BB

There’s a very specific type of person that hides his self-doubt and cynicism behind the thin mask of “being realistic”. It’s hard for me to hide my disdain for these types of creatures. They overpopulate Twitter like the perpetual pack of wildebeest on the Serengeti. Swarming the water hole and moving in packs until they’re slowly picked off by the waiting crocodiles. Just as you go to thank the crocodile for performing his civic duty, another wildebeest emerges from the shadows and steps forward to fill his lost comrade’s place. And the cycle continues. A monotonous mass of never-ending and perpetual crocodile food, just waiting for their turn to die. There’s this sense from these people that nothing is possible. They’ve resigned themselves to a life of mediocrity. It’s one of those things that’s extremely painful to watch, like seeing a relative slowly dying of cancer. Each step they take, each move they make, every time they open their mouth, you feel as though the slow march towards death has gotten one inch closer. In the world of finance, you can often tell the exact moment when the transition from unbridled optimism to pathetic “realism” occurs. And it’s at that exact point you know that that individual’s career is over. He has nothing left to offer and is ready to roll over and die. “I’m just being realistic” these creatures say, as if that’s supposed to be some profound thought - every word they speak laced with self-doubt and a heavy sense of impotence. They live in a cage of their own making, placing restrictions and barriers-to-entry around themselves until their range of movement is so restricted that there’s nowhere to go. “I would be doing x but I can’t because of y. X will never work because one time I did y and it failed”. Blah blah blah. On and on they go, like the world’s most boring broken record. Could give these people 25 different business opportunities to talk about and each one would result in the same conclusion – “it’s not possible”. “Yes, someone else has done it, but they got lucky” they mutter desperately – pretty much implying that they don’t believe they’re capable of getting lucky (which is likely the first time they’ve been honest with themselves in quite a long time). These people don’t realize how insidious their thoughts are. They think that being “realistic” is the reason for their mediocre success. “I have such a logical mind”, they boast to their friends. But it’s actually the exact thing that’s holding them back. If you believe in Bigfoot, you’ll see him 5 times every day. If you don’t believe in him, you’ll never see him at all. It’s the same thing with business and the same thing in real estate. Homerun deals are Bigfoot. The more you believe in them, the more of them you’ll see. It’s impossible to find the needle in the haystack if you don’t believe the needle exists in the first place. The reason I’m able to find homerun-type deals is that I believe. I believe that there’s a land just over the horizon and that if I sail far enough, I can reach out and touch it and make it mine. I believe that every single day God himself creates new frontiers tailor-made for me to exploit. I believe that homerun deals exist. You’d think this would be a pretty basic concept, but pretty much no one else believes. You know why? Because it’s not “realistic”. It’s low percentage. “These deals are rare”, they’ll tell you. Before you know it, these people have “logic’d” themselves out of making any money because they don’t even believe the opportunity to make money exists in the first place. Personally, I couldn’t be more pleased that this is my competition. “Realistic” people fundamentally don’t get it. If you talk to any highly successful person, they have a sense of mysticism about them. Beliefs that defy logic. An unrelenting dose of self-confidence and unwavering optimism in their abilities even in the face of overwhelming odds. They get it. You can’t get caught up in the facts, in the statistics, in the probabilities. You have to drown yourself in delusion. Most people hear this and they think “this guy is just telling me to throw caution to the wind, what an idiot”. And that’s because they don’t get it. The delusion is just table stakes – it gets you into the game. After that (once you’re in the game) is when “realism” is actually useful. But most people are “realistic” to begin with. They start out with realism – instead of delusion – which means they’re never in the game at all. Never even made it to the table. The time to be delusional is in the beginning – in your belief in Bigfoot and in your belief that the homerun deal exists, because that’s how you get into the game. You have to believe that the homerun deal exists in order to actually find it and you need a heavy dose of optimism and delusion to get there. Once you’ve found the homerun deal, however, that’s when you can switch to “being realistic”. That’s when you can rigorously underwrite the deal, rigorously stress test it and make sure the numbers work. That’s when you make sure that Bigfoot is real and that it wasn’t just a figment of your imagination. Delusion flows into realism. So if you never come across homerun deals, it’s important to ask yourself: Am I the Bigfoot denier? Am I the wildebeest on the Serengeti? Odds are very high that you are. This is a very big problem – a terminal disease - and one that you need to eliminate as soon as possible. You shouldn’t want to live in the among all the “realistic” people in the “real world”. “Realistic” people get nowhere. Clocking into an office every day for eight hours, accomplishing nothing of note with each passing year and slowly withering away into nothing. Instead, you should make a conscious effort to drown yourself in delusion, to believe that opportunity exists. Every day you need to make a conscious effort not to live in the “real world” but to operate in a different, parallel world – a fantasyland where everything is possible. This is the world business owners, CEOs and celebrities operate in. It’s a world with no restrictions, no cages. It’s a world where you shape events to your will and where you morph your deepest desires into reality. It’s a world where homerun deals exist and where you’re the one who does them. Let everyone else live a “realistic” life in the real world. You should prefer to live in fantasyland.