The Real Definition of Stress in Business | Expectation vs Reality Explained

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Show Summary

In this episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast, host Q Edmonds interviews Victor Menasce, a partner at Y Street Capital. Victor shares his unique journey from electrical engineering to real estate investing, discussing the lessons learned along the way, including the importance of managing expectations and stress. He emphasizes the significance of relationships in business and the need for a supportive environment to achieve success. The conversation highlights the value of honesty in communication and the impact of one’s inner circle on personal and professional growth.

Resources and Links from this show:

• • • Investor Fuel Real Estate Mastermind
    • Investor Machine Real Estate Lead Generation
    • Mike on Facebook
    • Mike on Instagram
    • Mike on LinkedIn
    • Y Street Capital Inc’s Website
    • Victor Menasce on LinkedIn
    • Y Street Capital Inc on Tiktok
    • Victor Menasce on Youtube
    • Victor Menasce on Facebook
    • The Real Estate Espresso Podcast

  Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

  Investor Fuel Show Transcript:

  Victor Menasce (00:00)
  To me, stress is when there’s a gap between expectation and reality.

  It’s in that gap that stress lives. If there’s no gap, there’s no stress. So when you’re thinking about stress, then it’s pretty simple. You only have two variables, expectation and reality. You can try and alter reality and sometimes that works. You might be late coming home for dinner and you can speed a bit and you can maybe shave two, three minutes off your drive. You’re probably not going to shave a half hour off the drive.

  Quentin (02:09)
  Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. And you know what I’m going say, I’m excited to be here today. I’m always excited again to see somebody and get to peek through their lens and get to know a little bit about what they do. I always say we often be doing the same thing, but it doesn’t matter because we all are experts at us, at what we do. We have ingredients that power us forward and make us who we are. And so today is no different. have somebody, listen.

  knows what he’s doing. Listen, not new to podcasts, not new to this world. And I believe you’re going to get a lot of great nuggets from this gentleman here. And so allow me to introduce to some and present to others, because some of y’all looking probably like, I already know who this gentleman is. So allow me to introduce to some and present to other Mr. Victor Menasce How did I do, Mr. Victor? All right, I get the last name right?

  Victor Menasce (03:02)
  Great to be here.

  You did.

  Quentin (03:07)
  Awesome, awesome. I always like to put respect on people’s name. So listen, thank you so much for being here. I’ll be honest, I kind of just want to dive right into it. I would love for you to tell our listeners what your main focus is these days. Then give us a bit of an origin story, kind of how you got into real estate, how you got to where you are. We love to hear about your journey and then where you are in the world. We love to know where you are geographically. So Mr. Victor, sir, you have the floor.

  Victor Menasce (03:33)
  Well, thank you, Quentin. So I’m Victor Menasce one of the partners at Y Street Capital. I happen to be based in Ottawa, Canada, although our firm is based in both Canada and the US, our US headquarters out of Salt Lake City. We’re currently active in developing in nine different states across the US. ⁓ Mix of multifamily, senior housing, flex industrial storage, industrial outdoor storage, and we also have several thousand acres of land under development.

  Quentin (03:35)
  That’s all.

  Victor Menasce (04:03)
  in various residential subdivisions and master plan communities. So that’s a little bit about us and what we’re up to. ⁓ I came into this space through an unusual pathway. It was not the typical career path. I started out my career as an electrical engineer, designing microprocessors, mostly in the telecom industry, and did a number of partnerships, both with IBM and Motorola over the years. I took one.

  semiconductor company, Public, it was a startup company. I did a handful of mergers and acquisitions and just rose through the ranks of various, telecom and semiconductor companies. And I’ve got chips and all kinds of weird and wonderful applications all over the world. And you might remember there was something going on around 2009 in the world of real estate. And I decided at that point in time to take a left turn in my career out of the semiconductor industry into real estate investing.

  pretty much full time. And so it was a good time to learn. The environment wallpapered over a lot of mistakes because the prices were so depressed at that point. So it was easy to, it was a forgiving environment in which to make mistakes, made a few, made plenty, but the market was resilient enough, at least at that point. Now, if you had gotten into the market in 2006,

  then that would have been a painful point of entry. if you’re getting into the market at 2009, 10, 11, it was a good time to be playing offense and a terrible time to be playing defense.

