Adam Torres and Alexander Concepcion discuss “Survival First.”
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Show Notes:
New book alert! In this episode, Adam Torres and Alexander Concepcion, Author, Entrepreneur at Taco Street Locating, explore Alex’s new book, Survival First: The Rebel Entrepreneur’s Guide to Risk, Riches and Immortality.
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About Alexander Concepcion
Alex Concepcion, Apartment Hunter Extraordinaire, Sommelier of Square Feet, Connoisseur of Condos, Lord of Leasing & (alleged) heir to the Seven Kingdoms.
He grew up in Miami, Florida in a wacky Cuban-American household. In 2015 he decided to trade in salsa music & beaches for breakfast tacos & brisket here in Austin where he now call home.
When he doesn’t have his apartment locating hat on, you can expect me traveling the world like some knock-off Anthony Bourdain, lifting weights at the Austin Bouldering Project, expanding my giant library of local taco expertise, and slurping ramen at Ramen Tatsuya.
His goal is to help you fall in love with Austin the way he had.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I want to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right, so today I have Alexander Concepcion on the line, who’s an author, entrepreneur, and also founder of Taco Street Locating.
Alex, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Adam. All right. So I I’ve been looking forward to this interview for a long time. First off for my long term listeners and visitors, you know, that I that I love promoting authors. I love talking about books, new books. I’m an avid reader. So when I heard about even just your title, so survival fiction.
First, the rebel entrepreneurs guide to risk riches and immortality. I was like, Oh, I got to have this guy on the show. So we’re going to talk about your book. Of course, we’ll get a little bit into taco street locating as well. But before we do all that, we’ll start this episode, the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute.
So Alex, we, at mission matters, we amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Alex, what mission matters to you? To me, it’s helping small entrepreneurs who have taken the leap to bet on themselves. To make their own businesses, to bring something beautiful to the world that they survive.
So they can continue to create their sovereignty, their freedom, live life on their terms. And for me, the way to do that is to guide people through the process of understanding what does survival mean? What does risk mean?
The book a lot of people, you know, talk about books, want to write a book, haven’t taken that next step to actually do it. You have what was the moment? Was there a moment? Was there a lead up? Like what led you to like, it’s a commitment to put together a book. What led you to this point to where you’re like, yeah, I’m going to do this.
This is the topic. This is the theme. I have something to say, like, how’d that begin? Oh man. So the pandemic started and I didn’t have much else to do. And around that time, I stumbled onto this seminar, like online webinar series about book writing. And I figured there’s nothing else to do. I have nowhere to go.
So that was the first domino was having the space and time, not just to consider writing a book, but to spend a lot of time just walking around my neighborhood and letting Little thought seeds beacon to sprout and become become more complex and nuanced ideas and somewhere along the way, this feeling took over me where I had to do this.
And it’s, I think about it as like logical insanity. For me, logical insanity. Why write a book? Logical insanity. Go ahead. I like, I like this one. I like where this is going. There’s practical reasons to write a book in terms of the reputation and the doors that it unlocks like me being here is one example.
And all the long term things that happened to me. But at the end of the day, I did it because I had to do it. And every fiber of my essence told me, do that, that’s the thing. And I just followed that voice, instinct, calling, whatever you want to call it, to do this thing. Hmm. And. That’s why I’ve spent almost four years now and almost 50, 000 to self publish for something that has a statistically low likelihood of succeeding in a lot of ways, but I had to do it.
Yeah, the, the title. So survival first, the rebels, entrepreneur, entrepreneurs guide to risk riches and immortality. Like what went into that title? Cause as I went through and out and just for some preface for, for the audience here I went through like I do with all my authors and guests, I went and did a deep dive on Alex and his background, checked out his website and things like that, and I’ll tell you.
You’re branding and just kind of the approach you’re taking to this. Like even the, the reviews you had on there that were almost poking that were poking fun of reviews. I was dying, laughing at some of the things you put on there. And I’m like, Oh my gosh. I mean, we’ve only known each other. This is our second or third conversation, but I can already say typical Alex.
Like this is amazing. Like what went into that? Like the title and just the concept when I was explaining the book and the ideas to people. This was before. I had title, I was explaining how the book changed, how I thought about everything. And I just casually dropped the phrase that for me going through this process has taught me to look at everything through a survival first standpoint, and then the light bulb went off.
