Real Estate Investors Create Good Work Habits

In any career, the key to success is having good work habits and a positive attitude. This is especially true for any career that has only periodic large cash payouts, like that of commercial real estate investors. Because your sales will be very large, but also few, you especially need to have excellent working habits. They keep you going through the lean times, and keep you grounded when you're pulling cash in from everywhere.

Good Work Habits - #1 Focus
With commercial real estate, you're dealing with a different animal than in residential real estate. Commercial investors must focus on specific types of property, as the different types are so widely varied. You need to select a specific niche strip malls, for instance, or standalone restaurants and stick with it, turning yourself into an expert. This ensures that you build a network of sellers and buyers in a single area, and enables you to find the best possible deals on both sides, as well as giving you a reputation as an expert in your area of focus. Because this is all you work with, day in and day out, you'll be able to know more about this type of commercial real estate than any other.

Good Work Habits - #2 Control
But what if you get a hot lead on a property that is outside your venue? In this case, you need to have a network of other commercial real estate investors who specialize in other areas. You can share leads with them that you aren't qualified to handle, and in return they will give you leads in your area that they do not feel qualified to manage. This good work habit resisting the temptation to step outside your tightly-focused niche will work toward making you much more successful in the long run than buying that tempting property might have been.

Good Work Habits - #3 Motivation
How about self-motivation? The biggest mistake made by many commercial real estate investors is to simply never get started. This is usually due to fear (of either failure or success, the two are surprisingly closely linked in the mind) and is guaranteed to lead you to failure. Alter this problem into a good work habit by looking for coaches and mentors who have had success in commercial real estate, especially in the area that you are focusing on. One great place to find these mentors, if you can't find them in your realtor community, is through SCORE, an organization of retired businessmen who work as free mentors for entrepreneurs throughout their communities.

Good Work Habits - #4 Clear Vision
Good work habits will not help you at all if you don't also have a clear vision: of your niche, your success as a commercial real estate investor, and where you want to be ten years from now. When you write down your goals, write them down in increments: what you want to achieve daily, weekly, monthly, annually. Have a five-year plan, and review your accomplishments compared to your goals periodically to make sure you're getting where you want to be, when you want to be there.

Good Work Habits - #5 Balance
Finally, success is not all about money; instead, it's about having an honorable, rewarding life that gives you what you want. You must have balance in your life, if for nothing else in order to avoid burnout. One way of looking at it is with the parable of the balls. Work is a rubber ball; your family, your health, your friends, and your spirit are all glass balls. In your daily life, you juggle all these balls, every day all day. But sometimes you drop a ball.

If you must drop a ball, it should always be the rubber ball, work. While dropping it brings other things to a halt, work will bounce back. It will be there to pick up when you're ready to resume juggling. The glass balls of family, health, friends, and spirit, however, are breakable. If you drop one of them, it might survive, if you're lucky. But it's very likely that this ball will break, and you will never get it back.

If you want to be truly successful as a commercial real estate investor and as a person, good work habits are crucial. But you must strike a balance between work and the things that make your life good. Work is not the end goal in your life. Instead, it should serve all those other things. Keep that perspective, and you'll prosper.