The Decade In Review

Today is New Year’s Eve and it also marks the end of a decade. On today’s show, we’re taking a look at the decade in review.

A decade ago we were in a post-911 world where many western countries were embroiled in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was the genocide in Syria and the collapse of the society in Venezuela and numerous other conflicts like the Ukraine have been a blemish on our humanity as a species. In this past decade we all gave up a lot of personal privacy in the name of security. There is more tracking and surveillance than at any time in human history.

This past decade was the decade of social media where it was once a peripheral distraction for early adopters and now has seen widespread adoption by almost the entire western society.

Ten years ago it was 2010, the Great Recession was in full force and real estate prices were falling in many areas of the country. Borrowing was extremely difficult and the only buyers were cash buyers. Loan defaults were making headlines on a daily basis.  The next two years would see millions of foreclosures in the United States. Many of the defaults were the so-called maturity defaults where the borrower had made every single loan payment on time. But the loan came up for renewal at the end of a 5 or 7 year term and the bank then required an injection of cash in order to fix the loan to value ratio. Values had dropped so much during those two years that the banks didn’t have enough security. In many cases, properties were under water where the current value of the property was worth less than the loan. That seems like a distant memory. I remember attending real estate meetups in those days when you could buy properties for about 30% of the construction cost.  I had people telling me not to invest in real estate because it was too risky.

We established the core of our “buy-on-the-line, move-the-line” strategy that proved extremely effective and scalable. By honing in on a repeatable process, I was able to build a sustainable development business.

I somehow managed to attract incredible people into my life over the past decade. I also attracted a few of the wrong people. Learning the difference and acting to eliminate those who were not a fit was the most important thing for me to do.

In this decade, I wrote two books, I learned how to communicate with the media and had hundred of media appearances and public speaking engagements. I took a leadership role in our local real estate investors organization and helped it grow to roughly double in size. Ten years ago I was listening to podcasts. These were mostly lectures and interviews with people from Silicon Valley. Little did I know that I would venture into this world only a short time later.

In the past decade, I had successful development projects, and I learned to manage success, as well as how to manage failure, delays, and setbacks. There were times when I felt stuck, like I wasn’t making progress fast enough. It was like pushing a rock uphill. I learned that persistence was the key to ultimately achieving success.

I watched my wife grow her family therapy practice from a single practitioner to having a staff of 9. I’m so proud of her.

Within my family, all of my children grew up and transitioned from being teenagers to young adults and living on their own. As a parent, I wish the best for my children. It gratifying to see them chase their dreams and at times it’s difficult to watch them make choices that I not would have made. But that’s what makes them unique. They have to live their life for themselves.

Above all, I’m committed to savouring the journey, to personal growth, and making each new day better than the one before.

As we start the new decade, let me be the first to say, hindsight may be 2020, but 2020 is in your future. Have an awesome New Year and New Decade celebration