It’s all about perspective
November 3rd, 2006 by KenricI got a couple emails about dropping my St. George lot price down to $75,000. At that price, it represents about a $17,000 loss if it sells at full asking price. And I have 2 lots!!!! That’s a decent size chunk of change. But for some reason, it’s not bothering me too much. I know what I’ve got to do so I’m going to do it.
Back in my regular job days, I would probably jump off a cliff at the thought of losing $34,000. I mean $34,000 probably represents 3 years of savings. Three years of diligently putting money away, working hard, sacrificing and then it’s just gone.
So what has changed? Well, I think the first difference is that I am confident that I can make that loss back. If I decided to give up investing because of this setback, than it would truly take me 3 years to get it all back. But, since I don’t even have the slightest thought of giving up, I know that I can make $34,000 investing. In fact, I think i can do it in about a year.
The second difference is the mindset difference between an employee and a business person. As an employee, you can calculate how long it will take to make $34,000 and it will seem like a long time. As a business person, you can work harder and make it back in a week.
Last year I was in Kentucky on this project that I was running for a friend of mine installing a wireless network in a huge factory. When the installation was complete, the system did not work. Certain parts of it would not come online. We traced it down to a power wire which we had run over 2 miles of. This power line was a few millimeters too small in diameter so the power was not reaching the equipment in the further places. We had to come up with a solution and get it done. In the end, this solution cost us $25,000 more and it was all due to an engineering calculation error at initial design.
I’ve known this person for 10 years now and on our way home we were talking about our old jobs back then and how $25,000 was 2/3 of our salaries and about if we had lost $25,000 back then how we would be feeling. He said, “In business you can lose $25,000 in a second. We lost it when the we punched in the wrong number on the keyboard while calculating the power run. Oh well, sh!t happens. All we have to do is get an extra project that makes $25,000 next week. No big deal.”
Posted in Personal Development | 4 Comments »
Stumble it!
It’s more than that, even. You’re losing $34k, but if you don’t sell, you’re losing hte opportunity cost of thta $150k, which is probably a heck of a lot more than $34k. Rich Dad talks about the velocity of money — if you let this money stagnate and die, then you might as well give up on all $180k. That’s poor thinking.
By Londo on Nov 3, 2006
Which is exactly why I’m dropping the price in hopes that it will sell faster.
By Ken on Nov 3, 2006
losing is part of winning. its your attitude that separates the losers from the winners!
By empty spaces on Nov 3, 2006
This is great!
You know you can’t win them all. But that’s part of the game. Risk. You can win and you can lose. I think a lot of people have this problem: fear of losing. You obviously don’t have this problem. That’s great!
By Clifford on Nov 4, 2006