  Quentin (06:32)
  Wow. Thank you, Mr. Victor. Thank you for walking us through it. I was writing some things down as you were saying it. Start off electrical engineering. know, took a company public. You guys said chips and applications out there. 2009, you made a pivot. And so I always ask people, and I have this saying, well, I destiny has no wasted moments. Meaning like no matter what you go through in life, destiny has a way of fortifying.

  actually the person who you are now. And it’s just like, was a compound of these different things that kind of bring you to who you are now. So I would love to know through your journey, through these different pivots and like, you know, changing from electrical engineering, what has destiny taught you about yourself? Like has it taught you resilience? Has it taught you to be humble? Has it taught you discipline? What is these moments throughout your life and your journey taught you about you?

  Victor Menasce (07:25)
  Well, I think a few things. Number one, know, often people experience stress in business, right? And, and there’s many different definitions of stress. Mine is a very simple one. It’s not a dictionary definition, but it’s a, I think a very practical working definition.

  To me, stress is when there’s a gap between expectation and reality.

  It’s in that gap that stress lives. If there’s no gap, there’s no stress. So when you’re thinking about stress, then it’s pretty simple. You only have two variables, expectation and reality. You can try and alter reality and sometimes that works. You might be late coming home for dinner and you can speed a bit and you can maybe shave two, three minutes off your drive. You’re probably not going to shave a half hour off the drive.

  So most of the time you can alter reality a tiny bit, but for the most part, not most of the time, the only variable that you have real control over is expectation, whether it’s your own other people’s expectations. That is the number one thing to manage. And if you can master that to some degree, then you can probably experience a little bit less stress in your life.

  Quentin (08:49)
  Yes, sir. That’s amazing because all I can think about is just my relationship, particularly my marriage. And most of the time there is friction because there is some type of false expectation. You have had, you you wanted this, and you didn’t get it, and you was expecting it, and then now, know, caskets are being blown. And so I love that within the world of business. ⁓

  stress that gap being between expectation and reality. I think that is gold. And I love how you said, majority of the times you really can’t alter reality. If you can, maybe just a little bit, but it’s the expectation part. So I love that. And so let me ask you, dealing with expectation throughout your life, throughout business, when adversity hit, how did you alter those expectations as adversity was really just kind of banging on the door? How did you alter the expectations?

  Victor Menasce (09:46)
  Well, oftentimes, and it happens even with our team, you know, they’ll say, well, we have this problem, you know, what should I tell people? then my answer is usually pretty simple. Well, tell them the truth. You know, it’s like, it’s not that complicated. Right? You know, so, you know, I said I’d be home by six and the truth is I left late.

  Quentin (10:00)
  ⁓

  Mmm. Yes.

  Victor Menasce (10:14)
  And I hit traffic and I’m late. That’s the truth.

  Quentin (10:52)
  I’m laughing because this is so true. mean, unfortunately, every time we talk, I’m bringing it back to my marriage because I just had a situation where I just had to tell the truth about where I was. I had to tell the truth about the narrative that I was creating in my mind. And the truth is such a powerful resource that some people don’t utilize often enough. And again, I love to bring it back to business, as you said, just tell the truth, you know, when expectations are wearing, you know.

  telling the truth of the situation is definitely a myth buster, believe it or not. And so what is next for you guys? What are you looking to solve next? What is your next real goal?

  Victor Menasce (11:34)
  Well, we have both, we have a mix of both ⁓ short, medium and long-term goals. Oftentimes it’s very easy to get focused on the short-term goals. And certainly I think all of us within the organization are in that place right now where we have a number of projects that are all coming to various form of reef enhancing all at once. so that’s just a mountain of work. And you know, once, once that fog is cleared, we’ll be able to

  focus our attention on some of the medium and long-term goals as well.

  Quentin (12:09)
  Got you. Absolutely. Now you’re saying we a lot. And so I would love to talk a little bit about the word relationship. So tell me your, I guess your perspective on relationship building within business. Is it important? Has it served you well? What are your relationships like within business? Talk to us a little bit about relationship.

  Victor Menasce (12:28)
  Well, so business by definition is a team sport. There’s no such thing as someone saying I’m a solopreneur and I’m in business. You can’t put that in the same sentence. For the simple reason that any business in order for it to be a business, meaning it’s a separate entity, something that you could literally sell, you when you talk about selling a business, remove the owner. And if it falls apart, then it wasn’t a business. You got to be able to remove the owner.

  and have it continue with a life of its own, only then is it a business. And every business has a number of core functions that even if you had enough hours in the day, no one individual has the breadth of all of those skills. There’s just no way. yeah, ⁓ it’s a team sport. We have an organization and…

  You know, we have some folks that are focused on the technical aspect on operations. We have other folks that are focused on marketing, other folks on financial management. You know, there’s seven core roles in any business. I don’t care what the business is. And you need to populate any business with a minimum of those seven core functions.

