Quantity and Quality
Today I was sitting here thinking to my self everyone. I was thinking: Where are we? Where are we in this cycle of real estate? As I was pondering this question I started thinking about a different cycle. I started thinking abotu what part of the life cycle we are in at this very moment. I have this belief that every person has different seasons of life; things are either growing, blooming, or dying. The two quesrions in this vein of thought are 1) What cycle are you currently in? and 2) Do you have any control of the cycles?
Well it is pretty easy to realize what everything is about when you areyoung becasue everything you think about and everything you do is geared on tomorrow. It is all about the future, your dreams, hopes and desires and while they aer unrealized, you dream of them often. As you move on in life you start to accomplish some of these goals and as you reach mid-life your objectives change to getting all of your dreas accomplished and doing so in volume, the more the better. Somewhere along the way you continue to mature and suddenly you realize that more is not better; that quality is better. You realize the most ofthe things you have accumulated over this time is not truly owned by your. The truth of the matter is most of your things own you now.
So this has been the story of my life and I was reflecting on the times a short while ago when I was wanting to own a yacht and a motorhome and what happened was tha I had reached some level of financial success and I had no desire to go further. I was making enough money to be comfortable and I thought that I deserved more toys. So I started shopping for these new toys and I found out that you could easily predict the age of the people that were shopping becasue each toy attracted its own age group. I started with the motor home becasue I thought it would be great to travel the country and learn about our land one tree at a time. It really messed with my head though becasue every time I went shopping for this home all the other people shopping were old people, really OLD people. IT really turned me off from the whole idea becasue, in my mid forties, I did not want to give in and start acting like an "old person". Then I moved to yachts and searched for the really luxurious ones. I wanted a yacht that was big and comfortable and awesome. When I showed up to inspect these new toys I started seeing old people again! So I took a closer look at this toy I was researching and the people that owned them. The more I looked, the more I noticed that these people were tied down to these yachts. They had to constantly wash them, they had to store them, they had to come down and be on the yacht becasue they had spent so much money on the thing that it would be a waste if they didn't spend the weekend on it! The same thing was true with the motor home and finally I completely talked myself out of getting them becasue I did not want any of these things to own me.
I started to realize that getting better things was better than getting lots of things. I also remember looknig at time shares and thinking how awesome they would be. But then I kept readign and there were maintance fees and transers fees if you wanted to move to another place and all sorts of hidden charges! After all of this I finally started to get the concept of toys owning me and it realyl changed my real estate investing style and this leads to you all as real estate investors and what level you currently occupy. If you are a beginner than the entire process is daunting. It just seems like an epic task to get your first deal done and you have no idea how you aregonig to get your second, third and fourth deals. Then you move to the intermediate level and it is no longer a big deal so you start to volumize. You buy ad buy and buy and all the sudden you wake up and realize that you have one hundred houses that you need to take care of and it becomes more work than you really want to deal with. From there you will probably face my problem and will have to move into apartment complexes and become a beginner all over again. Once again though you get comfortable and start to volumize and that is stillnot the right way to go. So what is the right way folks? One simple word: Quality.