I once believed that to have lasting change I needed to be like tortoise… slow and incremental.
However, the longer I live I realize that slow change is torture. Listen, if the change you are about to make in your life was bound to fail, but you didn’t know it at the time, wouldn’t you rather figure it out sooner rather than later?
Have you ever been a victim of failing slowly? Long, drawn out, turtle-shuffle failing. I have, it has taken me three laborious years in my real estate business to realize that I have been failing to slowly. I needed to fail quicker!
Remember, the famous line in the movie, Apollo 13, is “Failure is Not an Option!” Well, I’m here to tell that while I understand the point… it’s a stupid saying to embrace. Why? Look at the movie again; they repeatedly failed over and over, before they got the systems to work right. What was Not an Option for NASA, was failing slowly.
NASA had to have the tenacity of Thomas Edison, who failed over 10,000 times before he finally figured out….
how to make the dumb light bulb stay on.
When I’m door knocking for opportunities in my area of expertise, making presentations to raise capital, talking with buyers and sellers… I tell myself that I have to fail faster so I can finally get to the right decision-maker who will say YES.
Failing faster means you must go through the process of evaluation and qualification quicker.
Stop worrying about failing. Worry about failing too slowly. Rip the band-aid of self-doubt rapidly off of the gray matter called a brain… feel the pain and move on.
And come to think about it, the tortoise may be slow on land; however, it is much faster than a rabbit in the water.
Happy Investing
Kendall E. Matthews
Phoenix, Arizona Investment Real Estate