A real estate investor shares how they overcame a major setback on a property purchase by adapting their business model. The talk focuses on turning obstacles into opportunities and persisting through failure.
Everyone is a beast until they get punched in the face. The question isn't about can you win? It's about can you handle failures? It's about can you take the hit and keep moving on and pushing forward? In real estate and in life, you are going to get hit, deals fall through, partners are going to flake, sellers are going to ghost you. But how you respond, that is what separates the average from the high achievers. Every investor hits the wall at some point. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when and when it happens. Some people will ghost, they will complain, or they will completely pivot and go back to their 9 to 5 job and go back to what is comfortable for them. Others double down, they learn, they grow. They take that as a learning experience that made them stronger and make sure they don't make that same mistake again. Give you a recent example of a time that I got punched in the face. I bought a property that was in a highly desired short term rental market and I didn't even know anyone actually lived there. It's such a strong short term rental market that it's almost 99% tourism. And apparently I found the 1%. The seller had told me that they had operated the property as an Airbnb and the agent had told me that there were no short term rental restrictions. So taking all three of those things, knowing how strong the short term rental market is, knowing that the seller previously operated it as a short term rental, and knowing from the agent there was no restrictions, the thought didn't even cross my mind to check zoning. So we close on the property and we find out that the property is zoned in an area where short term rental is strictly prohibited. Talk about a punch in the face. Wow. I found out because I called the city to talk to them about getting my permit set up and all that stuff. And I will never forget that conversation because they told me that short term rentals were restricted and my heart just skipped many beats when I heard that. Probably at least 10. And the first immediate thought I had was, oh my God, I have a $6,200 a month mortgage and the only exit strategy available was short term rental. Every exit strategy results in losing thousands of dollars a month. A lot of things go through your head. You know, do you sue the seller, do you cry in the corner? Do you sit there and blame yourself for the mistake that was made? Do you sit there and blame the title company? There was a lot of factors at play here and it wasn't just me I could easily just sit there and point the finger at every single party that should have caught this mistake. But guess what? I take accountability. It is my fault. Fault. At the end of the day, it is on me. When I got punched in the face after my heart skipped 10 beats, I immediately went into how can I solve this problem mode. That's what I do. I solve problems. I wasn't looking to blame people. I wasn't looking for a way to undo this. I was looking at this as an opportunity to turn something bad into something great. I'm looking at it from the perspective of I'm going to turn this into something that is ten times better than what I originally had planned for this property as a normal short term rental. I mean, for me to make this problem go away and to turn this bad into a good, I'm going to have to think outside the box. I'm going to have to do something innovated. And so the business model that I came up with is renting to corporations and catering this place as a destination venue for corporate retreats. Something where a corporation could lease the property for 30 days on a 30 day lease, which is completely legal and they can use the property however they see fit for those 30 days. So we're going to have a structured agenda for a corporate retreat. And if they want to have multiple corporate retreats, they can do that with their 30 days and for the remainder of their time they can use that as a gift to their employees, as a thank you for their service, for them to take their families and have a vacation. It's also going to be a venue that holds podcast events, masterminds, workshops, anyone doing boot camps. They want to have like a three day retreat where people can come and stay and enjoy a beautiful place in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee and have just an amazing experience and learn about whatever the topic is. Mainly real estate and business in those workshops. And that's a new business model. I'm actually building a software around that. And so that's how I take getting punched in the face and turning it into something that is going to be an amazing and innovative business model that's going to make more money than it would have if I would have done just short term rental with what we have planned. So the next time you get punched in the face, remember it's not failure. You're taking those experience that appear at the surface level as failure and you're turning them around and making them into something good and you're being prepared for something bigger. You're not going to have problems unless you're doing big things. So stay in the ring and keep fighting. And instead of complaining or taking negative situations and feeling sorry for yourself, get back up and figure out how you can solve problems. And that is how you're going to be successful.
