I think you need to define failure. What one guy considers a failure, you may consider a learning experience.
I read your book (excellent!!) and you definitley had some failures that you talk about. YOU may not consider them failures or screw ups because a person like you is NEVER going to be beat. That’s a good thing, it is THE defining characteristic of successful people.
If you re-read your book I think you can pick out plenty of things you messed up when you first started out. I sure as heck know I can when I look back at my career.
I think it is MUCH safer to fail in the beginning. If you DON’T the odds of you losing because you think you know everything are surprisingly great. Do some research on successful Wall St. traders. Without exception they all consider their early failures KEY to their future success.
I’m climbing the fence. I have been lurking around the forums for quite some time now and just recently decided to join. I wouldn’t say that I’m at the top of the fence yet as I’m still giving myself a little more time to read and observe while working up my courage to jump in. I can feel it coming soon though!
I think you need to define failure. What one guy considers a failure, you may consider a learning experience.
FDJake,
You’re right. Everyone has a different definition of failure.
I guess that I would have two definitions of failure. For the purposes of education, I would say failure is losing money on a real estate deal, be it a rental, rehab, wholesale deal, etc. In my opinion, this is completely unnecessary because the information is available to prevent this if a person has done their homework.
Of course, the ultimate failure would be losing money on a deal to the extent that you throw in the towel and are out of business.
I would not consider failure to be a simple mistake or miscalculation. For example, if a person estimated the rehab costs to be $10,000 and the actual rehab costs were $15,000, I would not consider that a failure unless that mistake caused the entire deal to lose money. The real failure in this instance was not the miscalculation of rehab costs, but the failure to have bought at a big enough discount to offset the miscalculation.
Obviously, if you ask 100 people for their definition of failure, you’d get 100 different answers and all of them would be right.
Here is a recent “failure” for me. Bought a house that had a weird layout, no formal dining room. We knocked out a wall, opened the kitchen and called it a “modern open concept”. Eh eh. We also priced it too high. Long story short, the house has been sitting for a long time, 90 + days. We have an offer coming in tomorrow and when we sell it, instead of making $18,000-$22,000 on it like we thought, guess how much we are making? $4,000. $4,000!!! Failure? No way. We were humbled and learned that to ask top dollar for a home the home has to be top dollar quality! Lesson learned and time to move on! It’s okay when I fall because I FALL FORWARD!