Bill Stickley emailed me to run, run and run and watch it and I happy I did.

The Pursuit of Happyness, true story of Chris Gardner played in the movie by Will Smith with perfection, is simply one of the best movies I have seen and I think that everybody who aspires to become a Michigan real estate investor or own their own business in Michigan should go and see it.

Things go wrong sometimes – you make on an offer on a foreclosure that you love; somebody else ends up buying it. You sit down with a private investor – she says no to you. You are flipping a house – turns out the buyers are getting divorced and they don’t want to buy the house anymore.

But it is all how you and I do once things go wrong decides what kind of success we are going to have in our business.

The first time I ran an ad in Detroit News for an investor to partner up and buy foreclosures with me – the first person who called me up hang up on my face after 1 minute because I was nervous and talking way too fast. “ I don’t understand a word you are saying” was the curt goodbye that I got before she slammed the phone down.

I was pretty depressed – for about 20 minutes – then I made a cup of fresh coffee; ate a fattening donut; and said to myself, “speak slowly next time – better still make a outline so I know what to say instead of winging it.”

30 Minutes later the phone rang again and it was yet another investor who was reading my ad in Detroit News. By the end of the day I had more people lined up to do business with me then I could handle.

First apartment complex flip – deal was done and the buyer backs out for no apparent reason- depressing? Yup! Took Nora out to a good steak dinner that night. Which by the way is an Ijlal household tradition – having a bad day in business; go to a nice dinner that night; don’t bring misery home.

It is just hard to be miserable after eating a great steak (Morton’s, Capital Grille, Sposittas, Lilies, Andiyamos, Ruth’s Chris and even 2 cuts at Outback if you life far away from the first 4) and drinking an awesome Cabernet Sauvignon (Alpha Mondes, Chateau St. Jean) or a 32oz. of Fosters. :-)

Next day ran another ad in Ebay. Ended up selling the building without any discounts (the first buyer needed almost $30,000 in discounts / seller concessions etc) to buyer #2. Side benefit was to discover Ebay for selling Michigan real estate.

The list goes on and on.

Disappointments are a fact of life. But success is abundant also. People just give up way too easily on their dreams and settle for “good enough is good enough for me”. I hope that you are not one of them.

Chris Gardner saw lot of disappointments in his life early one. So do lots of other people. I did too and I am sure you did too. It was what we did afterwards that makes us who we are today and where we are going to end up eventually.

Jim Rohn once said, “The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place.” The story of Chris Gardner’s life and this movie reminded me very strongly of that.

See the movie. You will love it. It is a perfect movie to start up the year.