Oh, that’s the book title. And it’s direct. And the point is, nothing matters in business if you don’t survive. Your marketing doesn’t matter if you don’t survive. Your product doesn’t matter if you don’t survive. Your culture doesn’t matter if you don’t survive. Yada, yada, yada. So the book is about looking at every single layer.
Of business from the world you don’t control to the world you do control and ultimately yourself and how do you look at. All these layers through a survival first lens. And what I discovered is that lens, that frame, I think is the most radical, but practical way of looking at business. Cause at the end of the day, all these functions of marketing and culture and operations and product market fit are all for survival first.
And looking at when you went through this process, was there a, cause I feel like, and correct me if I’m off on your process, but I was just kind of trying to put myself in your shoes and especially during the time period you’re writing it. I didn’t know why you were writing it, but I didn’t know the time period you wrote it.
So I can say, I was like, man, was this kind of like a reflective period of self discovery for yourself as well? Or was that there anything like unexpected that you, you found through going through this process? I’m not the same person I was four years ago. This was the most radical journey of anything I’ve ever gone on, both intellectually, emotionally, and even spiritually.
This was the most important thing I’ve ever done. Even if the book doesn’t sell a single copy, even if nothing happens after the publishing date, just the journey itself. Is one of the most profound things that ever happened to me. So, yeah, I don’t regret any of it. I want to go through some of the, some of the concepts here, just some of the things and some of your philosophy.
So one of the things that you that you propose that I thought was super interesting, we don’t talk about enough. And it’s just like, I was like, huh. When, even when I read it, what you said, it’s so why should entrepreneurs Consider not growing their businesses, like having even that, that thought process, like what, what went behind that?
Yeah. So to me, everything is relational. And the most important thing I believe entrepreneurs should think about is their relationship with their business. Because I don’t think it matters if you’re super profitable, if you hate your business. Yeah. And for a lot of people, not only does growing Change the relationship to the, to their business for the worse.
A lot of examples are people who have a venture backed startups, they have financing and investors, and now they discover they’re not entrepreneurs anymore. They’re employees and they don’t like that relationship. Then the more practical down to earth thing is growth is the most thorough stress test on a business.
It stress tests everything from your operations to your marketing, to your sensitivity to the world around you, to most importantly, yourself. Cause maybe you’re a great small business CEO and operator. But as soon as you double, triple, 10x, whatever x you want, then the wheels fall off. So one example was one of the companies that I worked alongside to help me write this book was, Growing and growing and growing too fast.
And they hit a point where the revenue was not nearly enough to handle the expenses that they were incurring to expand. And they imploded a perfectly good business with an amazing award winning culture, product market fit that everything going for them. But when they tried to hyperscale. Everything just blew up.
How does this play into your philosophy and how you approach taco street locating? Like, cause I think this is interesting and you’re like, and how you build relationships and even just kind of offline, how we talk a bit about, you know, your, your circle and keeping close relationships, whether you’re playing, you know, disc golf or anything else, like, like how does that play into taco street locating how you run your day to day business?
Yeah, so taco street locating is a real estate agency that focuses on a niche called apartment locating. It’s really simple. I help people find apartments to rent. And that’s the entire business. It’s super simple. But one thing I was conscious of about building my own real estate business was I did not want to be a typical real estate agent and you can close your eyes and just imagine.
What a real estate agent looks like, it’s the same clothing, the same folded arms and the same fake smile. And I’ve always known that when I try to do something that doesn’t align with who I am, that I’m going to self sabotage. I’ve, I’ve done that multiple times and I knew the only way for me to. Enjoy this business was if I could be honest and authentic to who I am.
And the brand is honest to me, like I’m silly and ridiculous. I love food and tacos and that’s why I needed it for me, but. It’s also hyper practical to stand out because if I’m just like everyone else, then why would anyone choose me? So the more I stand out, the more my branding is distinct and fun, the more personality my business has, then the more people are going to want to choose me.
Because people like doing business with people, and that’s the advantage of being small, where the bigger a business gets. There’s a lot of other businesses in this niche. Yeah. And they have way more resources, way more money, way more firepower, but I have more humanity. And they do. So people choose me all the time.
Does that, does this kind of work into your concept of why business competition really isn’t real? Like, is that working with that concept? Like go into that concept. Cause I agree with this, like complete, I talk about this all the time. I’m like, Like, you know you know, there’s enough podcast listeners.
