Is Mindset all that important in REI?

[Joshua Christensen]

A few years ago, I bought the largest project I'd ever taken on.  It was a fantastic 100+ year old Victorian home in a Historic district of Albuquerque.  I was so excited to take this on.  The city had condemned the property as there were some hazards such as sinking foundation, faulty wiring, bad windows, roof, etc.  It was a foreclosure and the highest and best use most saw as a scrape and rebuild site.  Not me though.  I wanted to bring this house back to life.  

I convinced my partner to go for and we were off to the races.  We were both busy in our other businesses, so we decided to hire a project manager and oversee the work.  Initially, it started out ok.  Within a couple of weeks, we started to notice issues with the work being done as well as attitude from our PM.  The original project deadline was 3 - 3.5 months and $130,000 budget.  

Week after week the conversations got harder and more volatile with my PM which then flowed through to my partner.  I was angry.  Every day I grew more and more angry and frustrated by the process.  The budget ballooned to nearly $165,000 and we ran over total time of 6.5 months.  We put the house on the market with all of its flaws only to have the country shut down due to the pandemic.  It was crickets in that area of town.  Eventually, 14 months after we started the house sold and we broke even.  It was heart breaking.

As I write this today, I received my biggest lesson to date in real estate this morning.  I was reading The Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol.  He stated something to the effect that if you believe you can, you will.  Your inner voice will go to work to find the solutions you need to succeed.  For some reason, these words took me back to this old Victorian house we sold last year.  

See, my anger and frustration stopped our progress.  I had an absolute hatred for the project to the point that I fired myself as the listing broker and hired a friend to sell it.  He came in and sold it within 3 weeks.  I couldn't talk about the house without inner rage.  I was so angry at our PM.  I was angry at the sub-contractors. I was angry with the timeline.  You name it.  My partner was angry with me for getting us into the mess.  But Today, that all changed.

Here's the lesson.  The house was the biggest project I had ever taken on.  It was intimidating and a bit scary, but excitement drove me to complete it against all the odds.  When it was done, the house passed city inspections and was deemed habitable once again.  This piece of history was preserved due to our vision for it.  It looks different.  We modernized it and we completed was seemed impossible to do.  I CAN DO THIS!  

Don't get me wrong.  There were a lot of mistakes we can learn from moving forward.  I will and have.  The reality is that the inner self doubt of whether I can or can't do the job is gone.  That's a huge energizing fact.  The negative inner anger froze me and paralyzed me in my tracks.  That House now stands as a beauty marker on that street because I first saw it.  That vision became a reality.  

When you're not sure about what direction you want to take your real estate investing career or if fear and doubt weigh heavily on your mind.  Reach deep to find the things you've successfully completed in your life even when the odds seemed against you.  I've decided that this house is actually my greatest victory so far in real estate.  

What has been the biggest lesson you've learned around mindset?  What obstacle almost stopped you but you pushed through?

I'm excited to hear what you all come up with!