The Real Cost of Incompetence (And the One Skill That Makes You Irreplaceable)

Most real estate investors and business leaders think their biggest bottleneck is a system, a process, or a missing hard skill. Learn to underwrite better. Learn to raise capital better. Learn to close faster.

But according to high-performance coach Faisal Ensaun, that's rarely where the real gap lives. The leaders who plateau — even the technically skilled ones — are almost always missing something less visible: a clear, deliberate approach to competency itself.

Here's the framework he breaks down, and why it matters more for your business than another course on deal structuring ever will.

Two Types of Competency, Not One

Faisal splits competency into two categories: internal and external.

External competency is what most people focus on — hard skills (underwriting, sales, operations) and soft skills (communication, relationship-building). It's visible, measurable, and easy to put on a resume.

Internal competency is the part almost nobody trains on purpose: your thoughts, your emotions, and your spiritual life — meaning your sense of purpose and meaning, whether that's faith-based or secular.

Most investors spend years sharpening the external side while leaving the internal side to chance. That imbalance eventually shows up — in decision-making, in leadership, in how you handle pressure when a deal goes sideways.

Why 95% of Your Thinking Isn't Even Yours to Watch

Here's a number that reframes everything: only about 5% of your thinking is conscious. The other 95%-plus runs in the background — old stories, inherited narratives, patterns you picked up years ago and never examined.

This isn't about forcing positive thinking. Faisal is clear that "negative" thoughts can lead to positive outcomes, and blind positivity isn't the goal. The real question is simpler: what's the net effect of your thought patterns? Are they, on balance, working for you or against you?

If you don't know the answer, you're not actually in control of your decision-making — your subconscious is.

Emotions Are Contagious — Including Yours

Walk into a room after a tragedy, and you feel it before anyone says a word. Walk into a room full of joy, and the same thing happens. Emotions move through people the way sound moves through a room.

That means your emotional state isn't private. As a leader — of a team, a family, a deal — your ability to manage your own emotional reactions directly shapes the emotional climate around you. And most emotions aren't even about the present moment; they're reactions rooted in the past, replaying in real time.

If you can't regulate that, it doesn't just affect your mood. It affects the quality of your relationships and the quality of your business.

The Skill Investors Skip: Soft Skills

On the external side, hard skills get most of the attention because they're easier to learn. Underwriting is hard, but it's teachable step by step.

Soft skills are different. They're a stacked combination of communication, tonality, body language, and genuine curiosity about other people — and they can't be learned from a checklist. Faisal points to Peter Thiel's Zero to One and its take on Elon Musk: what made Musk exceptional wasn't just technical vision, it was pairing that vision with the ability to sell it. Even Musk has openly admitted his personal-life communication lagged behind his professional communication — proof that competency in one arena doesn't automatically transfer to another.

For real estate investors and syndicators, this shows up constantly: you can underwrite a great deal and still lose the capital partner because the relational skill set wasn't there.

The Real Reason Some People Become Impossible to Replace

This is the core idea of the session: skill stacking.

You will never out-skill someone who has more raw talent than you in a single category. But nobody else has your exact combination of life experience, thought patterns, emotional wiring, and technical skill — stacked together, in your specific order, shaped by your specific story.

Faisal uses himself as an example: an engineering background merged with a lifelong curiosity about human behavior, shaped by living across Eastern and Western cultures, built into a coaching practice. Even when he hands other coaches his exact playbook, they can't replicate the results — because the stack itself, not any single skill in it, is what's unique.

The takeaway for investors: stop trying to become a slightly better version of your competitor. Start identifying the specific combination of skills, experience, and perspective only you have — and build deliberately on top of that.

Why Calm Is the First Skill People Actually Notice

There's a simple test for internal competency: how do you behave under pressure?

On a turbulent flight, people don't watch the weather — they watch the flight crew. If the crew is calm, everyone else regulates. The same happens in business. In a downturn, a tough negotiation, or a deal falling apart, people instinctively look to the calmest person in the room for direction.

And you can't fake it. Tone and body language give away what your words try to hide. Calmness under pressure is one of the clearest, most immediate signals of internal competency — and it's built, not performed.

