There I was finally taking delivery on my boat. We’d spent the last three years looking, searching and making offers…and it was finally happening!! All the weeks and months of scouring the Internet, talking the brokers, reaching out to owners, networking with other sailors and it’s all been worth it to reach this point. Why do I bring all this up on a real estate blog?
Over the years I’ve talked to many investors and one of the key traits that consistently comes up as perseverance or persistence. Finding the right boat is very similar to finding the right investment opportunity. In fact, from my personal experience finding a sailboat is much more challenging than finding a good investment opportunity. Just like I spend time finding the boat with the right characteristics, investing is about doing the research on the market, listing out the traits that define your investment criteria, searching for, screening, and evaluating the hundreds of deals that are out in the market. The goal is to find the opportunities that meet all your criteria.
It takes perseverance to look at all those deals, analyze all the numbers, have all the conversations, and do all the necessary due diligence over months without losing your motivation. In the end, it’s all worth it. Just like the boat, when you find a deal that meets all your criteria, provides the right returns, provides the right cash flow, and will appreciate in value the feeling is ecstasy. All the while knowing that persistence and consistency of action the deal would not have happened. Which leads us to the next trait.
Consistent Action
Consistency of action and optimizing those actions are the second trait mentioned in my conversations with other investors. When I was leading a team doing construction management, these daily actions are a huge reason for my success in growing the team I was leading. When I first started with a particular client, it was a part-time consulting arrangement, and within a couple of years, I’d grown the team to eight people who have managed over 60 million dollars in projects. Every day and every week I spent time working with the new team members and time developing and optimizing systems that made it easier to manage our projects on a daily basis.
This reminds me of when I first started to learn to sail. When I first started researching my dream of sailing around the world, the sheer number and variety of topics and skills I needed to learn and manage seemed overwhelming and for a little while, I didn’t take much action at all. Until I laid out a plan to spend 30 minutes per day reading one book at a time or studying one topic for a week. I also committed to getting out on the water twice per week. Once I started taking these consistent actions my skill set rapidly advanced. They have advanced in a few short years to the point where for the first time, a boat I’m involved in sailing, got a first-place finish in a race. How does this translate to investing?
For investing consistent actions means analyzing deals every day, talking to brokers every day, keeping tabs on the investment market, and having conversations with property managers and investors. Don’t have the time or inclination to take this consistent action? That’s why you would partner with me. Interested in partnering with me or learning more about what I do, reach out and let me know.
Problem Solving and Resourcefulness
Another trait that is important to have his resourcefulness. When I was Looking for a boat I took all the normal actions, searched online, work with brokers, checked listings at the harbor. After some time, we were not getting the results we wanted using these traditional methods. After not getting the results I wanted I started digging and thinking to see if there was another way to approach the problem. As I was thinking and researching I found I could pull a list of Coast Guard documented vessels. This list was great as I could sort and filter by Manufacturer, build year, and length to narrow down the list to just the types of sailboats we were highly interested in. Only challenge….no owner information was included.
So back to the thinking board I went. A bit more research and a bit more thinking. I finally figured out how to get the owners’ names and addresses. This let us begin our own marketing campaign directly to the owners of the types boats we loved.
This reminds me of a project we were trying to construct. We had bid the project out several times, each time the bids had come in over the estimate and budget we had for the project. We ended up breaking the project into smaller pieces, procuring some of the materials ourselves, and working with different contractors than we had before. All of this eventually let us complete the project. And how does this relate to investing? I think it’s fairly obvious, if the initial approach us and normal approaches are not working, it’s time to get more resourceful and figure out another way. I would say this is directly tied to another trait mentioned in my investor conversations.
Mindset
Several years ago I had severe health challenges that led to me being bed-ridden and having to use a wheelchair to get around. I could have taken this as the end of life as I knew it and get very down, to be honest, it was very tough and emotional. Instead, I used this as an opportunity to research alternative means of solving health issues. My research led me to change my diet, which led to resolving my serious issues so I live a normal life and in fact would say I have better health than if this issue had not happened. The trait that made all the difference is mindset. Simply by choosing to look at this as an opportunity to improve and learn more about my body and health the outcome was drastically different.
This same trait can be applied to my sailing adventures. I’m reminded of the time I was exploring the San Juan Islands. There we were running the motor to get us out of an anchorage when all of a sudden the temperature gauge for the motor started to spike. Apply the right mindset this went from what could have been viewed as a detrimental issue that ended the trip to an opportunity to be creative and have a great story to tell. How’d the story end? After quickly shutting down the motor the investigation began. We found one of the brackets on the motor had broken which caused a belt to stop turning the water pump leading to the overheat. Again, this could’ve been taken as detrimental and ruin the trip. Instead, it was an opportunity to learn how to fix an engine while underway.
Once again the same trait is vitally important in business and investing. Any challenges that are encountered such ass having a team member quit with one week’s notice right before the critical time period for several projects. Again I could have freaked out and this could have led to a poor project, instead, this led to me finding a team member that had a better experience and was a better fit for the team. Well, I was sorry to see the team member leave I fully look for long-term relationships on the next train that I have encountered as being important.
Long-Term Relationships
I love having long-term relationships, in my personal life and sailing life there are so many people I have known and am close with. Some of these include friends who I have known and been involved with for over 20 years, other friends I’ve known for 10 plus years. For both of these groups of friends, we’ve all worked together building decks, remodeling bathrooms, celebrating birthdays, traveling, and in one case actually introducing me to sailing. Which leads specifically to new sailing friends, where in the past couple of years I’ve met a Canadian couple that is working and traveling from their boat, a couple that spends six months out of the year in Panama, and still others that I sail with on a weekly basis.
One interesting thing I’ve noticed is how connected different groups of people are. I recently found that one of the people that I sail with has known an engineer that I’ve known and worked with for almost eight years.
Responsiveness and Accessibility
The final trait I’m going to discuss is accessibility and responsiveness. As I’m sailing there are many races to participate and assist with. Every week there’s a roll call for people who are sailing. Every week I answer this call. On an on-going basis, there are sailing races. Months in advance of these events they are placed on my calendar and plans are made to participate.
A previous position and project is a prime example of how responsive and accessible I can be. One afternoon was walking the campus I was working on and noticed a fire coming from one of the utility rooms. After dealing with the immediate issue of the fire department extinguishing the fire, we spent the next eight or 10 hours troubleshooting where there were power issues and contacting companies to obtain a generator to temporarily power the campus. Over the next four days, I worked hand-in-hand almost around the clock with the owner, contractors, utility companies and other vendors to restore power.
How does this apply to real estate investing and running a business while traveling the world? We are very fortunate that we were in a time that allows me to access email and make phone calls from where ever I am in the world. Further, I have also implemented systems that allow my investors to know when and where I am and what times I will be available up to 30 days in advance.