"You need to be more positive!"

“You need to be more positive!”

A frequent BP poster texted me after one of my recent blog entries and told me “You need to be more positive…you aren’t ever going to get any business like that.”

He may be right. I have been investing in the Smokies since 2005, and admittedly, I have been bearish on further investing in the Smokies since early 2022. Another BP poster emailed me just last week, asking my opinion on a property in Gatlinburg for sale, and whether we would be willing to manage it for him. I told him simply: “I am not a proponent of buying property in Gatlinburg right now. That property is overvalued and will struggle.”

Of course, discouraging folks from investing in vacation rentals, thus thwarting their potential engagement with my company for management, isn’t helping my bottom line. I won’t be taking any trips to Cancun this year because of all of the money I made from new homeowner clients.

Yet dishonesty is no way to do business. Truth is truth, regardless of the dollars involved. Embellishing the potential for profit, and exaggerating one’s experiences in order to induce other investors to line one’s wallet, is a reprehensible thing.

Jesus put it rather succinctly when he asked: “What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? What could one give in exchange for his life?"

The one thing I will stay consistently positive about, is that I never intend to trade the truth for a dollar.