Which Road to Take?

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road can take you there”. – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

This quote was used this week in a conversation I was having about leadership with a colleague of mine. The initial context of the discussion was about setting a Command vision for the people that I will be in charge of as my Navy career progresses, but after the dialog was over I thought about how this quote is relevant to so many other facets of my life.

The first thought that came to mind was how I am doing as a father, and as a husband. Do I have a plan? Do I have a certain road I want to take? Or am I just reacting as things come up and flying by the seat of my pants? Many times, I feel like it is the latter of the two. I’m not gonna lie, dealing with my daughter’s terrible-two shenanigans is hard!

It also made me think about how I am doing in my business as a real estate investor. Do I have a plan? What road am I taking?

Cheshire Cat tells Alice that it doesn’t matter which road she takes if she doesn’t know where she is going. Is this a good idea? How does that work out for Alice?

I’d venture to say that most successful business men and women don’t just wander aimlessly through the forest without a plan with hopes that they eventually find their white rabbit. Instead, they wrote down their investment strategy, their business plan, their goals (short term and long term), and specific directions (or roads) on how they planned on getting to where they wanted to go.

I often get caught up in all of the shiny objects that get dangled in front of me and I lose focus on my original plan. There are so many ways you can be successful in the real estate business; wholesaling, buy and hold, fix and flip, multifamily, commercial, mobile homes, apartment complex syndication, private lending, mortgage notes, Airbnb, and the list goes on. I’ll read some article about an investor crushing it in mobile home parks, so I’ll decide I want to go do that. I’ll spend weeks of research on the subject. I’ll then get an offer from an investor to fund some flips he is doing, so I’ll go do that. Then I’ll hear about a friend who is syndicating apartments, so then I’ll want to go do that, and on and on and on. You can quickly see how it can continue down a dangerous path: the road to nowhere.

So, this blog post is more of a mid-year review and a reminder to myself that I need to decide which road I’m going to take, and then stay on it until it gets me to where I want to go. I need to stop letting the Cheshire Cat distract me with all of these other roads, and just focus on my original plan. Hopefully you can do the same.

We are over half-way through the year, so it may be a good time to do a mid-year review and check to see how you are doing with your plan. And if you didn’t write it down, it’s never too late to start. Decide which road is best for you, and stay on the path.

Written by Stuart Grazier