Have you heard of the Wilsons? They are a couple of maths teachers in their 60s who rode the buy to let boom and ended up with 700 properties. They did a lot better than me with my humble 200 but they were maths teachers after all and had a few more years of experience!
So when I read in the Daily Mail that their empire is crumbling it did make me laugh. Not at the Wilsons but at the poor story they had put together. Because newspapers love to write about people’s downfall even if they are not downfalling. They will put 2 and 2 together and come up with a story of how it could appear that they are downfalling.
So why does this irritate me? Well I do not have a good history with papers like the Daily Mail (even though their coverage of me did wonders for my business!) but I also get fed up with the negative karma they put out. If someone does well then they should be dragged down it appears.
I think it has a lot to do with people wanting to feel better about themselves. If we see someone doing bad it makes us feel okay about our situation. This sells newspapers. A paper with bad news makes the reader feel good. I am not a psychotherapist as you can tell (!) but it does just irritate me. Especially when they knock hard working landlords like the Wilsons.
But it did get me thinking. Aspirational people are definitely in the minority. If you can rise above all the negativity and still want more for yourself then you are a very special person. To think independently of what is being said around you takes guts. Most people do not have this kind of guts.
Can I ask you do you dream or take action? Do you get an idea, research it, implement it and wait for the results and only killing the idea once you get real results of failure? If so then you will succeed.
Starting and failing ideas is the difficult bit. Running with a good idea is really REALLY easy as even a child would know how to do that. You just do more of what you are doing. The hard bit is finding that good idea. The only way you get to that good idea is by failing many many times.
Now to get a great idea you need not only to fail many times but quickly also. So make sure you fail quick and move on to the next idea without losing your shirt!
So how many times did you fail today?