Mark Twain said that the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. If you keep getting the result you don't want in your life, take a look at what you are doing and just STOP doing it.
It is not something I look at every day but it is something that is seared in my head. Some I can share. Some I cannot (too personal even for an open book like me) but it is good idea for us investors / entrepreneurs / want-to-own-and-do-my-thing types to make a list like this. I wish I had this list when I started. Would have saved money and time - lots of it. Here are 4 on my list, in no particular order:
1. No Wall Street: I lost $15,000 trying to figure out the US stock market back in 1999-2000. Remember that was the dot-com boom/bust cycle. Made money in the beginning (all jackasses are genius in a rising market. Yours truly included) and then subsequently lost everything in the bust. The $15,000 back then was a lot and lots of money.
Our money that we could not afford to lose especially when we were starting out in real estate and starting our own business. So we made an agreement between us - no Wall Street. Period. I don't buy stocks. Not even mutual funds. Get constantly poked fun of by my friends about it. Although some times (like this year) I do get envy also.
As far as using financial planners: their advice about refinancing your home and putting that money in the stock market never made any sense to me at all. Not then. Not now.
2. No Business Without Background Research: I went into three businesses that subsequently went bust because I was too stupid and too excited eight years ago to think straight. If instead of jumping head first into the thing I had looked into the history of the thing for two weeks... would have saved myself lots of grief.
3. No sitting at home / behind a counter in a store / behind a nice desk in a private office, waiting to be discovered. Good quote: "Success does not comes to you. You go to it." I did that several times because lets be fair, that is what the most do. They sit somewhere and wait. And pretty soon they become very good at sitting in the waiting room of life.
Finally I got it: nobody cares, nobody is coming. All up to me to make the world / market notice me. Go out and make noise. Lots of it. Funerals in Hong Kong have fireworks and firecrackers. I need to tell Nora to do the same for my funeral. They should know who is leaving.
4. Stop spending time with people who don't say challenging things that make you uncomfortable and amazed at the same time. I try to do this every month at Ijlal Inner Circle Mastermind. Believe me it will be without effort to repeat REO / Short Sale / REO / Short Sale / Rehab / Mold over and over again, every month till I turn blue. But where is the fun in that?
I feel obligated (without them asking) to take my members into new roads with me. Every month. Every author who had influence and lasting change on me, made me uncomfortable and challenge my what I thought at that time was true (Kiyosaki: not counting equity in net worth; Brody: safe harbor / no debt) was shock to the system at first. Profit later.
