many others (before he went to law school, he had been a history teacher in Gardnerville, NV back when the teachers ‘paddled’ students who weren’t following instructions). As mentioned, I just wouldn’t be able to get through saying this all verbally in front of you, but an important lesson he taught me is that it’s not about what you can’t do, it’s about what you can do. I can hear him telling me, “So you’ll choke up if you try to say all this verbally, big deal, write it down and make it the best it can be.”
“Dad, this is way out of my comfort zone and this is becoming a huge undertaking.” “Well, find a great writer and ask for help”. While all the faults of this story remain mine (particularly the long winded blabbery and difficulty separating myself from his story), I did ask my beloved childhood friend and our high school class valedictorian, Andrew Pederson, to take a look. I also have no idea how to build a beautiful and useful website, so I asked the best man at our wedding, Dylan Stone, who is the best at these things to help out (he can help you, too Victormendations, I’m forcing him to release this before it’s really ready so don’t judge yet). Vic not only taught me that I should always seek out the best team and work together, he also taught me that putting that team together is more important anyway because it’ll get done faster and nobody is great at everything. This philosophy has profoundly impacted my life, and I’m eternally grateful. If you’re interested in some examples, below are a few that I can think of, but I’ll understand if you skip it.
I wasn’t a great student, but I was always good with teachers. I could always find a way to get extra help from them when I needed it, and I didn’t hesitate to ask the smartest kid in the class to help me out (ultimately, this led to a top 10% of class graduation, thanks Dad, Mom, Smart Kids, and Kind Teachers). I also had a very difficult time learning how to read, but my Dad and Mom got a college graduate student to meet with me. They didn’t know exactly how to help, but knew an expert would. She was just fabulous. After she found I wasn’t interested in the kid books that were offered, she figured out she could get me to practice something I liked and somehow discovered a pile of dinosaur joke books for her picky reader (Lyndsey got me a bunch for a birthday recently). Folks who know me well also know I’m a voracious reader now thanks to this effort.
Pretty much everything is an opportunity.
To encourage me to take the opportunity to learn about myself, if I did really well on something, he’d encourage me to take it to the next level. If I didn’t do well on something, he’d ask if I really enjoyed it, and if I didn’t, he’d suggest I quickly drop it. “Like it or loathe it, take the opportunity to learn”. If I did enjoy it or found it interesting, he’d encourage me to emulate the best practitioners and learn from them. I had an early interest in investing, and he just said, “This guy Warren Buffett seems to be pretty good at it, let’s read about him.” I’m a professional real estate investor nowadays, which certainly isn’t security analysis, but continually taking failures and successes as opportunities to learn led me to where I am today.
Another strange little story my Dad loved (this will probably make about half the readers cringe and I acknowledge that) was that when Donald Trump eulogized his father, he did a lot of the standard “He was a great dad, he was smart” thing, and at the very end he said something to the effect of, “And I know this is strange, but my father would have absolutely loved this – we are selling condos at 89 Riverside, and here are what the views will look like. If you’re interested, please grab a pamphlet at the back of the room on your way out.” This is arguably very insensitive and self serving, but Vic thought it was hilarious, quirky and although kind of disgusting, a great illustration of how even somber occasions are disguised opportunities. He would have also broken it down to something like, “Fred Trump would have wanted his son to have a successful project, and it needed sales to be successful, so what’s really wrong here?” I’m cringing as I post this, but here are our versions of this Victormendations and Things That Aren’t Flowers.
What’s the downside? This was a very common refrain from Victor related to anything, and it was a lesson he and many of us learn the hard way. It could have been about as mundane as making a decision to mow the lawn a little earlier than normal or about a big real estate deal. He’d consistently say, “if you can determine there’s not a lot of downside, take a swing.”
Is the downside upside? This one is weird and everything comes back to real estate with Victor and the simplest version is: You have a tenant paying below market rent and they go belly up and you have a big vacancy at your property. But is this downside upside? Well, maybe because you no longer have an under market rent so you could end up being better off with the next tenant paying more. There are relationship versions of this and it’d be something like “This girl I’m interested in, doesn’t seem interested in me…” “Well, maybe that’s good news because now you can spend your time finding another girl that does like you instead of wasting time on one who doesn’t and let’s say you do finally get a date with them, is it going to be any fun to be with someone who’s not interested in you anyway?”. Maybe the downside is upside.
