Clarifying your thinking

This week I spent much of my (after work) time working on a single email. For work I write many emails every day, but for this one particular email, It took me a large amount of time. It is one of those that has a quasi legal nature affects many individuals, partially adversarial, and involves a large sum of monies so I am really careful when I send them. Other emails of similar nature have taken me a week or more to write and rewrite.

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Oddly this section on writing emails/letters can be directly compared to the first of Brendon Burchard's components of sustained long term success... "Seek Clarity."

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These letters usually start off as a brainstorming session where I write all the ideas of a reply down. The order of the ideas is not important, just that I get them all down. What I write includes my logic and sometimes a bit of anger, especially if someone is making a claim which has no proof and there are plenty of facts to prove the opposite. It is good to get as many ideas as I can because it allows me to really think each idea over and see if it is true or just some fanciful idea I have that has no real relation to the facts. The question that I seem to be asking is ... Is this true and how do I know or do I just want it to be true?

The email usually has to go through 4-5 revisions and sometimes up to 10 revisions, depending on the importance. The reviews include:

1) organize the ideas in the correct order for the most impact. Sometimes I have to number my paragraphs or ideas as the emails/letters can get very long.

2) content/fact confirmation, especially if I am referencing other documents, I pull up the previous documents and re-read them. I usually try to stand in the other person's shoes and ask myself, why was this done this way in the past and what were they trying to achieve?

3) removal of any excessive anger or finger pointing. I usually need outside help here to see if an email comes off as angry. Never ever send an email when your angry.

4) review for grammar and word choice, to see if I can re write the same words in a more effective way. (I usually get help with this one as well)

5) a proof reading by someone who is not involved in the situation to read it as if they were a Judge or an Arbitrator to see if, without any background, they understand the meaning of the letter. The question I want to ask myself is if an Arbitrator was reading this, would he/she say this email was "reasonable."

6) I usually sit on the email for at least a day to put time between writing it before I send it. I try to read the letter/email again to see if it captures the meaning I want to send. It also gives me a chance to think of any other related issues that may need to be added, if not added before or used as proof in #2)

As time goes on, my ability to write emails has gotten much, much better. I am surprised when I read letters that are in relation to important matter and see how little thought or fact checking goes into them.

I do not like to be cryptic, so after this particular issue that I am working on gets finished, I may write about it in more detail. It has been ongoing for about 12 years! Sometimes as part of step 1, I have to provide a history as the individuals that I am dealing with do not have the ability or time to actually know what is going on and make false statements based on what they think happened, but not what actually did happen.

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I finished reading "Mastering the Art of Commercial Real Estate" by Marshall. Interestingly he mentions several articles from BP in his source material for his Chapter 1, Why Invest in Commercial Real Estate and Chapter 3, Time Proven Principals of Investing.

The book was very relevant for me as I am moving beyond just the first level of analysis to see my potential investments from the point of view of a commercial lender. In all of my future packages going to banks, I will include the DCR, LTV, my global debt etc.

I have to keep pushing myself to review apartment buildings for sale. One of my short term goals is to be very comfortable doing the numbers on a potential investment; Comfortable enough that when a property fits my criteria, 3-4 months from now, it will jump out at me and I will be ready.

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Lastly I am continuing to build up my cash reserves for this next investment and will continue to watch the long term interest rate and inflation rate very closely.