The following Q&A was completed as part of our conversational Commercial Real Estate FAQ Interview Series, we hope you find it helpful:
While shortcutting may seem like a way to make money more quickly, the abilities you gain limit your investment experience. The individual who does a couple of big deals quickly, but without many deals in between, as a much less valuable client and contact base when compared to the individual who took things slow and made 30 or 40 smaller deals in the same span of time. Stopping to learn, build contacts, and network allows you to play a longer and more successful game.
Richard: So the more long-term medium focused on learning and being mentored by someone who is a true veteran expert, not “Oh, where do I get a 64% versus 79% split…” just, you know, flipping that mindset.
Peter Von Der Ahe: 100%. I mean it was very common for me to see the first 10 or 15 years – I have several stories I could mention of people I would watch enter the industry and they would, kind of by luck, do 1 big deal and then they would go through 2 or 3 years and not to any deals and then maybe do 1 big deal. You would say “Okay, well in that 3 year period, maybe average out they did pretty well.” but if you come back to them 7 years later, compared to someone who during that same time did 40 or 50 deals, now they have hundreds of clients and not to mention all of the additional client relationships they’ve made during those times. Their income, their contact base, their knowledge base, it’s much more diversified, it’s much more robust. So, you know, just like anything, it’s really about playing the long game and not trying to short-cut.
Richard: Right, yeah, that seems important in every part of business, or investing.
Peter: Right.
Richard: I appreciate your time here today, Peter, and thanks for a CRE Power Player on CommercialRealEstae.com. I appreciate all the advice and insight, and taking your time out of the day to do this interview here.
Peter: Absolutely, Richard. Thanks a lot, it was a lot of fun.
Richard: Yep, thank you.
