I wanted to take the time to talk to everyone about perspective. It’s the time of year where everyone is looking at what has happened and what they expect to happen based on their history. Everyone has their own experiences, and therefore their own historical perspectives that help drive their predictions of what to expect in the future. As a result, these predictions influence their actions to achieve an expected result. I want to challenge all of you to take a lesson you learned this year, any lesson, and re-evaluate your perspective to find the opportunity in the problem.
Example Scenario: Say that you really had trouble collecting rents due to the moratorium, list prices for comparable properties were increasing quickly, and you decided it was the best option to sell the property to get out of that situation with enough money to cover your losses.
Historical perspective: What you remember now when you look back on it could be, “Man, appreciation skyrocketed this year, I shouldn’t have sold that home when I did.”
Re-evaluation and Opportunity: However you remember the past, try looking at it a different way. Think outside of the normal linear thought process. Instead, find a lesson in the experience and don’t try to avoid the situation from happening again in the future, but learn how you can prosper from it if it happens again. You can say, “I struggled financially when I wasn’t receiving the rents, how can I make sure that I don’t have that same struggle if I find myself in that situation again?” A good answer off the top of my head is to talk to Unbridled Wealth about their infinite banking system. Read their article, learn, and view your problem as an opportunity to look at a new way of financing. You could also go to AZREIA meetings for the market updates to see when the right time to sell would be in the future.
The idea I’m trying to get across is that you can’t view all of the not-so-awesome stuff that’s happened this year as a “Well that’s just the way it is” situation. We’ve just lived through a once-in-a-lifetime market hoopla that has had, and still has, everyone guessing at what’s to come next! Something like that doesn’t just happen and everyone sits back and says, “That’s the way she goes.” The entire world has changed and adapted, and many people and companies have come out of this more prosperous than ever because they know where to find the opportunity in the problem. They didn’t run away scared of what was going to happen next, they took advantage of the situation and set forth in motion what they wanted to happen next.
AZREIA is here to teach you how to do everything the right way the first time. How to make the right deals, find the right people, use the right contracts, have the right entities, the right money, the right strategies, the right education. We are here to give you the tools for success. But success only comes with execution. Yes, you can be successful with an “Oh well” mindset, but if you make mistakes all you’ve done is lost. If you can change your mindset to be opportunistic, well then you win from every mistake you’ve made, my friend. After everything you’ve had happen this year, how can you better prepare yourself and adapt for next year? How will you change your perspectives so you can change your predictions so you can change the results you expect to see? Because doing THAT will make you more successful than you could ever imagine.
If you’re struggling to find opportunity in a situation, reach out to use at memberservices@azreia.org. We are more than happy to work with you to understand what you can learn from your experiences.
Smarter Investing,
Michael Del Prete
Executive Director