In this talk, Chris Prefontaine addresses a student’s frustration over not closing a real‑estate deal after four months, using the moment to illustrate the broader principle that decisions are followed by a lag period before tangible results appear. He shares personal anecdotes—his son’s six‑month journey to score a first hockey goal—and the classic “Three Feet from Gold” story to emphasize that progress is often incremental and hidden from view. Prefontaine warns that unrealistic expectations cause many aspiring investors to quit prematurely, missing the subtle gains that eventually lead to success. He recommends concrete habits such as journaling and self‑evaluation to maintain momentum, stay in the game, and ultimately achieve the desired outcomes in creative‑financing real‑estate investing.
Chapters
Everything always takes a lot longer than you think. See, we recently had a couple of our high-end students come in to complete what we call an office visit. Now, an office visit is where our students fly in from all over the country and they walk through a very specific agenda throughout that timeframe in order to help them with their necessary skills and systems and Sometimes be it mindset in order to really come up with a plan so that we can go ahead and execute and reach their goals. See, during one of the timeframes in our office visit, we have a thing what we call strategy session, which is really where we break down their entire business and create short and long-term goals. Now, during one of these sessions, one of the students stood up and was openly frustrated. He said to me, It's been about 4 months and I haven't completed a deal. Now, my immediate reaction was almost to laugh, and then I realized he was serious. My reaction was to laugh was because I had perspective and that student did not. And what I mean perspective is that, you know, I've helped build multiple businesses over 6 and sometimes 7 figures. And what I've realized is that as soon as someone makes a decision, so like this student, as soon as you made a decision to say, I'm going to invest in creative financing in real estate investing, that decision was made. But then there's action that comes into play after that alignment, but then there's time. Now, I'm a big fan of the like attractor factor, which Joe Vitale put together, or The Secret, which means that as soon as a decision is made, there's a sense of alignment and that you start attracting everything. And I completely agree with that. But what I think that most people miss out on, and was the misconception of the student, was that there's a lag time to every decision. So his frustration of 4 months, I realized that there's gonna be a lot more lag time than 4 months. So let me give you a couple examples here. One is a story that you may have heard before, but another one's a personal story. So my son Remy made a decision to start playing hockey about 7 months ago. He said, Dad, I wanna play hockey. All the neighbors are playing hockey and I'm excited to do so. So of course, me and my wife, we went ahead and we got him signed up to start playing hockey. And that was about 6 months ago from the date, you know, this filming. You maybe listen to it later, but it was about 6 months ago. And I was just at one of his recent camps and he just scored his first goal. That means that my son took 6 months in order to score his first goal, from the first practice to his first goal. You know, and then immediately the following week, I was so proud of him, he ended up scoring multiple goals. The week. So just let me give back even just a little more background there. And that is my son had never skated, nor had he picked up a stick until that year, until about a month before his first practice. So the way I relate this to real estate investing is that you make a decision to start real estate investing or start a real estate investment company like with ours, and then you're just at the beginning of that journey. And it always takes longer for you to reach your end goal. See, the scary part about this though is that many students quit because of unrealistic expectations. So I knew when that student stood up that he had unrealistic expectations about how long it was going to take for him to get his first property under agreement or to get his first 3 paydays. And the sad part about that though is that because most people quit because of unrealistic expectations, they actually tend to miss the incremental progress. You know, when all of us are in the trenches, no matter if we're buying real estate or we're doing any type of business or working towards any type of skill, We tend to miss the incremental progress. Now, I knew this student was light years away from where he was when he started, you know, 4 months prior, but he didn't see it yet. See, this happens quite often, and this is how I relate it to. There's a business story, and you may have heard it, so if you've heard it before, this could be redundant for you, but— I've heard it. Let's walk through exactly this story. So the story is called Three Feet from Gold. So Three Feet from Gold talks about some gentlemen during the Gold Rush. See, many people during the Gold Rush, they moved out west and they leased lands and they begin now digging for gold. They're using their pickaxes and they're literally digging for gold. But unfortunately, they didn't have the technology like we have now, and People couldn't tell where the gold was. So many people would begin digging for days, weeks, months, even years, and then eventually give up. But what they didn't realize is that they were right on the cusp of finding gold. And then the next person would come in and they would find the gold. So when it comes down to missing incremental progress, You may miss out on the gold. I mean, you put in all the work. So if I'm bringing it back to that student's comment, he's maybe three feet from gold today. Like he may have a deal in his follow-up system right now. He may have a deal from a seller he's going to talk to tomorrow. So I'm encouraging you to stick to the process. And to consistently plug into incremental progress. And you can do that so many different ways by journaling and, and really self-evaluation. But whatever it's going to take for you to stay in the game long enough to see your success, because if you truly believe that creative financing or real estate investing is the pathway to help you reach a better life, Then we just gotta keep you in the game long enough to see success and then build that foundation and then build that momentum. Stick with it and keep investing.
