Today, I am going to talk about something that most folks do not talk about in real estate or note investing: FAILURE. While most of us are quick to talk about the successes we have had, most of us are shy or hesitant to talk about the failures we have had in investment. Let me say that I have had my own experience of failures in real estate investing. There have been times when the deal that I thought was great turned out to be a flop. I have made money in real estate and I have lost money in real estate. I recall someone telling me that the deals that keep you up at night are not the ones that slipped through your grasp but the ones you got that turned out to not be such a deal.
Here are three “a” words that are a key for me in dealing with the failures in my own real estate and note investing. I commend them to you as follows:
- ANYONE- Anyone and everyone who is a seasoned real estate or note investor who is honest with themselves and with others will tell you that they have had failures in investments. If you face failure in your future or are facing an investment failure right now, please don’t think you are the “lone ranger” and the only one that is going through that. The difference is that you know well the story of your investment failures and do not know the full story of that seasoned investment who seems like they are standing on the pinnacle of success.
- ASSESS- Assess and evaluate once what happened. In most every serious tragedy, an investigation takes whether you are talking an auto accident, a homicide, or a national tragedy. For a course of time, people evaluate and assess the situation. I encourage you to do the same. Why was this investment experience a failure? Was it something you did or did not do? What could you have done differently? What can be learned from this experience? It might be helpful to talk to a mentor about this and get their insight. While it might be temporarily painful to be honest with them that you failed, it might pay great dividends to get their thoughts. While assessment is important, I encourage you to not get bogged down in this step so that you suffer from “analysis paralysis”.
- ACTION- Take action. Learn and move on. This will be a failure only if you let this experience keep you from getting up and resuming your real estate and note investing. Learn what this experience is teaching you and start investing again being wiser for it all.
Best wishes to you in all your real estate pursuits.- R. L. Wall