I Robbed a Bank for $8,500 (Kinda)

In this article

I’m always learning important life lessons. One lesson I recently learned is this: Don’t eat an entire box of macaroni and cheese and then go for a five mile run…..you will puke your brains out, trust me on this.

In a minute I’ll get to another lesson, but first I have to tell you the $8,500 story. On two of my recent deals I made $8,500 (you gotta love wholesaling). Anyways, a few weeks ago I bought one of those flip video cameras and decided that I was going to enter the tech age and shoot a video for a new website that I’m working on. And I get the bright idea that it would be cool to flash the $8,500 in the video (and maybe make a rap video while I’m at it). So I head down to Bank of America ready to withdrawal $8,500 from my account. But, I didn’t bring a bag, so I first walked next door to McDonald’s and asked for a “to go” bag. Then I walked up to the bank teller and told her I needed to withdrawal the $8,500. They made me show 17 ID’s and the manager had to do some override thing (I was actually impressed with all of the steps). Then, since they only had one teller open, I see this huge line forming behind me as the teller is counting out the money in $100’s. And when she’s done, I tell her to put the money in the McDonald’s bag (hopefully, that’s the closest I’ll ever come to feeling like a bank robber…I don’t even think soap on a rope would save me in prison).

As soon as she had filled the McDonald’s bag, I looked over my shoulder at the seven people behind me and raced out of there, continually looking over my shoulder to make sure nobody was following me. I even checked my rear view mirror a few times (yes, I’m paranoid). So I shot the video and the next day I returned the money to the bank. I tell ya, it’s a good thing Vegas or Atlantic City isn’t close by.
Okay, here’s the other important life lesson. You don’t need to know it all or master it all…..you don’t need to be a jack of all trades. Here’s what I mean: I was talking with an investor the other day and she asked me some lawyer type question that nobody had ever asked me before. I told her I had no idea what the answer was and she seemed surprised that I didn’t know (it was a pointless question). Anyways, I said to her “Why in the world would I need to know the answer? That’s what I have a lawyer for”.

If you’ve ever read the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, there’s a story about Henry Ford when he’s in a courtroom. The prosecutor is grilling Ford on all of these specific questions (they were actually trying to prove Ford dumb, because they thought he was too arrogant). So Ford tells the prosecutor that he doesn’t know the answer, however, he has 10 men that work for him, who can find the answer in a few minutes…………re-read the following story, it’s very important. I have a lawyer, an accountant and a webmaster for a reason. My job is to focus on high dollar activities. I’m a marketing man, a negotiating man and an idea man. I don’t need to know HTML and I don’t want to.

Don’t get caught up in the stupid trivial aspects of this business. Outsource it all, so you can work less…..and when you do work, you should only be doing activities that will make you money.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.