Asking, “why not?” is as important as asking, “why?” – I specifically remember him saying this exact phrase when we were in the car while I was a pesky pre-teen doing the “Why, why, why?” thing our son now does with us. In his ever calm voice, he just said “Why not, John?” and then went on to explain how sometimes why is not readily determinable, but why not always useful to consider. This led to an inverted question theory he espoused. I’m going to have to rewrite this someday rewrite this someday In short, if you’re trying to connect with person A and they’re not responding, who does person A interact with and can you reach them to find a way to help them instead? In the process you’ll probably find out that the person you can help is whom you really want to talk to anyway.
There’s no shame if you’re not ashamed – This is one I still personally struggle with and think is one of the hardest to get the courage to execute. I can also see how, taken to an extreme, it’s just a terrible concept, so don’t try to apply this to serial killers or something. Now you’re thinking about serial killers and this isn’t working. BANANA, BANANA, BANANA…now you’re back to moderation land.
Vic essentially had no shame because he wasn’t ashamed, and I think he purposefully ignored many societal norms because they didn’t make sense to him. “John, everybody needs shelter and I’m a realtor, so of course I’m going to tell them that’s what I do, how do you think people get shelter and realtors make a living?” Whenever he broke it down like that, it was usually inarguably logical. It could feel painful to go through the many awkward interactions he put us through all the time, but he had great logic; “John, of course, it’s awkward to meet new people, we don’t know each other, but how do you think people get to know each other? Well, generally they have an initial awkward interaction, and then that’s over. Maybe it goes nowhere, or maybe it’s a lifelong friendship.”
Another awkward interaction I’d find myself in was that he was, he was endlessly promoting his progeny and friends Victormendations and Things That Aren’t Flowers. He’d say, “What’s wrong with me wanting to help my kid out?” and I’d be thinking, “Dad, we’re at the Nevada Supreme Court Law Library, and I don’t think they’re hiring full-time middle school students.” In that case, through his tenacity and probably begging his good friends, the Twedts, he ultimately got me a job in the mail room when I was in high school and college. While I literally just made copies and pushed a mail cart, the Supreme Court looked pretty great on my resume, and he encouraged me to make the best of it, so I ended up reading tons of legal opinions and chatting with the attorneys in the clerk’s offices and really got a great appreciation for their role in government.
He was always the guy who would start conversations with a stranger, and my reaction was immediately, “Dad, this person is trying to work! Or they’re on a treadmill with headphones on, Dad and clearly don’t want to chat!” but he would do it anyway, and the results were always surprising to me. Sometimes, yes, they’d brush him off and we’d continue on, but more often than not they’d engage with him and share a story or we’d walk away with a recommendation for a place to eat. He would just start talking to people, and then a month later that person would find themselves having a meal with Vic while he’d be showing them pictures of Lyle and adding them to his list of people to text/email about cars on BringATrailer. As an example, two people who became a second family, David and Carol Hopkins, were just minding their own business at language school in Mexico when my dad said something to the effect of, “Hey, I’m Vic, and this is my son, John. We should play ping pong”. Twenty plus years later, Carol was the officiant at our wedding and Lyle’s middle name, Bear, was David’s nickname (RIP David, hope you’re reading this). It was just endless. “John, I met this great lady on the plane today, and you’ll never believe what her family does – they recondition dumpsters. Imagine that, they take dumpsters that are all busted up, get them back into shape, weld them whatever they need. And here’s her number, she wants to meet you, Lynds and Lyle if you make it to San Antonio. Oh and she loves this one taco place where the owner will give us special treatment if we say we know Sarah, remember to meet Sarah at the taco place and meet this lady next time you’re down in San Antonio.”