The Bottom Line

Competency isn't one thing. It's internal work (thoughts, emotions, purpose) plus external work (hard skills, soft skills), stacked together in a way that's entirely your own. Skip the internal side, and even strong technical skills will only take you so far. Build both deliberately, and you stop competing on skill alone — you become genuinely hard to replace.

The question worth sitting with: are you actively working on your thoughts, your emotions, and your core skill sets — or are you hoping they develop on their own?

TRANSCRIPT

Hey, Yin. I don't think I hear you yet. Might be your headset. Let me double check on my end, too. I think mine should be good. Check if you're… Oh, now it's good. Good to see you here, Ian. Good to see you, how are you? I'm doing well, how are you doing? What's been a win? I don't know if I had any wins since the last time I spoke to you, Not really sure. Having a really hard time sleeping lately. I've been trying to get off, this one, like, sleeping medication I've been on for, like, years, and I kind of quit it cold turkey. Oh, your voice disappeared again. Retired one, because… Oh, now it's back, it's back now. Go for it. So you said something about a sleeping medication, you went off cold turkey? Yeah, I did, just to try to, like, just get off of it and just reset myself, but, it's kind of been a struggle, so I haven't really slept more than a couple hours last night, but still made it to the gym and just gonna try to push through today. Well, that sounds like a win, going to the gym. Yeah, yeah, that's… I guess so.

So when I ask for a win, it doesn't always have to be a big one. It could be as simple as you just feel alive. It could be, you feel good, or you feel like you made it through the day. It can be anything, and there's a reason why I ask it. I ask it in pretty much every conversation, whether it's my team members and others, because most of our mind is directed towards what can I fix and what has gone wrong, but we rarely think about what is right in the moment. It's a simple thing, but here's the data I've gathered over, I think, at this point, thousands of times doing this. After about 10th time, you're thinking about the win before getting on the call. Okay. And then you slowly start thinking about when in your life, because now your mind is trained to look for that. And it actually has a tangible effect on the way you feel and the way you think about your world, so it's a good tool. Keep it with you. You can ask other people around you what's been a win for them. Awesome, I will. Awesome. So, I want to jump into the training. Others might jump in, but I'll ask you to go on mute, for now, for the next few minutes, and then we'll come back and have a conversation around this. So this week is about competency, and today I want to talk about cost of… Lack of competency. If my AI… focuses on it, so… the… what does it cost us when we don't have competency? But before I go into the lack of competency, I want to go towards, as leaders, what kind of competencies do we need? If we can just simplify it and make it very straightforward that, hey, here are the areas I want to be competent in. And again, the levels matter, because we're all competent, but at what level? Have we achieved mastery in different parts of our life? We'll talk about that, too. So I'll break it down, what those competencies are, and then at the end, I'll also share what makes you completely invaluable for… in your business, and even in your life as well. And there's this one idea that makes people super invaluable in every space they're in. Once you figure that out, it actually makes it very simple to move towards how we can do that consciously, and most people kind of build that out without realizing it all of their life. We'll talk about that, too. So, let's talk about competency. And of course, there are different ways of approaching this, but I want to approach it in a simpler way so it becomes logical in your mind about what competency is as a leader for me, and that could be as a business owner or somebody who's running your life. It can show up in both sides. So, I'll talk about two types of competencies.

