Be a Visionary Investor: Think Big

by Cooksquared

Real Estate Investor

Author website

As I sit here in Ithaca, NY snowed in, I can only look out of the window and think about real estate. While that might be sad to some, to me real estate is truly a passion. As I eat my bagel I have been pondering what makes people like Bob Toll and Donald Trump different from Joe Everyday Investor or even from me. The answer is simple, vision (and about a million of today’s dollars in seed money, but you see where I am going). I really think they simply dream bigger than most.

Case in point, I am considering joining a long term partnership of investors. During my trip to Greensboro, my wife’s friend approached me about joining a group of local investors. All of these guys have been investing locally for about three to five years and have good market knowledge. At our first meeting two days ago we began to talk generally about our vision for the group and some of our financial goals. Right away, I felt a bit out of place. Most of the people in the group seemed to be thinking very short-sighted, more concerned with how quickly they could get money out than how quickly the group’s investment could grow.

This initial meeting really made me reassess my personal vision. The question I continually ask myself is, am I stretching myself far enough? As an investor, I have set specific life goals for myself. These tend to serve me personally better than setting goals in dollar value ($1 million before I am 30 for example). However, like most investors, at times I get so bogged down in the investments that I forget the goals. Before I know it, I am off track (sometimes ahead, sometimes behind). Luckily, my goals are certainly a stretch. Right now, the only difference between me and Donald Trump is 30 years of investing (and about three bankruptcies). I do not feel at all like that level of investing success is unattainable (even with less risk).

So why do I write this piece today. I write this to challenge you to rethink your goals and make sure you are stretching yourself. Too many times investors get comfortable with what they are doing and simply stop being aggressive. If this is a conscious choice and you choose to focus on other things, I think that is great. But make sure you are doing it for those reasons and not because you have gotten comfortable.

As a relatively new investor (five years), I still remember the nervousness I had with my first investment. As I made successive similar investments, buying houses became almost like buying groceries; you know what you want, you look for it, and then make the purchase with very little effort. That made me reassess what I was doing. If it was that easy, I must not have been taking enough risk and I was definitely leaving greater returns on the table. I made a choice to go back to business school to learn how to invest in bigger properties and take more calculated risk. While I do not recommend this to everyone, it worked out very well for me.

The point of all this is to not be comfortable in your investment strategy. This article is dedicated to the younger (18-60) investors, who can afford to take more risk. I am not suggesting you put your family or your livelihood at risk, but I am suggesting that you think bigger. Step up to bigger properties and do not be comfortable doing well. If you are not making more every successive year of investing, then you are probably not stretching yourself. Think bigger.