Mark Homer is a financially-free multi-millionaire property investor and entrepreneur, and below details the kind of mind to adopt when investing, when to cut your losses and how to manage losses.
Some people delude themselves that something is working to save face (or hard work), or because they don’t want to feel (especially publicly) that they made a mistake.
A mature investor will quickly accept his mistake(s), & often see it as a relevant lesson in the pursuit of success.
This process of honesty (to yourself and others around you) is an essential trait of a wise, profitable investor.
How quickly you recover from your mistakes & stop the losses measures your success and bank balance as much as your victories.
If you kid yourself, it will cost you in the long run, people will trust you less and you'll have no ‘room,’ for investments that really work.
Once you’re sure an investment is a lemon, cut your losses quickly & move on, taking the important lessons and the opportunity to make a sound investment replacement.
Although at the time painful, people will respect you for this honesty and are more likely to warm to or partner with you.
These investors/partners on the side-lines will be watching you on your investment journey, silently judging your actions remotely and seeing how you react to them.
You’ll be surprised how your mistakes (and how you deal with them) attract partners as much as your victories.
Many investors are afraid or closed with their knowledge, but as long as an investor isn’t local to you and buying exactly the same property/investment types, this caution is usually misplaced; very much an old school psychology of lack/not enough to go around.
People often don’t appreciate that being open with critical and valuable investment knowledge specific to your niche pays huge dividends, because people will want to reciprocate.
You’ll end up with a much larger collective knowledge base and value any information given in a very high regard.
I find it useful to watch what people do - not listen to what they say they are doing, as you get the greatest insight into the reality of what is working (and what is not).
Mark Homer is a financially-free multi-millionaire property investor and entrepreneur, whose contrarian, detailed understanding of the UK property market is unrivalled. Mark co-founded the UK’s largest property education company, Progressive Property, has bought and sold over 550 properties since the business began in 2006, and has co-authored four bestselling books during that time. Mark loves to uncover the investing strategies that 95% of the others fail to find, and takes pride in having thrived during some of the toughest economic years Britain has faced in the last century.
This may seem like a scary feat, but according to Rob Moore, The Disruptive Entrepreneur and author of Global No.1 book ‘Money: Know More, Make More, Give More’ released on audio on July 27th on Amazon, there’s no better time to invest time and energy, if not money, in becoming an entrepreneur.
Should You Become an Entrepreneur?
I’ve often said before that the idea of “time management” is a joke, and it is.
Instead, let’s focus on “life management”.
So, ask yourself: how well are you managing your professional life? Are you keeping up with payments, progressing well in a field you are passionate about, protecting yourself and those you love, and feeling fulfilled while making a difference to the world around you?
Or, are you feeling overwhelmed, struggling to move forwards in your career, and feeling as if your decisions are controlling you, when you should be controlling them?
If you are answering “yes” to any of these latter questions, then I’m here to tell you that it’s time to learn how to succeed in life and how to make a change, to take your life into your own hands, and to find a way to carve your own profitable path of success.
It’s time to become an entrepreneur, right now.
Survival of the fittest
If you haven’t recognised that we are working in Darwinian times, what world have you been living in for the past couple of decades?
Pensions have become a vulnerable, endangered species. Manufacturing or manual labour jobs are being devoured by automated systems. Money is changing form and moving faster, technology is accelerating and contorting the whole financial, professional and private landscape, and businesses that sell no products and hold no stock are floating for billions.
Beyond all these disorientating changes, and more significant than these sometimes-worrying concerns, is the fact that with the age of information there has also arisen an age of opportunity. With the right mindset, the right dedication, and the right decision-making, you can make this upsurge of technology work in your favour and find your own successful niche in the market.
I’m almost tempted to suggest that we are living in a Brave New World, but this would be an exaggeration. Business is the same as it has always been; it’s simply changing shape, and the gulf between old and new technology is widening at a growing pace. This is the reason that we must all embrace this new age, or risk being trampled beneath it.
So, I repeat: it’s time for the stronger, fitter, more ambitious professionals among you to become an entrepreneur, right now.