And the first one is internal, internal competency, and the second one is external competency. And those are the two types we're going to talk about. And the… I'll start with internal, and a lot of our work here is actually internal, but of course we go towards external as well, how you can develop your external competencies, too. The internal ones are three. Thoughts, emotions, and your spiritual life. Those are the three internal competencies as a leader you need to understand, and I'll go into that And what I mean by thoughts is, how do you make sense of your own thoughts? Or… A better way of putting it, how much control of your thoughts do you feel like you are? Which means that do your thoughts, on average, create positive outcomes for you, or negative outcomes? And it doesn't mean that you should think positive or negative, because sometimes… quote-unquote, negative thinking can lead to positive outcomes, and people don't realize that, and people go on this bandwagon of, let me think positive constantly, which is not possible. But, what I'm asking is, what is the net effect of your conscious and subconscious thoughts? Now, conscious thoughts, we're aware of them, which, by the way, is about 5% of your thinking process. About 95% plus, if you look at anybody who's an expert in the area of thought, they will say subconscious thought processes, which means there are thoughts running in the background that you're not even aware of. There are stories, narratives, and then along with those stories comes emotions. And that's the second competency, major competency, which is internal for you as a leader. How much control do you feel like you have over your emotions? And emotions kind of get a little bit complex, because it's your emotions and also the emotions of other people. It's the same with thoughts, but emotions are much more contagious when you talk about people around people than thoughts are. you might have felt this in a given situation. If you walk into a room, if the… if… I don't know if you've ever walked into, like, a tragic situation, you can… without even… somebody even saying anything, you can feel the effects of it. Or you walk into a space where there's joy, and you all of a sudden feel… that's why we call it contagious, that it affects people. So, one part is, how much control do you have over your own emotions, your reactions to your own emotions from the past, from what you're reacting to right now? And the trick is that almost all emotions are in the past, they're not in the present. Feelings might be in the present, but they usually connect to your past. And then, how do you react to other people's emotions?

Because there are other people around you, team members, family members that you're taking care of, partners, customers, they all have emotions, we're talking about human beings. And if you don't have that competency, then it can affect your life quite a bit, the quality of your life, and also the quality of your business. And I'll come back to how all this comes together, but let's talk about the external competency as well. The external competency, I've also broken it down. Your external competencies are very simple. There's your hard skills, like whatever field you're on. If you're in real estate, maybe your focus is underwriting, your hard skill is underwriting. the better you are at that skill set, the more you're going to attract business in that area. In fact, I know a very successful underwriter, pretty much because of his competency in that area, lots of real estate investing organizations are going towards him constantly to underwrite their deal. Now, there's, the second one is actually, what we call, in popular Kershaw, we call that soft skills. Soft skills, and a better way to say this, relational skills. And so, soft skills are usually the way you interact with other people. Your ability to communicate, your ability to understand others, and that could be in your business, in your personal life as well. So, there's a book called Zero to One by Peter Thiel, who was, Elon Musk's partner and PayPal with him. And he talks about Elon Musk, interestingly. He talks about a lot of things. Two things that really stood out for me in that book, among a lot of things. One was that he talked about business partnerships. He said that you can fix a lot of things in life. In business, sorry. But you can't fix business partners. You're either with the right business partners, or you're not. Of course, there's… there are things you can improve if they're the right business partners, but if they're the wrong business partners. It doesn't matter how much you work on it, it's not gonna work. By the way, the same… I believe the same holds true with your life partner, too. And then the other thing he talked about was specifically Elon Musk. He said that he's a perfect combination of a tech guy with sales skills. So… and he talks about his success, like, he was one of the few who was able to sell renewable… get all these government contracts for renewable energy, for space, all kinds of things. Because he was not just good at the ideas, he was good at getting people… selling people on the idea. And so, he had to have relational skills in there. No matter how awkward he is, he was able to sell the idea.