There’s enough, like if my voice somebody doesn’t like my voice, they like your voice. They like somebody else, but it’s okay. Like the competition for eyeballs. Like if you’re putting out great, in my case, mission based content content and bringing on the right individuals on the show, like our show is going to grow and it has.
Year over year. So that idea of competition, I don’t care how many podcasts there are out there. Like we still do great work. And so I talk about it all the time, but I love to have a guest too. And that was your proposed philosophy. So like, how does that work into your, your concept? Yeah. So
competition is a. Broken frame and how it applies to business competition in the real world is me versus you playing a game like chess and whoever checkmates the other person wins. Yes, and you have a fixed set of rules and a fixed set of outcomes and that is never, ever, ever. The case in business, you are not playing the same game against another podcaster and the winner gets the audience member.
That’s insane, but worse than that, competition creates the frame where you, the entrepreneur focuses on what everyone else. Is doing and what that creates is copycatting. That’s why so many businesses and entrepreneurs look exactly like each other. That’s why almost all real estate agents look and act like that.
Like each other. And that goes back to the question before, why would anyone choose you if you’re just like anyone else and the operating word there is choice. So in this case, the, the prize is in this context, the person watching. Or viewing this, and the people who are tuning in right now are choosing to tune into this instead of doing anything else.
And what the risk actually is, is replacement risk. Is that the person listening to this? replaces this experience with anything else. And so that creates a different spectrum of something that’s infinitely replaceable, a commodity, which is what most people do. And when you’re a commodity, the only thing you have to separate yourself It’s price.
And when you’re there, then you’re not a business anymore. You’re effectively a freelancer to a market. You don’t control, but when you’re irreplaceable, you’re a monopoly. Then people want to choose you because there’s nothing else to replace it with. Yeah. And I see what you’ve done with taco street locating.
And it’s interesting because I wouldn’t have, I would not have until I saw you and I met you and got to know you a little better to see, like, okay, you did, you have created your own niche within apartment locating just from your branding alone in the way you. So are there other services that you know are in real estate?
Right? Obviously, duh. Yeah, right. But is there another taco branded like led by yourself with a founder like yourself that is, that is operating in this segment of it? I’m going to go with no, like, I don’t know. I’m not going to claim I did a ton of research on it. Also, also, Go down the line located in Austin knows the market has an affinity for Texas and all things, Texas, and also for the market and an understanding.
And if you just keep on checking the boxes, going down the list, one after another, like you’ve separated yourself in a field where maybe some would argue, it would be very difficult to, if not possible to at times. Right. And you’ve done that. Yeah. So what I call it is stacking monopolies. So I have some of the most useful content.
I have the only taco themed real estate business. I’m probably the only independent agency with like 150 something five star reviews. I’m the only me. Yeah, and the more of these little monopolies that I stack, the less replaceable I become. I’m not irreplaceable. There’s a lot of alternate options.
There’s a lot of other people that do apartment locating. There are direct replacements. But also if someone just finds an apartment on their own, that’s what I call indirect replacement. But everyone gets one freebie, Monopoly, and that’s reputation. And that segues to the word immortality in the title.
To really become indestructible, to become immortal, if you will, then that’s dependent on your reputation. Because there’s a lot of people where they could lose everything. Like, one mental exercise I like to do is if Warren Buffet wakes up with zero. How long would it take for Warren Buffett to become a billionaire again?
Yeah. He could send a text message. So a very long list of people and they would send him a billion dollars, no questions asked, no strings attached because of his reputation. That’s a great game to play. That’s true. And a lot of people don’t value their reputation like that. And you can tell by the way they behave, the way they act.
Yeah. And. Sacrificing your reputation is the worst thing you can do.
Let’s let’s jump around a little bit here. I want to, I want to talk a little bit about risk and your, your views on risk because according to our conversations, like you don’t believe risk is worth obsessing over. Like, tell me more about that. Yeah. I think risk is the only business subject. And that everything is a subtopic of risk.
Like the function of marketing is to survive because if you don’t get customers, they don’t make money. They don’t survive. The function of operations is to solve problems so you can make money so you can survive. So everything is best viewed through the function of risk. Hmm. And this book isn’t about pure doom and gloom risk.
It’s how do you handle the tension of both risk and opportunity? Which are just inverse expressions of uncertainty. And that’s the tension that we’re all dealing with as entrepreneurs. We’re all making decisions under uncertainty and every decision that we make has upsides and downsides. And what this frame is, is a way to frame decision making.