Hard work is killing you
One of the most repeated, most foolishly believed lies is that ploughing through a 60-hour week for years on end will bring you success. That if you work harder and longer than anyone else you will triumph beyond them, make more money, and progress further.
These are the claims of someone who has not yet embraced the idea of finding success on their own terms, and someone who is ignoring reality. In 2016, work satisfaction in the UK was at a 2-year low, with almost 1 in 4 workers looking to leave their jobs, and over 1 in 3 saying that they were unlikely to fulfil their career aspirations in their current roles.
If you spend 60 hours every week working yourself mad for someone else, in the hope that you will get that promotion you have always craved and that your pay will rise incrementally, what about the activities you truly love? What about aiming for a greater share of the wealth you deserve? What about the time you struggle to spend with the people you want to be around? What about the physical and mental exhaustion that comes from slogging your guts out for so many hours, every week?
Then there is the fact that many of these industries are becoming redundant, and the inherent risk of basing your entire income and future on a technical skill that could no longer be required in the very near future. Without the ability to control the financial upside of your role, and if you are relying on the safety net of state systems to protect you when you retire, you may be wasting your present while putting your later years at risk.
After all, how many employees do you know who are truly satisfied and fulfilled by their job? How many shut their minds down at work and “just get through the day”? Combine this lack of passion and satisfaction with the long hours, the exhaustion, the lack of financial recompense and the fact that many sacrifice the time they could be spending doing the things they love, and you have a recipe for dissatisfaction at best, and disaster at worst.
Another time for the record: it’s time to become an entrepreneur, right now.
Merging passion with profession
I’m convinced that the ideal scenario is to run a company that allows you to merge the things that enthuse and excite you with technology and with the opportunity for making large amounts of money. You have nothing to escape if your work involves doing what you love. Interested? If not, why the hell not?
Once you have accepted and embraced the need for change, I advise seeking out the path of least resistance which has a limitless earning potential, a limitless customer base, and the opportunity for creatively making a difference in your field and potentially the world.
I’m not here to tell you the path you need to take, but the prospect is not as intimidating as it sounds. Some people who have been working a job for years will struggle to imagine altering their course now, and will scoff at the risks involved. But what is riskier than spending your life in a career that does nothing to satisfy you emotionally and very little to reward you financially?
While it may seem like a pipe dream before you begin, remember that the wealth of the richest people in the world, who make up 1% of the population, is worth 65 times that of the poorest half of the world.
Whose strategy seems to be working best: the 99% or the 1%? Which do you think is the group that is more satisfied with their lot, the more fearless, the more financially stable, and the ones making a real difference?
If you aren’t answering “the entrepreneurs” loud and clear, then I don’t know what else to tell you.
Seriously: it’s time to become an entrepreneur, right now.
Where can you start?
Becoming a successful entrepreneur is not always a straightforward process, but there are trends and similarities between different people’s success stories that you will benefit from taking notes from. When you study the most successful people in the world, you learn ways to emulate them, and are giving yourself a reliable fast-track road towards mastering being an entrepreneur. Read their books and biographies, listen to their podcasts, and watch their videos. No one can give you a better, quicker, and more thorough guide to mastering your own potential and investing in yourself, than those who have already succeeded in life and achieved what you want to achieve.
The fact is, many of these mega-rich money-makers idolised those who came before them, just as the smartest entrepreneurs are idolising and following the world’s richest entrepreneurs, now.
When it comes to your own personal vision for your ideal business, it comes down to your own values and shaping them into something profitable. Anyone seriously considering their future as an entrepreneur should have a crystal-clear image of what they want to achieve and a profound awareness of the things that matter most to them.
Look deep inside, start making notes on the things you love and the things you want to achieve, and start emulating the entrepreneurs who already know how to succeed in life.
You can do this. Many have succeeded in life before you, and many will succeed after you do, too.
So, what am I going to tell you, one final time?
It’s time to become an entrepreneur, right now.
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In this TEDx Talk event, trader Alessio Rastani exposes one of the biggest lies in investing that almost everyone believes in... It reveals a truth a big truth about the stock market and the economy.