  Quentin (13:43)
  Yeah, I love it. Absolutely. So let me ask you this. Is there any topic that I have not brought up that you would like to talk about? Or is there any other maybe words of education, inspiration, or motivation that you feel like maybe people need to hear? So any topic that I have not brought up that you want to hit on or any other words of inspiration or motivation?

  Victor Menasce (14:05)
  I think when people often ask the question of what do I need to do to get to the next level, you often hear that question and you will find folks that say, you need to take this course. You know, I’ve got a workshop on fill in the blank, right? And if access to information was the limiting factor, then anyone with access to an AI tool or to Google should be a billionaire. So

  clearly that’s not the ticket, right? Then you’ve got the mindset folks who are out there saying that, you know, you’ve got limiting beliefs and you’re thinking too small or you’d lack the emotional fortitude to get through the tough times, whatever it might be. And if that were true, I mean, it’s important, but if that were true, then anyone who’s been to a Tony Robbins event should be a billionaire as well. So, so that’s not enough either, right?

  What I’ve found is the game changer, what really changes things is to get in the environment where you’ve got other people that are doing the thing that you do or you aspire to do and hang out with them. Who’s your inner circle? That’s going to define your trajectory. It doesn’t define your starting point, but it defines your direction.

  So if you want to be world-class cyclist, hang out with world-class cyclists. If you want to be a world-class figure skater, we just finished the Winter Olympics, go hang out in one of two rinks in Canada, one in Burlington and one in Montreal. Now, you know, they have ice in Japan, they have ice in Korea, but why would those elite figure skaters come here? It’s because it’s all about environment and that is the game changer. So if you’re missing something in your environment, go create it, go find it.

  ⁓ That’s the key.

  That’s the key.

  Quentin (16:44)
  I absolutely

  love that. I absolutely love that. One of my favorite books, I talk about here on the lot, is the atomic habit. Yeah, I was real here, read it about three times. Yes, and you know he talks about sometimes you gotta split the room. know, sometimes, you know, if you’re in a room, you gotta split it. This side is for work, this side is for whatever. And he talks about overall, changing your environment. Sometimes changing the environment does something for you psychologically that kind of puts you in a different perspective. And so I love how you talked about.

  Victor Menasce (16:50)
  No sure, time’s clear.

  Quentin (17:14)
  changing your environment, even just putting yourself around people that may be doing better than you or where you strive to go. And so I just wanted to double down on that. You’re absolutely right. Changing your environment is a humongous thing. And I mean, it’s helped me a lot and I’m sure it’s going to help and continue to help many people and people that’s listening to this. That’s just a good nugget for you to try to just implement in your life. ⁓ So Mr. Victor, listen, I appreciate you, sir. If someone wanted to reach out to you.

  connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing. How can I get in contact with you,

  Victor Menasce (17:48)
  Well, our company is ystreetcapital.com. So it’s the letter Y, street, capital.com. And we have a number of projects underway. Certainly feel free to register for the investor portal, learn a little bit more about what we’re doing. We do work strictly with accredited investors and I’m also the host of the Real Estate Espresso podcast, a daily show, seven days a week. And our audience are very engaged. We’ve been going now for close to nine years.

  almost 3000 episodes. So love to connect with folks that way as well on a daily basis, seven days a week.

  Quentin (18:27)
  Absolutely. Well, listen, sir, let me say three things to you. First, thank you for your time because you could have been anywhere in the world, but you’re here with us. So definitely thank you for your time. You know we can put a premium on our time. So thank you for being here. Secondly, thank you for your narrative, for your story. I put a premium on stories that tell people that, you you can plant a seed with a story and you never know just when it’s going to grow, when it’s going to sprout up, but just planting the seed.

  can literally change somebody’s life. So thank you so much for your story. And then thank you for your perspective. Thank you for your mindset, bringing that perspective and mindset to this platform. I appreciate you being here today.

  Victor Menasce (19:05)
  Well, thank you so much, Quentin.

  Quentin (19:07)
  Absolutely. Well, listen, you heard Mr. Victor. You got the nuggets. You got the value. Check the show notes. Get in contact with him. Look at, get, watch the podcast. It’s available seven days a week. Get in contact with him. But if you don’t go to that podcast, you’re here now. So you might as go ahead and subscribe. So we’re going to check out Mr. Victor. Definitely make sure you subscribe here. Cause I got to keep telling you, we’re going to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Victor time after time. So sir, thank you again. And everyone else listen, y’all have a fantastic day.