#37 Lessons From Failure

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Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Well, hi there, and welcome back to Your Favorite You. This is episode 37 of the podcast. Today, I'm going to be telling you all about the incredible number of things I have learned from my first failed real estate deal. If you've been following along, you may know that I have ventured into real estate investing. I just bowed out of my first offer during the due diligence phase of the deal for many reasons that I won't go into here.

All throughout the work that I've done on this deal, the reading, the research, the planning, and everything that went into it, I knew I was going to have plenty of lessons to share here on the podcast. So today, I'm going to share the eight lessons that I have learned from real estate investing so far.

Number one: anything that was meant for me will never miss me. Anything that misses me was never meant for me. This is a quote that I've heard some version of before, and it just so happens to be the quote in the mantra book that I bought when I was in Miraval this spring. The book is called Daily Mantras to Ignite Your Purpose by Lisa Messenger. Well, luckily for me, this quote came up on the day before the real estate deal fell apart. Anything that was meant for me will never miss me. Anything that misses me was never meant for me. Turns out, I was never meant to be an automotive garage landlord in the outskirts of Chicago. I thought I was for a period of time, but I was wrong. You can apply this lesson to so many things in your life: relationships that did not go the distance, job offers and interviews that you did not get, being fired or laid off from a job. That dress you "should have" purchased that made you look hot but then you put it back on the rack, never to find it again, even after an expensive internet search. That group of friends that you never quite gelled with, the flight that you booked that got canceled. Nothing that is meant for you will ever miss you. Anything that misses you was never meant for you.

The second lesson that I learned is that patience is still a virtue I need to work on. I come from a long line of impatient ancestors, so this is a familial trait that has been passed on through the generations. I don't like waiting. I don't like waiting on people to respond to my emails, on people to return my phone calls, on counteroffers. I constantly have to remind my brain how being patient has served me so well in my life. If I leave my brain unexamined and uncoached, it will continually allow me to be annoyed at waiting. It is a daily practice to remind myself that often good things come to those who wait.

The third lesson that was reinforced for me is the best I can give to any relationship is 100% to my half of the relationship. I cannot control the other 50%. I think this goes along with the impatience. If I'm being honest, I'm the type of person who tries to only touch things once. If I get an email or a message and I can respond to it immediately, I do. I try to close as many of the open browser tabs in my brain as quickly as I possibly can so that I can move on to the next thing.

It turns out other people in business don't operate this way. Who knew? I'm guessing a lot of you knew I was like this in medicine too. I tried to check things off my list as soon as I could and only touch them once if I could get away with it. The people working on my end of this deal tended to be like me. In future dealings, though, I'm going to make sure that the realtor working on my end of the deal is more like me than the person I chose for this deal, while she was not half as bad as the seller's realtor, who honestly could not be relied upon for much. I definitely know the questions to ask before I work with the next person. I know that, even though this deal didn't work out, I'm going to give myself a 90% grade in how much effort I put into my half of their relationship. That is good enough. Remember that perfection is overrated. Again, this is another powerful reminder for me that I cannot control how other people think, feel, and act. I can just stop trying to do that. I can control how I show up, I can control who I hire to help me, and I can boldly and confidently ask for what I want.

The fourth lesson that was reinforced is that I want to do business with people like me. They should be honest, they should be transparent, and they should be trustworthy. If they are not, I can walk away. Again, I can't control how other people act, but I can control who I let in my orbit.

The fifth thing this deal taught me was remembering to trust my gut. If I'm being honest, my gut was kind of a no when Jack and I went on site for the inspection and the tenant was nowhere to be found. There was one person working there, but the tenant who was supposed to meet us for the inspection was not there and he had to be called and reminded to come. This might have had something to do with the seller's realtor and her level of competence, but my gut kind of started making me question this deal at that time. I felt the little niggle in my gut and I let it pass. It only would have saved me a little bit of money to have followed my gut then, but it would have saved me a lot of time and it would have saved me from being in limbo these past couple of weeks about the deal. So this was just another lesson that I can actually trust my gut in these real estate deals, the exact same way I trust my gut in other relationships.