Now, that might have not been totally true on his personal side, because he's actually shared this even publicly, that his personal side, he struggles a lot on the communication side. And that's what I want to share in here, is that you might be really good at a competency on the professional side, but you might not be good at that on the personal side, such as communication. But it's not just about communication, it's how you connect with others, how you understand others, how you relate to them, how curious you are about their journey, and how you translate that from Connection point to creating something collaborative, whatever that is, whether that's a business, whether that's a partnership as a customer, or whether that's in your personal life, your relationships you hold in your personal life. So, and just… and I want to summarize this, and there… so there are just two skill sets, internal. external. If you break them down, there's thoughts, emotions, and I didn't go into the spiritual side, because I want to attach something to that. Spiritual, thoughts, emotions, and spiritual, and then on the external side, there are hard skills and soft skills. Soft skills are the ones that are hard to actually… it's a… paradoxical, they're hard to gain, because they're a combination of multiple other skill sets, like communication, as you have to learn how to speak properly, but you have to understand your body language, tonality, and you have to experiment with that constantly. It's not as simple as learning how to underwrite, even though underwriting can be very hard, too. And… and the soft skills also plays into your business and personal life. Now, let's circle back to the spiritual side, because I wanted to wrap it up with that, and then I'll talk about the… what's the number one skill that's invaluable, that'll make you invaluable, or the number one reason you will become invaluable when it comes to your competencies. And there's a term for that. So, the spiritual side, and it has… I look at it in two different ways. One is it's connected, for many people, that's connected to their faith, but it's specific to how they relate. It's not what they believe. It's how their lens of the world changes. And actually, Einstein was the one who made, who explained it better than anybody else. He, posited it in one of his… one of the powerful questions he asked was, do we live in a… In a friendly universe or not? Do we live in a friendly universe, or do we live in a hostile universe? And at least in his conclusion, for whatever reason, he concluded that it was a friendly universe. And on average, if you look at people who have a spiritual life, they tend to look at even if there are things that are wrong around them, they tend to look at things in a positive lens because they say that, ultimately, God is good. they will say that their faith takes them to something positive, whether that be their idea of heaven, or whether that be that I have faith that God will take care of things. They… they have a very different lens. So it's not about what they actually… how they do things, their internal lens is very different from somebody who doesn't believe that. But there's another aspect of the spiritual side that's important. So, spiritual can also show up in the secular world, which means that if you have a sense of purpose, I actually put that in the category of spiritual. Why? Because that's where the questions of why come in a lot. That's the question of meaning that comes in. Where you're looking at your long-term, maybe even the rest of your lives, like, what is my life gonna be about? Whether I believe in God. or not, what is going to be deeply meaningful to me. Now, for religious people, that's kind of given to them, and again, depending on how deep they've contemplated on that, they might have faith or not.

But for those who are secular, they can still be spiritual. If they go deeper into the meaning that is important to them, whatever meaning assigned to them, and if you listen to some secular scientists, this becomes very evident. There are a couple of scientists who talk about the cosmos, the universe, in a certain way. They don't speak a spiritual language, but when they talk about the universe, it's as if they… Feel like… as if they're talking about the sacredness of the universe. they don't talk about it, they're just talking about the, like, how amazing they're in awe of everything. And they've dedicated their whole life to understanding that. To me, that is a spiritual path. Because it becomes deep, and it's deeply connected. What is the effect of that? Well, you show up with dedication, you show up with conviction, you show up with excitement, you show up, no matter what is going on, you show up because this thing matters to you deeply. That… that in itself can completely change your thoughts and emotional process. And when I see that people don't have that, whether they have it on the faith side or the purpose side, if they don't have that, they're missing a huge component, even if they work a lot on their thoughts and emotions. There's one other component of thoughts and emotions that goes to the skill set, it's a bit of a technical thing, is that thoughts and emotions are not just in the present, they're in the past and the future. They take you to the past and future.

If you cannot make sense of those two landscapes, you'll always struggle. You will not know how to maintain your current… you will not know how to navigate your current thought process if you don't understand your past, your story, if you don't understand where you're going, which also connects to your spiritual life. So, that internal… those internal skill sets around thoughts, emotions, and spiritual life is deeply important for you to show up better as a leader. Why? Because you're going to be dealing with other human beings with the same problems. Either they have those skill sets at a certain level, or they… and you can… if you have these internal abilities, you can notice how they are, and you can help navigate them. You can actually build better relationships. And then on the external side, you're actively working on building your core skill sets, which are hard skill sets in whatever field you're in. And then, on top of that, you are working hard on building your communication and relation… relational skill sets. And when you work actively on these things, you understand that, oh, I can actually build, like, a track to improve all of these areas. So my question to everybody here, whether they're on the recording or live, are you actually actively working on your thoughts, on your emotions, on your spiritual life? Are you actively working on your core skill sets in that specific field? nor are you working on your soft skill sets, which could be relational or communication, etc, like that. And finally, the last one I want to share is the reason… number one reason why you will become invaluable, and I had to explain all that for you to understand it, and this… it's a term we call, skill stacking. What makes you unique is the stacking of all those skill sets on top of each other. When you meet somebody that's incredibly unique, you'll find that they've gone through an incredible journey, their thoughts are unique to themselves, the way they react to emotions to others, it's a very unique way… approach they have. They look at the world in a specific lens, and then they have a very powerful core skill sets within a field, or they They have multiple that stack on each other, and then they also have unique ways of communicating their ideas.

