Welcome back,
As real estate investors our businesses often times revolve around the decisions of other people. While purchasing property we often times can find ourselves mentally crossing-our-fingers or saying our prayers in hopes a seller or buyer will make a decision which favors our wallets. These unnecessary and ill placed expectations can often times lead to misunderstood suffering and anxiety in your real estate business.
For the health and well-being of your business and sanity keep in mind that there are some activities and decisions you can control, and others you cannot control. Keep focus on the items within your control and eliminate the expectations of the others from your mind.
Setting your real estate investing expectations.
A few tasks and decisions on which you may not want to place high expectation:
- A seller’s decision to accept your purchase offer
- A buyer’s decision to buy your property
- Your buyer becoming approved by his/her lender for financing
- Any underwriting decision
- Your handyman’s productivity
- The speed of your closing company, bank, lender
- Setting an appointment with any specific fsbo before you first call them
A few tasks and decisions on which you may want to place high expectations:
- How many offers you make per day/week
- How many new fsbos you call per day/week
- How much effort you exert on advertising and marketing your business
- How much you network with other investors
- How much effort you put forth in your business
- Which escrow companies or attorneys you work with
- Which sellers and buyers you work with
As touched on in the bullets above the only tasks and items you may wish to place high expectations upon are the tasks and items which depend on your direct and complete activity. If you succeed or fail in performing these tasks then the success or failure is solely on your shoulders. When you start including other people, either buyers, sellers, assistants, closing attorneys, outsourcers, contractors, handymen, title agents, etc you have less and less control. This is not a negative or a positive, it simply is something to understand and compensate for.
In short, items and tasks which only involve your physical and mental energy to perform are within your control. Any items or tasks you outsource are outside of your control. Place high expectations on items that you solely control – these expectations with time deadlines are often times called goals.
When real estate is involved tasks often times have the outcome of taking longer and costing more than expected to complete. For this reason it can be sage advice to expect things will take twice as long to complete and three times the amount of capital as expected. Whether you are accounting for holding costs, repair costs, marketing, selling time, or repair time always err on the side of caution and factor in extra time and costs in to your deals.
Be the happiest real estate investor you can be. The less stressed and less you suffer the happier and more likely you will be to consistently put forth effort in your investing business and take daily action.
Love what you do daily,
John Fedro
support@mobilehomeinvesting.net
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10 Comments
Ken
January 13, 2014Hi John,
This is an excellent article. I have recently learned this lesson of suffering in my personal life however I never thought of it like you mentioned. Are you Buddhist? This is one of the main pillars of Buddhism too. I do have another question. How do you personally deal with the issue of your heart racing when you are waiting for sellers to call you back about the purchase offer you just made to them? I get so stressed and anxious some times.
Cheers,
Ken
John Fedro
January 13, 2014Hi Ken,
Thanks for your kind words. I personally think happiness is very underrated when it comes to real estate investors. So many of us want the profits but never understand how to be happy in the mean time. After all success is truly a journey and not simply a destination in some far off future. To answer your questions no I am not Buddhist but I do respect their beliefs very much. Secondly if you only have one deal or one offer out to one or two sellers at a time you will be sitting, stressing, and twiddling your thumbs waiting for feedback from this one or two seller(s). My advice and training asks that you make offers to dozens and dozens on sellers. After-all every home has it’s price or terms. When you have so many offers out there you find that you can cherry pick the deals you want to work with. Like I said above you can control the number of offers you make and sellers you speak to each week. my advice is to push your business and comfort level to the limit. 🙂
Love what you do daily and talk soon,
John
Josh
January 13, 2014John,
What music are you jamming to in the car? Good video and article. Definitely something I have struggled with, especially at times when I have believe I have found “the deal.” Have definitely spent too much time in events and decisions both physically and emotionally I could not control. Great ideas for definite course correction.
Josh
John Fedro
January 13, 2014Hi Josh,
The music is added later during production. Thanks for commenting and your kind words. Yes, this is something that I think most investor’s don’t think about but does do damage to our mental well being. Investors are too focused on making money and not making themselves happy at the same time. Glad you have gained some value from the posting.
Talk soon,
John Fedro
Stan LA
January 14, 2014Very inspirational post John. I like these types of self help articles and videos. Plus it’s very easy to understand and digest.This hits close to home for me personally. Please feel free to continue making more of these types of articles and vids. These types and step by step deal ones too.
Your proud member,
Stan LA
John Fedro
January 14, 2014Hi Stan,
Thank you for commenting and for your very kind words. You are the hard worker here and deserve all your current and future success. I will continue making these and have an additional surprise I will be sharing with everyone soon. Thanks for following and for being such an active member.
All the best and talk soon,
John Fedro
Patrick Howard
January 15, 2014Great philosophy. Control the things you can control, and influence the rest.
John Fedro
January 16, 2014Hi Patrick,
Thanks for commenting. I like the last part you mentioned, “Influence the rest”. Well said.
Talk soon,
John Fedro
Abby
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John Fedro
April 14, 2014Hi Abby,
Thank you for commenting and your kind words. I am glad to see that this site has been giving you value. Don’t hesitate to reach out if anything is needed.
All the best,
John Fedro
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