In this excerpt of a recent interview, I share the real meaning of persistence.
When I first started out in real estate, everyone kept saying to me, “You need to get a real job,” but real estate was my dream job. Some would describe sticking with it as a part-time job for six years as “stubbornness,” but I’d call it “persistence.” If you have a dream that you’re serious about and want to live the entrepreneurial lifestyle, you will deal with some tough times.
You’ll almost certainly have to push past what I call the “wilderness experience”—a feeling akin to wandering around in the wilderness alone without direction or much resources to sustain yourself. Every dreamer encounters the wilderness, but the successful ones are those who figured out how to suck it up and persevere. Their big secret: learning from their mistakes and never quitting.
Real estate can be an absolute grind (trust me, I was grinding it out for years). After a while, though, I started to see the true shape of what I was building. When my passion finally produced a fruitful lifestyle, I remember saying to myself, “This is it.”
“The successful ones are those who figured out how to suck it up and persevere.”
My father gave me a book titled “Think and Grow Rich.” In it, there was a story about General George Washington crossing a river to fight the British during the Revolutionary War. Upon reaching the other side of the river, Washington commanded his soldiers to chop up their boats and use them as firewood. Of course, that meant that his army would have no way to retreat from the coming battle. His message was clear: Either tomorrow we win, or tomorrow we die.
I meditate on that story a lot. In many ways, it describes the attitude I took toward real estate. Not stubbornness—persistence. Not fearfulness—vision. I hope you enjoyed this insight into the career I love.
As always, if you have any questions or comments about a real estate topic, don’t hesitate to reach out by phone or email. We here at Vision Realty would love to hear from you and help in any way we can.
