What is one thing no one with money, power, or education has control over? What is one thing that anyone would give anything to be able to create more of? What is one thing that heals, destroys, or conquers us if we let it?   It’s TIME.

 

We all want more of it, we all wish we could control it, we all wish we can create it. We try everything including cutting corners, taking shortcuts, and sacrificing certain things that should not be scarified thinking we could have more time on our hands.

 

Well I am here to remind you that when you take shortcuts there are consequences. If you must take a shortcut then be sure it is the right shortcuts and not the wrong ones, especially in real estate.

 

For example if you can avoid learning real estate on your own and have the ability to get with someone who can teach it to you then that is a good shortcut.

 

You will be cutting your learning curve by months or even years. 

 

When rehabbing a property and you decide to do something yourself because you “think” you know what is wrong and can save the time and money by doing it yourself, then this is a bad shortcut.  It’s bad because more than likely you are going to run into a snag. You will miss something since it’s not your specialty. You will end up having to do more work and waste more time.

 

I have heard of horror stories where investors (both beginning and advanced) decided they wanted to save the time in getting a lawyer to review something they thought they knew because if they didn’t the deal would be lost, but ended up paying more than what they would have profited if they reviewed it with a lawyer.

 

This is just two examples of why trying to rush through things can really be a waste of time and money.

 

I have had many who come to me getting upset when I don’t give them the “secret” of how I make money in real estate right away! They want to cut corners and skip all the basics. They want to rush through it. I usually tell them to refer back to the movie “karate kid”. Most has seen it so I am in luck.

 

But if you remember Miyagi (the handyman at the complex) taught Daniel (karate kid) how to fight in the most unusual ways. He had him paint, wash, and scrub his place for whole days at a time. What Daniel didn’t know was that he was training his mind and body to become one and “burn” it into his mind to become automatic. When Miyagi finally showed that his way of teaching actually worked is when Daniel realized that he was able to block punches and kicks automatically and swiftly.

 

Daniel luckily was patient and didn’t rush. Because of this he was able to beat everyone in the competition they had later in the movie. He had NO previous education and only counting on the little training that Miyagi gave him. He learned this stuff in more than half the time than if he tried to learned it himself. He also trusted in himself that he could do it and slowly crawled to the top in the competition even though it was his first time competing!

 

So you can either take the time to learn and master something or don’t even try mastering it at all.

 

Your health takes time to gain strength when you are sick, but you rest to get better. You pay for doctor services to provide their advice to make you better. So why not do the same with everything else.

 

Take the time and pay the price if necessary to complete a task that will provide you with a reward. If you want to take shortcuts, make sure you find someone who has previously taken the shortcut and succeed. 

 

Now there are those explorers who has explored and created a new frontier for us all and why we have what we have, but they have suffered many consequences and used up lots of valuable time.   So if you want to become an explorer just remember that you will end up spending more time and money doing so and it as the saying goes, “don’t try to reinvent the wheel”. If it has been done successfully in the past learn to do it successfully till you master it, then you can see if you can IMPROVE it not reinvent it.

 

All in all you will never be able to create more time, so don’t waste it by thinking you can.