Doing It ALL Takes Time

A Serial Entrepreneur – that’s me, someone who just loves working – all the time.  I lived my life focused only business, developing, running, and working.  I was the best at everything – marketing, sales, desktop publishing, accounting, you name it.

I was an entrepreneur trapped in my own ‘success’.

That changed in 2005.

I just returned from an awesome trip to Alberta touring with the Real Estate Investment Network (REIN) and I was able to speak to hundreds of members in both Calgary and Edmonton about fear, my business and life experience and how I realized at 40 years old that working long stressful hours in my ‘freedom’ was really just selfish – there was nothing I was doing for anyone else…even though I pretended it was.

Doing it all cost me a lot and taught me many lessons, regret and missed opportunities but the one thing it DID not do, was paralyze me.  And THAT was MY choice.  I still was able to look at where I was and decide to change it…but why??

Over the course of my Real Estate investing career, I have thought many times about WHY I am doing this.

First, Let Me Tell You What is NOT Motivating Me to Invest In Real Estate

• Money
• Freedom

Isn’t that weird?  I’m investing in an asset that could potentially bring me serious gain, but it’s not about the money OR the freedom!!

First, you can get money anywhere – I had a great salary with the company I sold and if all I wanted was money, I could have kept it.

Second, if all I wanted was freedom, I could have taken all the equity in our home and gone on vacation after vacation for the next ten years instead of investing that into building our portfolio … basically get immediate gratification.

I’m telling you this only to stress my point.

Who would this have benefitted besides me and my wife?  You have to DIG VERY DEEP to figure out WHY you want to invest in Real Estate.

Do You Want to know WHY I do it?

First and foremost my intention is to have Real Estate provide the means to support our family so my wife can continue to do whatever she wants – to finally have all the freedom she deserves.  She has been a martyr all her life and has given me the freedom to pursue everything I have ever wanted.  My gift now is to be able to give this back to her.

The second part of my WHY is to do the same for other people, to help them achieve what they truly want;  but that’s not a blanket statement…it’s not a ‘false wish’… I TRULY love being that person who can alter someone’s life and it’s why I jump at the chance to talk on stage, it’s why I’m not embarrassed at all to share my stories, regret, humiliation, to cry, to admit my mistakes and toot my triumphs.

Simply, all my life, for some reason I can’t explain, I have always wished for everyone to have an equal life. From a small child, I wished (literally) others would have the same thing I had and I felt sort of ‘guilty’ if I had something they did not.  Yes, I know how the world works and that there will always be wealthy & poor but if I can now share and what I know to impact people around me so they too can have what I have on every level if they choose to do so, it makes me tick.

This is a huge part of my passion – it’s why I get up in the morning – it’s why I spend hours on the telephone coaching Real Estate entrepreneurs and it’s why I didn’t even think twice at flying across the country to speak to hundreds of others in a like-minded environment.  There was at least one person I changed this Monday and Tuesday, and it is worth it all.

In fact, I have to admit what energized me the last few days were the personal conversations I was grateful to have with the people who told me I DID impact them…and that is indescribable.  Thank you for those important words – I will never forget them.