A career provides a kind of security like no other. But sometimes in life, you have to get off that comfort zone and take leaps, pivots, and swirls to get to where you’re meant to be. Back in 2021, Lisa Hylton decided to make a huge leap. Walking away from something you’ve been doing for years is not an easy task. Lisa sits down for this episode to reflect on her decision and journey through more important aspects of her life. Let’s listen to what Lisa has to say about overcoming life’s dilemmas and conquering your story.
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Leaps, Pivots, And Swirls – What I Learnt
In this episode, I am going to be talking about leaps, pivots and action. Before I get started, a couple of the episodes in March and April 2022 will be just myself because I have some topics that I’d like to talk about. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy these episodes and they will be inspiring or insightful because that’s the whole point of why I’m sharing some of these topics with you. This episode talks about leaps, pivots and action. For those of you who don’t know, I decided to make a huge leap in 2021. I was deep in a lot of thought, reflection and inspiration focused on making a decision to walk away from a job that I was working at for the past years at that point in time.
It was to pursue the unknown and build a business in the real estate syndication space. It was a huge decision for me to make at that point in time. A year later, I have learned so much. This episode is a little bit about reflecting on that time this entire year from March of 2021 when I made the decision to leave to the point at which I left. Now, I’m like, “Where am I? What am I up to? What have I learned from these experiences?” I believe that every experience you have informs and helps you grow. When you come from that perspective, life becomes more of a big lesson and it becomes like school.
You can relieve yourself from being perfect and correct in everything because at the end of the day, you are growing and that’s a part of the big leap and the things that happen. I spoke a little bit about the leap that I made. From that leap and going full-time into the business, I experienced a lot of pivots. I knew going in that I wasn’t necessarily looking to operate deals, but I did want to work with people who were good at the operation side of the business and focus on how I could add value to their businesses. The way in which I came about seeking to add value, what I realized with time is I had tools in my toolbox that I was throwing out the baby with the bathwater and not necessarily seeing them as valuable tools that I could use to help other people around me.
Relieve yourself from being perfect and correct in everything because you are growing at the end of the day, and that's a part of the big leap and the things that happen. Click To TweetI remembered so distinctively one day I was on a call with fellow people who are fundraisers, capital managers and that kind of stuff. Many of them were concerned about accounting for their funds, looking for fractional CFOs and stuff like that. They weren’t necessarily that particular group, but going to conferences and meeting operators who were looking for fractional CFOs. I realized, “The skillset that I left behind, that thing that I thought that I didn’t need going forward was something that people saw that could add value.” I started to think about, “How could I come back into the space but come on my terms and be able to build in alignment with where it is that I wanted to go?”
That’s where my journey has begun. It became a series of various pivots to get to where I am now. Along the way, even though at times I did feel like I wasn’t taking any action, but I was taking a lot of action. I always tell people that action reveals because if you think you might want to do something like starting a podcast or buy a commercial real estate property. Maybe it’s a duplex, fourplex, triplex, 100-unit or whatever it is. Break it down into little pieces and start to take action on some of those little pieces. From taking action on those little pieces, in that journey, you’ll start getting feedback. You’ll be able to start to say, “I want to push harder to go for this path or this other path.”
What it does is it helps you to get a lot of clarity in terms of where it is that you want to go. It starts to take your dreams from being these hypothetical things in the sky to being real things and for you to start living in the now as opposed to being out in the future somewhere. For me, I feel like that was the deepest benefit this time period gave me. I’m a bit of a stubborn person.
Pivot: If you want to do something, break it down into little pieces and start to take action on some of those little pieces.
What I will say next is that you don’t need to quit your job in order to get these realizations, learn and grow in this way. You can do so by better balancing your work-life load that you currently have and maybe take a different type of job that gives you a little bit more freedom and flexibility or more autonomy than whatever you might be in now if that’s possible for you.
It’s always taking a step back, looking at where you are at and saying, “How can I better set up my life so that I have the room to go after some of these things that I’m interested in doing while also staying responsible for whatever else I have in my life?” It’s maybe because you’re married, you have children and the idea of quitting is not a possibility for you.
To wrap this up, do I have any regrets? No, I don’t. As I said before, the action unlocks clarity. It brought a lot of deep peace and inner knowing. I would also say that it felt like a journey to my outer limits because I was extremely uncomfortable in some of the places where I found myself because of the decisions that I chose to make. In those places, you grow and don’t have to live at the edge of your limitations constantly. You can also decide, “This is the medium. This is as far as I want to go.”
Take a step back, look at where you are, and ask how you can better set up your life, so you have room to go after things you’re interested in doing. Click To TweetWhat’s in store for me now? For sure, I’m going to continue building out my show. I see my show as a creative medium. I probably haven’t been using it as creatively as I want it to because of not paying attention to it as deeply, or maybe not even exploring some of the other ways in which I could do it. One of the things I do know is I enjoy doing this. I enjoy sharing my thoughts and being able to interview amazing guests, learn from them and being able to share with other people their journeys.