Now, you stack all those On top of each other, there's nobody that would match that. Because they're… they're the unique stack combination of that. And nobody else will have their life experience, their lens of looking at the world, nobody else will have their combination of thoughts, nobody else will have their way of reacting to the world. Nobody else will have their way of connecting with people. Nobody else will have their way of putting together those skill sets in specific ways. So, for example, for me, I think one of the things that gave me a huge edge was that I've lived in the Eastern world, and I've lived in the Western world, I've struggled on both sides, and I've lived in multiple different countries, so I've seen the different narratives that culture gives you, and where the personal side comes in, and I've… I've been curious since 6 years old about human behavior, and then I realized much later on that that's what I wanted to go towards. And I started to build skill sets from… my skill sets from the engineering side connects with my skill sets with coaching, so I think systematically, but I think in a relational way. Like, you put together all those, there's nobody who thinks like me, around me. Yeah, I just… I'm just unique in my space.

And there are probably a dozen other things that I do that… that are subtle, subtly different from other people around me, other business owners. I think that's one of the main reasons why my business has sustained through all kinds of hardships and all kinds of things, because I bring a unique level of value that other coaches are not able to. Even if I… and I train other coaches, even if I train them every single thing, they don't know how to put them together in that combination. And I've actually given all my resources. This is my regular practice. I meet a coach who's working through some things, like, hey, whatever you need, just let me know. He's like, oh, I was looking through your workshop, or through this, I'll send you all those files. They take it, they go run it. It's like, I don't know how you do it. It's a lot like cooking something. You can give the recipe, but there's a whole process that goes through it. And that's connected to my life experience, my specific skill sets, how I put them together, and how I move forward. The reason why I shared this is, start asking, and that's why I said in the beginning, most people kind of build that out, like, without realizing it throughout their life, by running into one thing or another, and I got that, a lot of it, because through my challenges, but after a while, I started becoming aware of it.

So I started leveraging it, like, what are the unique skill sets that I can add that will make me unique in this space? So, for example, in the coaching space, I realized a lot of people were not really good at marketing and sales, so… I started building those skill sets more and more in that area, and that made me one of the leaders in the coaching space, and that's why I run a community for coaches. So I started building on those skill sets. And my personal life, I realized a lot of people don't think the way that I do, and I came at a price in the beginning, but I realized, well, how can I amplify that instead of shying away from thinking like that? So I started going deeper into that, and I realized that most people around me don't think like me. So that gave me an edge to connect with people who thought like me in my personal life, too. So, and I want you to think about this. Are you working on your internal and external skill sets, and are you working on those components, and are you stacking those skill sets as you're moving forward, so you can become an invaluable resource pretty much in any space, and that by… by…

By the consequence of that, your business becomes just as invaluable, because you are going to be running in your own… running it in your own unique way, versus copying somebody else's model. I'll pause there. I'd love to hear from both of you. I know, Greg, you jumped in a little bit later, but I'll ask Ian first, and then whatever insight you had, you can share to Ian. What was your biggest insight today? I think it's… I was thinking a lot about, like, the what skills am I working on, you know? And, you know, for me, that's really, like, my emotions, and that's kind of, like, my internal framework. And, like, really just… like, reconfirming the idea, like, a hundred times that, like, that's what I need to double down on, you know? Not too many other people, like, in my industry of business, of development and raising capital, I think, really have that people skill and that EQ.

And if I can really hone on on those skills, I can really surpass everybody else that's doing the same thing as me. Yeah. And does it just have a business significance for you, or it also has a personal significance? Personal significance, and it's just… Like, kind of… in every aspect, I mean, like, it'll make me better in my business, but it'll make me better for my business. Like, it'll make me a better employee of my own business, for example. Like, you know, I can operate better and… you know, like, managing, like, I think you said something about, like, if it's a tragic event, you walk in the room, you could feel that energy, or if it's, like, a joyous event, you walk in the room and you feel that energy. I want to give off that, like, really joyous, grounded, like, no matter what's wrong, like, I'm good type of energy. And that's something, like, I really need to work on bringing that in. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. I love that. And at what point, and what… how did you… I know you were aware of this before you came into the picture. What made you decide that this is an important skill set for you? Like, the generality of, like, mastering, like, EQ and emotions, is that what you're referring to? Yeah. Okay. I mean, I mean. I'm… Like you said, not a lot of people go towards that as a conscious thing to build, a skill set to build, but why? Why for you? I want the most control over my life as possible without, like, I know that kind of sounds bad, like, because you can't control and everything, but if I can control my mind, I can control my life. And then if I control my life, I can control my outcomes. So, it's like reverse engineering, like, where do I need to start? It all needs to start with me, like, I need to be great before I can help other people be great.

