So there I was. I just got a call from the lender saying, “Yeah, we need 30 more days.” This was after two extensions beforehand, making it about 75 days to close total.
Today I’m talking about great risk to great reward, and what the different parts of that equation look like as it relates to investing, being in real estate, and being in business in general. Let me give you a summary: there are three points here. First, when your body says “don’t make that call,” that means you have to make the call. Second, not everyone is built for investing or business. Third, absent business owners eventually make absent profits.
That example of the most recent listing was the most stressful. The lender was apparently twiddling their thumbs in their office for weeks, failing to follow through on a typical 30-day close. I could have been that guy thinking, “It’s going to be awkward to tell my seller after we worked so hard securing extensions and the buyer gave their word to close.” But instead of crawling into a corner and crying, I practiced this principle: when you don’t want to make that call, you have to make that call.
Your body will want to say no because you want to deliver good news all the time. Most people lack the courage to deliver bad news. Even outside of this listing, it’s the same in investing and business—you want everything to work out perfectly, but that’s just not life. You don’t earn great rewards by having everything pan out.
It makes me think of people who look for shortcut solutions to create massive wealth overnight, which realistically happens to less than 0.001% of people. One guy did it, but at the cost of his family. He worked 100-hour weeks for 10 years and became a millionaire, but the unintended consequence was, according to a mutual friend who relayed the story, he had unlimited money to give away or invest in more businesses, but the thing he couldn’t buy was his wife’s love or his children wanting to be with him. That’s the consequence of unrealistic shortcut solutions. It’s better to have stepping stones toward progress.
This naturally ties into the next point: not everyone is built for investing or business. Before I leave the first point, I want to make one last sub-point because it’s key. Sometimes having the courage to deliver bad news in a weird way can actually help build relationships because you’re being proactive. Think about your body: the best way to get ahead of issues is preventative maintenance, not reactionary band-aids like Ozempic. You’re supposed to be doing the work along the way, like not drinking soda, having the courage to make the hard decisions.
Similarly, having the courage to deliver bad news to clients, friends, family, or colleagues builds courage. Oprah said she doesn’t trust any friends to become best friends until something serious happens between them. Until you overcome a valley together, you can’t really see what the real prospects of the relationship are, especially if you want to climb Mount Everest together. If that person loses their mind over something small, Mount Everest will never happen.
Alright, let me get off this first point I spent five years on. Not everyone is built for investing and business. Here’s a simple analogy: a woman I know was in a relationship with a guy who was very aware she wanted to start businesses and build big things. He was real with himself and said, “I just want to start a small family and continue being a security guard, living modestly.” He respectfully bowed out and told her to go do great things with someone who wanted the same. Some guys might think, “Man, that dude’s a punk, he could have figured it out.” But some people are just not built for business. It has a high failure rate, high stress, and requires sensibility and character that isn’t for everyone. Sometimes you have to be real with yourself, knowing you love being a restaurant manager or a cashier, and you’re okay with a modest life while your spouse does something else. There’s nothing wrong with that. Business and investing can be high-risk and high-stress, and not everyone is built for it.
Lastly, while not directly tied to great risk or reward, it’s related: absent business owners eventually make absent profits. I was having a conversation with a lender who told me about loans he’s done for franchise owners like Burger King and Wendy’s. They’re now going back to lending only to owners active in day-to-day operations because they’ve noticed absentee owners lead to revenues dropping significantly. To reduce risk, they’re adjusting their guidelines.
It’s natural: if an owner doesn’t care, the business will go down. About eight months ago, I ate at a McDonald’s near my office, which sees at least 10,000 cars daily, if not more. I went there twice, six months apart, and the experience was the same—poor service, long delays, taking 20 minutes for a two-cheeseburger meal. It made me think this must be an absentee owner not paying people well or overseeing anything, just collecting $2, which will eventually become unsustainable. If someone inherited wealth and thinks money will keep printing, they’re wrong. You have to be attentive to how capital is used.
It ties back to great risk and great reward because being involved in business, even in the McDonald’s example, requires taking risks, like showing up once or twice a week to say, “You’re not doing good, I have to fire you.” That’s a risk because you might get slapped in the face or have to get your hands dirty. You might need to learn every job in the restaurant for when someone inevitably calls out. Those are some of the things I wanted to cover on great risks to great rewards.
Let me give you some related quotes here: “The harder the struggle, the greater the reward; the greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.” I’ll wrap up on this: having a hard time is not necessarily a victory. You may have a hard time and end up failing, and ironically, I’d trust that person more than someone who always wins because constant winning looks like a Ponzi scheme. There is glory, whether you fail or succeed, because the glory is in knowing what to avoid in the future.
My mom invested in me to start an internet café when we moved to Jonesboro, Georgia. She was my seed investor, and it was a hard time. I didn’t know anything about business, didn’t go to college, and jumped straight from high school into business. Impulsively, I picked an office in a medical area, and that was my version of college. In six months, I learned what not to do in business. That was a degree of glory because it taught me to keep an eye on what a business owner should watch for instead of being absent or avoiding difficult calls.
That’s it. I’ll go ahead and wrap up here. Have an amazing and blessed day.