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How to Tell If You’re Going to Be Successful

Jason Hanson
2 min read
How to Tell If You’re Going to Be Successful

My dad is getting married next month. He just bought a brand new house. And that means I recently had to clean out all of my junk from my childhood home. I had a lot of junk — a basement full of items from a recent move where I stored things… and then my bedroom closet full of toys and stuffed animals. (Yes, I had stuffed animals, my mom didn’t throw anything away).

So, I decided to take an entire Saturday and clean everything out at once. I had a pickup truck full of garbage bags, I had a pile of furniture that I’m trying to sell and then I’ve got another pile I’m slowly donating to goodwill.

What I learned from this cleaning event…

Now, even though I hate cleaning, I learned something very valuable from the whole process. As I was cleaning out the basement I came across all of my real estate courses, which I haven’t looked at in years. I owned pretty much every big name guru’s course. I also came across old notes and business plans. I found my goals from 2005. I found marketing plans from 2006.

Other important things I found from the cleaning were all of the items that were my “failures.” I found old bandit signs. I found my first car signs. And I found a ton of yellow letters. My first yellow letters were so boring, I can’t believe I got any deals from them.

I also found key chains that I created and numerous business cards. I think early on I had a business card addiction, because I was always changing my company slogan and my phone number.

So what’s the million dollar lesson I learned from all this cleaning?

Well, that it’s obvious why I became a six-figure real estate investor. Success leaves clues, and I had years of clues buried in the house — charting my progress as a real estate investor who could barely write a marketing letter… to a person who can now write some of the best letters in the business.

My point is, if I were to come to your house today and ask to see your real estate “office” what would I see? Would I see signs, letters, envelopes, deals sheets, and CD’s? Or would there be no sign at all that you were a real estate investor?

Zig Ziglar said, “rich people have big libraries, poor people have big TV’s.” If you want to be rich, you know what you should be doing.

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