Don’t Compare Your Chapter 1 To Someone Else’s Chapter 10

I recently had a conversation with a younger real estate investor. He feels like he is not moving fast enough in acquiring rental properties, growing his portfolio, and building a monthly cash flow base that will allow him to leave his 9-5 job in the future.

He’s often on Facebook and Instagram and it appears to him that so many investors around him are moving much faster. They are buying rentals, flipping houses, wholesaling properties, etc. His question was: where is everybody getting all this money and credit? And how do they have the time to do all this, don’t any of them work?

These are valid questions. But as we continued the conversation, I reminded him of the most important point:  Don’t compare yourself to others!

Firstly, everybody is sharing more on social media these days. Sometimes it’s better to take a break from your phone and focus on tasks and activities that you need to complete to move forward in your own portfolio and business. Don’t compare your Chapter 1 to someone else’s Chapter 10.

Secondly, every single individual that is trying to make it in the real estate game is doing it while facing different circumstances: full-time job, no job, kids, no kids, spouse, single, good credit, bad credit, lots of capital, no capital, etc.

If you are a 20-year-old with bruised credit and limited capital, don’t get discouraged when seeing the 50-year-old with his in-house construction crew knocking out reno after reno. You have 30 years to get there, if not further.

I finished the chat by giving him advice, and it was in the form of a question: “Are you further along in your journey today than you were yesterday? If the answer is yes, then you’re doing just fine”.

Reach out to another investor to chat, watch a Matt McKeever Youtube video, sign up for an upcoming local (and virtual) real estate property tour, read the Residential Tenancies Act, etc.

Completing any of these tasks in a given day means that you have done more than 99% of those around you in order to get closer to financial freedom one day.  Consistency is key – and success will follow.