Boston/Forbes Day One Thoughts: It’s really interesting to be in a place where everyone built up, instead of out. The architecture is different, house to house. The rows are so close together (6 inches between houses?) that it looks like a really cool patchwork quilt. It seems like the returns out here are pretty good. The multi family properties are returning 1% or more, monthly. What’s the catch? Do the loan programs blow? Do the 700k to 3M home prices force you to go commercial or jumbo on everything? Vacancies don’t seem to be high, but I wonder if tenants are the problems. In Logan, my friend and I own about 1% of the Multi Family market, and are able to influence it’s prices when needed. Definitely not something I could do here. The Forbes event opened today, and it was bomb. I met plenty of new friends interested in what I was doing. There were even girls who seemed to care/understand about what I’m talking about. Anyone understand how frustrating it can be when nobody understands how cool it is to make 4600% on your money in a few months? Being at this event... for the first time, in a long time, I was just... average. Everyone was just as smart, working just as hard, juggling just as many things. There was nothing special about me. I was a little bit disoriented. I spent so long looking up to my Dad, and to my mentors, trying to find all the answers, that until today when it was absent, I never realized that people had begun looking at me like that. How many people understand that every single one of the greatest successes were only ever one mistake from catastrophic failure? That the three months of moving fast and buying houses was precipitated by years of failure after failure, with absolutely nothing to show for reward? When you’re walking forward, but it’s just muscle memory to keep you from falling? Being self employed is hard. Empty bank accounts is hard. Self discipline is hard. Rejection is HARD. Everyone here today understood that. You could see it in the way they walked. I learned a few things today, but what stuck with me the most may come as a disagreement to many. I’ve been fighting with the idea of humility for years. With the idea that Ego is this evil thing everyone keeps telling me to put in a box somewhere. I learned that pride, and ego are different. Ego doesn’t mean you look down on people. It doesn’t mean you perceive others as less than. Ego is affirmation. It’s finally coming to the realization that your struggles were worth something. That despite all of the doubt, and the hatred, your decisions paid off. I hope that whenever you see one of my post, if you ever feel like saying, “Hey, that guy’s an asshole” you can understand that my feelings come from being proud of an uphill battle, a fight worth fighting, and that I’m also proud of everyone taking those steps, big or small. Success or failure. You guys da realest. Thanks.
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