Awesome, thank you for sharing that. I think that's a powerful ideal. Greg, were you able to hear anything that was an insight for you? Yeah, I mean, yeah, you dropped a lot of knowledge. That was, like, that was so much, and such, like, everything I said, I didn't want to, like, take some time to… I wanted to listen instead of write things down, but, everything was very good. I'm definitely gonna re-listen to the recording. Awesome, awesome, thank you, Ian. Greg, go for it. Yeah, no, I mean, I think the… the skill stacking that you mentioned, you know, towards the end, that I kind of caught, I think that's an interesting concept. I think it's, something that evolves over time. You know, I try to, you know, think about the skills that I have and how often I… utilize them, and the ones that I'm still kind of working on. I would say similar to Ian, I'm trying to be very conscious of my thoughts nowadays, kind of like, what am I… am I reacting to what's going on around me, or am I… am I being proactive in deciding what my thoughts are, given my environment? So, even this weekend, I caught myself being reactive and being emotional based on what was going on around me. And, you know, I think the more I can do that. the more, you know, confidence and self-assured I'll be, and the better off I'll be, probably, in the long term. But, I would agree with Ian that, you know, having me focus on my own thoughts, irrespective of what's going on around me, is going to be important. Yeah, and I love that. Thank you for sharing that, and especially in times of turbulence, that becomes more and more important. I always tell people, ask them this question, if the… speaking of turbulence, if you're in a flight, and there's turbulence, or I was on a cruise ship the first time. we were having dinner, and it's like, it felt like I was kind of moving by this, and I was just looking, I'm like, how come the waiters are not the maitre D, none of them are caring about this. That actually, I could tell that was alleviating my… and I finally asked one of them, he's like, is this normal? He's like, you should be in Hawaii. It's much worse. I'm like, oh, okay, that answers my question, so they're not that concerned about it. Same thing when you're on a flight, when there's turbulence. you watch… you naturally, subconsciously go towards the leader, which is usually the air hostess, and those who are running the show in the background, or the pilot, how the pilot communicates all this stuff. If you hear any kind of, like, erratic, even tonality. you start to kind of shift. And actually, leaders are trained in those spaces to be calm, regardless of those situations, because that's what actually communicates to everybody around them, whether it's firefighters, or those in military, or anywhere. And you're a leader in your space, in your home, in your workplace, in your business. Usually, it's the… when people are seeking support, they go to the calmest person in every room. That's just our common reaction. Of course, you need to have background knowledge, understanding, other things, but this is the first form of Communication is your calmness. And calmness, you can't fake it, because people will read through your body language. very quickly, even if you're pretending with your words, your tone will give it off. Your body language will give it off. Human beings are very good at reading other human beings at a subconscious level. Maybe not at a conscious level as… For example, a trained psychologist or a therapist or a coach can look at, but at a subconscious level, we're all kind of psychologists, because we've evolved to understand Panic, understand danger, and we see it in other people's faces. So, I'll pause there. This week, we're gonna go much deeper into this, and there's a worksheet connected to this, and especially the skill stacking, there's actually a whole process around that, so I'm going to be sharing with you after the group session that we do, where we're going to go deeper into what's happening with your competencies in different parts of your life. What do you need to think about in different roles that you're in? So make it a little bit more specific. and go much deeper, and you'll also hear other thoughts around how other leaders in our community are doing in this area. But thank you for everybody for showing up, and super excited for the Thursday session. We'll talk soon. Take care, y'all. Awesome. See you guys. Thanks, guys.