I’m going to keep doing the show and continuing to rethink the way in which I deliver content. To the extent that you are a longtime reader and want to read certain things or if you have ideas or anything, by all means, feel free to share. Who knows? Maybe I’ll start incorporating some of the things that you’ve suggested.
What else is in store for me? Full disclosure, on March 1st, 2022, I decided to take a job. I am now the VP of Finance at a small startup. It’s in the real estate space and I’m excited about it. For me, it helps me to continue to grow in my real estate investing journey because I’m still continuing to be connected to the industry and grow in my role as an accountant into that real estate CFO because that’s a large part of who I am as well. It’s something that comes naturally to me in terms of continuing to build out systems and processes. Also, the basics of accounting, thinking about strategy and being a valuable business partner on the team.
Pivot: You don’t need to quit your job to learn and grow. You can do so by just balancing the work-life load that you currently have.
That’s something that I learned in my last role. At Ares, I do remember that so much in my training. I would consider it training now, but in my role working as a controller, I remember always being told to be a business partner to the investment manager team, coming from that place, being able to be that for them and the teams that I work with and for my investors as well. Talking about investors, I am also launching a 506(c) accredited investor fund. It’s a fund that I want to allow investors to choose what deals they want to invest in.
Essentially, they only send money once they see a deal they like. Life is so strange because when I worked as the last large investment manager here in LA, I worked on a fund that was set up like a club. Investors joined the club, which was the fund. They would be presented deals and be able to choose what deal they wanted to invest in. If they saw a deal they didn’t like, they didn’t have to invest and that was it. How I got on to that fund was it was a fund that not many people want it to be. I ended up being on it. I was on it for two years.
It was a very challenging fund to be on because of all the complexities of dealing with different investors and different investments but I did it very successfully and took care of it. People were happy. As I think about building a business, it’s like cooking soup. The soup bones, vegetables and then you cook the broth and everything. It’s thinking about, “What are the things that I already have?” It’s being resourceful.
Action unlocks clarity. Click To TweetIt’s using what you have to build the next iteration of yourself. That’s where that comes from. Lastly, what’s next is helping fellow fund managers to manage the basics of accounting. Also, strategically forecasting and thinking about the financial aspects of their funds as well as their business. It’s being that partner for other people as I continue to grow in my career in business.
I love numbers and working with people. Those are two things that I realized from this entire journey. I love having those conversations. I love learning about different people and their processes, systems, putting them in place and making the automation work so that way we can make life easier for all of us. I’m very detail-orientated. How can you take that out after you’ve been doing it for such a long time?
That’s what’s in store for me. That’s what I wanted to talk about in this episode of leaps, pivots and taking action. As I said before, taking action will always reveal the next step. Sometimes, I’m guilty of it too. I try to plan out everything and all the different steps like, “What’s going to happen next after this and that and everything?”
I’ve also learned that I have my big North Stars in the sky where I feel my end destination and what are some of the big-ticket items that I want to achieve. I’ve also learned to let go of how the steps appear because the reality is, sometimes when you take 1 or 2 steps, that experience enables you to realize, “Maybe that third step over there isn’t a step I want to take. I want to take a third step on the West, South or maybe on the East.” It enables you to get more clarity in terms of where it is that you want to go.
Pivot: You don’t have to constantly live at the edge of your limitations. You can also decide, “this is as far as I want to go.”
Before I wrap this up, I also want to talk about the swirl. One of the things that came from this time as well is the swirl. What I mean by that is imagine going to a yogurt ice cream shop. They swirl the vanilla and the chocolate. If there are other yogurts, they’ll also swirl those as well. You could have a variety of different ice creams. All the different yogurts are all the different things that are important to you or the following.
It could be things that are important to you, things that come naturally to you, your skills, what you value in life and the type of lifestyle that you want. Where you ultimately want to go, your North Stars, opportunities, where you currently live, your current situation and all of these things. When you take a look at all of them and say, “How can I better be resourceful with everything that’s in my toolbox?” To me, that’s what makes you, you.
For me, it makes life so much more fulfilling because I am playing in my strengths and in alignment with who I am naturally. I’m not seeking to be someone I’m not. That, to me, is beautiful. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be whatever you envision or dream of in your life that might be different from you. It’s like, “How can you create that is more in alignment with you? How does that dream manifest in alignment with yourself?” In this whole entire episode, I hope that stays with you.
As you think about creating whatever you want to create in life, knowing that the leaps, pivots, taking action and swirling all of those things together can create such a beautiful journey and a fulfilling life at the end of the day. That’s what I want for you as a reader and also for myself. I am doing work that is meaningful to me and also brings a lot of joy and value to the people around me. I hope you enjoy this episode. I hope it brings some insightfulness and inspiration to you. Have an awesome day. Until next time. Keep leveling up.
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