Wealth is a numbers game.
The famous horror writer Stephen King has a saying:
“Amateurs wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get to work.”
I think this is how we should think about our own journeys as property investors and independent wealth creators.
We should aim to scare the pants off people.
No, I mean that success is a numbers game.
I see people waiting years and years for that perfect deal. That rare one where they can do something totally mind-blowing and land a massive pay-day.
Whereas in the same time frame I can see someone do half a dozen ‘vanilla’ deals and just retire.
Your hero here should be the 19th Century English novelist Anthony Trollope.
He published his first novel at the tender age of 30. Over the next 37 years he banged out an incredible 48 novels and 18 works of non-fiction.
His works received good critical reception, but the critics were suspicious of just how much he was producing.
So he gave them an insight into his writing process. When Trollope worked, he kept a watch near by, making sure he consistently banged out 250 words every 15 minutes.
People were scandalised. Writers are supposed to sit around under trees until inspiration strikes, not churn out the copy like some sort of literary conveyer belt.
And when Trollope revealed that one of his main motivations for writing was to make money, and he was actually quite happy with the comfortable lifestyle his output and his money provided him, he was kicked out of the Gentlemen’s Club.
Not really, but people were genuinely offended by his refusal to stick to the ‘starving but inspired artist’ trope.
Property investing (or whatever your journey towards independent wealth is) is the same. People think it’s about the innovative deals or the killer deals that deliver six-figure profits for just 15 minutes of work.
And it’s true that these stories get all the lime-light.
But wealth, by and large, is made in the daily hustle of being an investor.
It’s about finding a strategy you like, a strategy that delivers consistent, steady profits, and then just banging out as many of them as you can.
Rinse and repeat.
It’s not glorious. It’s not cutting edge. It’s barely even art.
But having money is glorious. And when you’ve got money, you can go out there and push whatever edges you want. Go nuts.
I’m telling you all this because I want to stress that it’s probably not as hard as you think. You don’t have to have some special genius. You don’t even have to be particularly creative.
If you can keep your head down and just keep banging out the deals, wealth will come very, very quickly.
Slow and steady wins the race.
So forget all the frills and whistles.
Just roll up the sleeves and get to work.
DB.