January 2015 Dinner with Damon

Right after I found out that Property X's autistic menace Tisha had left, I had my scheduled dinner with Damon. As one would expect, I was in a great mood.

We first talked about how useless the Investor Club (IC) meetings are becoming. I still plan to go to a few meetings this year, but I absolutely do not plan on renewing my membership. After most meetings, I feel like I spent too much money for information I can easily get online. Damon then spoke of his progress with the Vacancy Bank property he's trying to purchase. He said the application has been submitted, and that he should have the property by March. I’m really curious to see how this works out for him, and glad that he gets to be the guinea pig and not me.

Damon then asked how long we’ve been doing these dinners, and I told him that it’s been since May of 2014. He talked about how beneficial it’s been to talk to someone who’s in the same business as he is. He reminisced about times when he would talk to people about his problems with tenants and they wouldn’t have a clue as to what he was talking about. They would question him as to why he would still want to be a landlord, and he would actually consider selling his property and finding a new way to make money. I told him that these dinners have been great for me as well, but not for the same reasons. I love bouncing ideas off of someone. I love taking people’s experiences and learning from them. But I’ve never lacked in confidence and motivation. And it's all thanks to my anti-social attitude towards people in general.

People are mostly stupid and narrow minded. It gets much worse when you try talking to them about things they know nothing about, because the result is always negative. When I first came to Smalltown I would talk to people about my tenant issues and they never had anything good to say. In fact, these were some of their lines:

“See, that’s why I’ll never be a landlord. I can’t deal with those crazy tenants!”

“Yeah, and it’s not getting any better. That’s why no one wants to live here anymore!”

“Good luck with that (sarcasm)!”

“Why can’t you go back to school and get your masters degree for something stable like the teaching you used to do?! (mom)”

Even Sam would be negative, and he's a fucking landlord! The truth is that the only people that can understand the entrepreneurial mind are entrepreneurs. My mind is so wired towards success that I can’t understand the naysayers and losers… and they can’t understand me. We’re at two completely different levels of thought, so why would I go to them for advice or to complain? Once I realized these people were wasting my time with their negativity, I decided to treat them all the same. Whenever they’d ask me how my real estate ventures are doing, I’d always give them negative answers like:

“It’s tough work, man.”

“(sigh) I don’t know. I just wanna sell that place and start over somewhere else.”

"Tough to make money in this economy, man."

I would tell them any negative answer I could think of, because I know that’s what they want to hear. There’s no benefit in telling them that things are going good because they’ll try to bring me down or get jealous. Why try to make myself look important to a bunch of savages? Why celebrate with failures who can never be or understand someone like me? I don't need their accolades. I don't need their consolation. They are about as useless as condoms in a nunnery, so it’s best to keep them believing that the world is as small as their pathetic minds assume.Weaklings.

So, while I definitely appreciate these dinners and am looking forward to future dinners, Damon and I get different things from them. He gets confidence to continue his path to success through real estate. Because I already have a mountain of ego and confidence, I simply get to bounce my ideas off him. My mind has so many ideas floating around, but I’m never focused enough to develop them correctly. Damon is good at pointing me in the right direction to get one of my ideas off the ground, and especially good at catching me when I say something or do something stupid in my property management. He's kind of like a living, breathing version of this blog. These dinners are very important, and I’m looking forward to next month’s.

P.S.: Inspired by Damon following through with his purchase of the Vacancy Bank property, I decided to make an appointment to see a couple properties for sale this Wednesday. I’ll go into detail on this blog after the walk-through but, if things go well, I may have found my Property 4. And 5.