Who Are You Helping Over the Wall?

I hear the phrase “self-made” thrown around a lot in business and real estate.

I’m not sure I believe it exists.

Sure, you might have found the deal, signed the note, taken the risk and stayed up until 2 a.m. trying to figure out why the numbers stopped making sense. But somewhere along the way, somebody answered a question, introduced you to a lender, shared a contractor, challenged your thinking or simply believed in you before there was much evidence they should.

Somebody helped us climb.

And I think that matters, especially in a business that can convince us everything is competition.

We compete for properties, capital, contractors, attention and sometimes relationships. A little competition can sharpen us, but the problems we’re solving aren’t exactly getting simpler.

A deal today might have a financing problem wrapped around an operational problem sitting beside a seller problem, and the solution probably isn’t hiding inside one person’s head.

The terrain has changed.

In the military we’d call that asymmetric. The battlefield isn’t neatly arranged anymore, so neither are the solutions. You learn the terrain, understand what you’re facing, figure out what resources are available and adapt.

Real estate feels increasingly similar to me.

Maybe the goal isn’t becoming the investor who knows everything.

Maybe it’s becoming the investor who knows how to ask better questions, listen long enough to understand the problem and recognize when somebody else belongs in the conversation.

That gives us a pretty simple pathway forward.

When you’re climbing and somebody has already crossed the obstacle, ask how they did it.

When you reach the top first, turn around and reach back.

And when neither of you knows where the hell the path went, wander around for a minute.

Ask. Listen. Learn.

Not every period of uncertainty means we’re lost. Sometimes we simply haven’t learned enough about the terrain yet to recognize the next path.

That part is messy.

Deals fall apart. Financing changes. Contractors disappear. Assumptions prove wrong. Sometimes we stumble because we screwed up and sometimes the ground just moved underneath us.

Either way, eventually somebody needs a hand.

That’s where I think an investor community becomes something much more useful than a collection of business cards.

If I know a lender who might help you solve something, make the introduction. If you understand a structure I’ve never used, teach me something. If somebody behind us is struggling with an obstacle we already crossed, reach back without pretending they don’t still have to climb it themselves.

Because helping another capable person over the wall doesn’t necessarily create another competitor.

You might be helping build the person standing beside you when the next wall appears.

And maybe that’s the interesting question hiding underneath all of this.

We spend a lot of time asking how do I get ahead?

What changes if we start asking...

Who are we getting over the wall with us?