Be independently able. Clearly I can’t separate myself from these lessons, so I guess folks can just bow out of reading this or roll with it. Anyway, my Dad gave me probably too much freedom and always encouraged me to try to figure things out for myself. I feel lucky to have lived in an era where this was sort of ok, but I’m also sort of lucky to not have gotten hurt. In other words, I’m not sure I’d advocate that parents allow their kids to do these things, but maybe they can find safe ways to encourage independence, or maybe we’ll find ways and get back to you.
Here are a couple of examples:
- In my childhood we would go to San Francisco to see a Giants or Niners game and in the days preceding or following a game would do touristy stuff. We always liked to bike the golden gate or go see a play (the half price ticket place always got you into something weird and wonderful). So we’d do all that, see a game and then there’d be a half day of down time and my dad would just say “go do your thing – be back at the hotel at 5pm for dinner”. I can’t say exactly how old I was but it was probably 8ish when I got a ‘full freedom’ afternoon (I got these multiple times a year). I never got into trouble per se, but I also just can’t imagine a parent doing it nowadays. I try to think through his logic on this and it’s something like “He’s probably just going to go look around, he’ll probably be kind of scared and cautious. He’ll go to a music/book/clothing store and find something he wants and buy it himself (see Get a Job, ASAP below) or ask for my help if he can’t afford it (“sure John, I’ll pay for half, where’s your half?”). Friends from big cities will find all this very quaint but we’re from Carson City, NV population ~50,000 at the time, we knew everybody, it was just so different. This all ended up being really good for me as I kind of learned how to be in a big city. The counterexample I can think of is a neighbor of ours from Maine’s kid went to college in Chicago and someone asked to borrow their phone when the train was stopped and the doors were open. Bye bye phone. How do you teach someone to be a comfortable and not gullible big city person?. “Well John, you’ve got to let the kid experience the city and get a feel for it”.
- There will be more of these posted over time. Too many other sections that are top of mind for the event.
Ask an expert for advice but beware of their incentives. The constant refrain from Victor on this was, “Don’t ask a barber if you need a haircut.” The idea is that the barber is the right person to get a haircut from, but he also has an incentive to sell you one. This lesson has infinite permutations, like “Don’t ask a financial planner for a plan” (get their advice but consider how their incentives work before you sign up). I won’t list more of these now, but another thing Vic would always say is, “What’s it cost to go see another provider and get their opinion?” I really liked that and agree that getting 2-3 opinions from experts is always a good idea, particularly for large decisions.
Get a job, ASAP – My Dad talked about how he and his brothers all had jobs before they were 10. My recollection is that they’d get up at 5 am 5 days a week and throw newspapers out of the trunk of their Dad’s car. Then they had jobs in restaurants and grocery stores, and they milked cows and collected eggs at the mini backyard farm in Yucaipa, CA. I heard endless stories about the jobs all these boys had and how it always had a positive impact on them (work ethic, value of money). We want this to be interactive so post a job you know they had or one you had and why it could be important for young people.
I wasn’t spared in this regard as a child either. When I was tall enough to reach the handle, I was mowing our lawn and then lots of neighbor’s lawns and because I was too young to drive my dad bought me multiple push mowers and placed them at each of his rental properties. I’d then ride my bike around town to the rentals with a little trailer attached that had a weed whacker and gas in it.
My friends weren’t spared either. A favorite story is Dylan, best man at our wedding who’s the marketing king, Victormendations, called me up on a Friday night to see if I could hang on Saturday, but I had to help with the wood splitting and stacking. Dylan was thinking “cool, I’ll come help you guys for an hour and then we can go see a movie”. I should have dissuaded him of that notion because I was well aware of what was to come as my Dad and I did these wood splitting weekends every summer where once we had collected enough rounds that his arborist friend said people didn’t want, we’d start the splitting. Poor Dylan, it was an 8 hour day, limited water breaks, short lunch, too tired to go see a movie, but he did take us to dinner and ice cream. He probably paid us (loved to do that), but it was a big shock to a buddy who was looking to have fun. Dylan will tell you it was actually pretty great in retrospect and he’ll also tell you Vic got him other jobs around town.