The sixth thing that I got from this experience is that it's definitely helping me embrace the idea that I got from Adam Grant - if I'm not failing at least a couple of times per year, I'm not playing big enough. I was listening to Adam on Dan Harris's podcast, 10% Happier, and he was explaining to Dan about his idea of reimagining our relationship with failure by setting what he calls a failure budget. The idea is that you decide ahead of time how many fails you want to have in a specific timeframe, say three in a year or something like that. Then you go out and try new, different, scary, exciting things. If it goes well, amazing. If not, you budgeted ahead of time that you were going to fail at least three times in the year. It allows your brain to dream bigger, to dream for a bigger life for yourself. And we talk about failure as if it's undesirable, but what if failing just means you're playing big? I will have my podcast editor link to that episode of Adam and Dan. They were talking actually about perfectionism and procrastination, and it was an excellent episode, so we'll link to that in the show notes.

The seventh lesson the deal reinforced is not to be afraid to ask questions. When you don't know something, you can't possibly know everything. No one expects you to, and people like to be experts in their own field. It's okay to let them shine; actually, it's desirable to let them shine. I practically started out every phone call or email with everyone I interacted with during the deal saying, "This is my first time doing this," or "Explain it to me like I'm a fourth-grader," or "I apologize for my ignorance, but I'm learning." It disarms people when you admit that you're not an expert. People really do love sharing what they know about a particular subject. I practically became besties with the environmental expert Becca. She was so helpful and knowledgeable about her field, and she was all too happy to explain everything to me in terms that I could understand so that I could make the most informed decisions about whether or not to move forward. Most people really do want to help other people, and working with people like Becca helped shore up my faith in humanity.

The final thing this foray taught me was reinforcing my belief that we are either winning or we are learning, and I have learned a ton of things about real estate and septic systems. So, although I did not have a typical "win" in this case and the deal fell apart, I learned so much about myself, about real estate, about how my favorite version of me deals in this type of business, that it did actually turn out to be a win for me. I will take all of the knowledge that I gained in this deal to use with the next one. I will know that the next deal will also be filled with lessons for me to learn if I'm open to them. I will know that if I do get a deal to go through, it was meant for me. So, to summarize, my favorite version of me is a real estate investor.

She takes risks. She knows that everything that is meant for her will eventually be hers. She is unashamedly working on growing her patience muscle. She knows that this will be a work of a lifetime. She knows that good things come to her as she waits, and I don't mean waiting like sitting idly by and waiting for something to happen. I mean taking action, from feeling a certain way about how I want the deal to go. She recognizes that the best she can give to any relationship is 100% of her half of the relationship. She cannot control the other 50%. And it turns out she allows herself to give 90% to her half of the relationship.

She is honest, transparent, and trustworthy, and tries to do business with other people who share those values. She trusts her gut in every scenario. She can listen to those little whispers. She decides ahead of time that she's going to try to fail at least three times a year so that she can live a bigger life. She makes her failure a sign that she's in the big leagues. She isn't afraid to ask questions when she doesn't know something, and she encourages those around her to share their genius. She knows that in every area of her life, she is either winning or learning, sometimes learning so much that it turns into a win.

I will definitely keep you all posted as I make my next offer. I'm sure to have more lessons for you all in the future because I'm sure to be learning more lessons in the future. I would love to offer for you to decide that you want to work with me to become your favorite version of yourself. Our next group starts in August, and I would love to have you join us. To get started and to sign up for our consult, go to www.MelissaParsonsCoaching.com/group See you all next week.

Thank you for listening to the podcast and loving on me all the time. Although the doors are closed for the inaugural group of women wanting to become their favorite versions of themselves. No worries. You still have the opportunity to work with me in a group setting. This group is for you since you are listening to my podcast, you will get amazing coaching plus the beauty of a community of other women who are interested in thriving as much as they can, and you also will want you to succeed at becoming your favorite you.

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