More specifically, asymmetric decision making, where by understanding how to spot asymmetries in the real world, both positive and negative, you could avoid making asymmetric negative decisions where the downside is much higher than the upside. And simultaneously, how do you find things and decisions to make?
Well, the downside is not a big deal, but the upside is massive. Yeah. And all of us have different realities that we’re dealing with different risk tolerances that we’re dealing with. So one thing I became deliberate about in this book, it’s not a prescriptive book ever. I never tell the reader what to do because I don’t know.
You, I don’t know your business. I don’t know. No, no, rather this is more of a Socratic approach. This is presenting questions to ask the same questions. And the answers to these questions are going to be different for everyone. But they’re always eternally applicable where you can ask these questions over and over and over and those questions are going to help you guide your decision making to avoid those pitfalls and discover the gold mines hiding in plain sight.
So that’s the practical function of the frames I’ve created. Hmm. So you know, we’re entrepreneurs. Many of the people watching this are entrepreneurs. You’re an entrepreneur. This is kind of like the part where I like to dream a little bit. So let’s dream. So whether it’s the book, whether it’s Taco Street regardless, what is your vision for the, the brands that you’re building going forward?
Like, what’s the dream? What’s the vision going forward is to find profitable obsessions. And what began to happen to me towards the end of this journey was even looking at the frame of business and instead of creating a new frame of how do I find profitable expressions of my highest self? Because a business is a very specific container.
Of an experience in a way to engage in the world. It’s valid. It’s fine. But what I think is a more interesting frame, a more exciting frame is how do I turn the dial up on myself and who I am and my energies and my talents, whatever they may be, and find ways to make money from that. Wow.
It’s this overlapping of personal growth and entrepreneurship and how to find alignment in both. So it’s not, how do I start another business that I really don’t care about, but how do I tap into the highest version of myself and become that person and make a ton of money that way? So that’s the ambition and the function of this book is what I call it.
It’s a, it’s a heavier fist to bang on the doors of reality just to see what opens and I think the most radical thing that happened to me in this process was learning to surrender. Hmm. And I have no idea what’s going to happen after I published. And that’s kind of the point. But what I’m trusting is if I do what I need to do, if I show up the way I need to show up, then I’m going to trigger something, I’m going to press some button and a waterfall.
This is going to trigger and I’ll put my cup in the cascade of random delights and just appreciate the ride along the way. Oh, man. That’s awesome, Alex. That’s awesome. Well, first off been great having you on the show and getting to know you and connecting, learning more about your business, your book, all of that.
For the audience, everybody that’s listening or watching this live what’s the best way for people to, I think it’s on, on sale for pre order right now, but when they’re watching it, this even later on this may, the book may already be live. So how do people buy this on number one and how do they, how do they connect?
How do they follow up and follow your journey? Yeah. So everything I’m posting right now is on my website, survivalfirstbook. com. There you could see some of the book description, some of the blurbs I, I made up. Which you have to go watch these. Some of these are, I’ll read these. These are hilarious.
They’re funny. Oh my God. I’m not famous enough to get blurbs from like famous people. So I just made up my own. I don’t care. I, I, I liked your, I liked your, your stance on it even more than the famous word, whatever it caught my attention more than the other one. So I thought they were amazing. Go ahead.
But also relevantly, if anyone hears. listening is thinking about going on their own book journey or even their own creative process. I’ve completed a 24 part making the book series, almost like a director’s cut of what it was like to do this whole thing over the last four years. Everything from the publishing strategy, the writing.
The design to building the team, to the finances, everything. And I, I made it cause I’ve never seen any other author do that. So I figured I might as well do it. So that’s connected to the sub stack on survival first book. com. So hopefully that’s going to be useful for people. Yeah, I think it will. I, I checked it out.
And just for everybody watching this, just to know, we’ll put the links to the website and the show notes so you can just click on it and head right on over. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters, first off, welcome second hit that subscribe button because we have many more mission based individuals coming up the line, and we don’t want you to miss any of the upcoming interviews.
So whether you’re watching on YouTube, whether you’re watching or. Lee hit that subscribe button and Alex, thank you so much for coming on. Truly been a pleasure getting to know you and more about your business. And I’m looking forward to this book release, man. So congrats. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on.
