Magic Formula Turns Life's Challenges Into Building Blocks

My last post, Challenges become Blessings, Weaknesses become Strengths is sort of a journal entry about some of the more serious life challenges I have been confronted with in the past several months.

I decided while I slept last night, that there must be more to learn from this topic... there must be a FORMULA that can be gleaned from all of this.

Here is what I came up with:

1. Identify the Challenge. Spend time REALLY contemplating the Challenge. Is the Challenge simply "Not enough money?" (Everyone I know would claim that challenge - or is "Money" a SYMPTOM of the REAL PROBLEM). It may help to write down the challenges, and then group them if necessary... into Challenges and Symptoms, or groups of challenges. Don't think you can stop at just one! The most difficult challenges come in groups.
2. Take ownership of the Challenge. Take personal responsibility for it. No room for blaming others or wasting energy on feeling sorry you have to go through it.
3. Ask empowering questions of Yourself. "What would I need to do in order to make more money even though... (INSERT CHALLENGE HERE)." If this step is going to work, you are going to have to BELIEVE that you CAN overcome the challenge.
4. Learn from others and ask for help. When mired in the agony of our own challenges this can be the toughest. It is tough to admit to others we are stuck or in need of help... but it is a big world, and there are lots of people who have gone through it before. I would LOVE to expend some of my energy really trying to help someone else untangle a life's challenge! So if you have no else to ask, ASK ME!
5. Go to work, while you plan. TAKE ACTION. Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs in life come in working, NOT in planning. It is no wonder that the Wright Brothers' very first airplane did not fly... it took dozens of iterations and modifications to finally get one that would work. I have lived this principle if nothing else. My Dad always says that "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly, at first".
6. EVERYTHING serves a purpose toward your goal. If "More Money" is your problem, and the only thing you can come up with is taking a second job delivering Pizza to earn more money - then listen to personal development books on tape while you drive, and resolve to ASK every person you see who has more of what you want than the people you know how they did it. Then take the information you gain, and re-apply it to your challenge.
7. Repeat. Check out my blog on REPETITION = GREATNESS. The simple fact is that setting Goals regularly and working at them will nearly always lead to a more productive life. Carefully managing ones expenses will surely lead to greater financial freedom, and working at ones Challenges will strengthen a person in nearly every way.

If you had looked at my list several months ago it might have looked something like this:

Step 1. Challenges & Symptoms:
1. Have no money
2. Need to finish building 5 houses
3. Banks refuse to lend money
4. I am not earning any money to pay my bills
5. Homes costing more to build than they will sell for
6. Committed to finish homes, and now I have to find a way to earn a living
7. Investors have all taken a bath in the market
8. Nobody wants to invest in housing
9. Owe the Bank $20,000 per month in interest
10. Some anonymous coward smeared me on a blog
11. Subs don't want to do work for fear of not getting paid
12. Heading into winter
13. Can't afford to employ anyone to help me resolve this mess
14. Everyone I know seems to be blaming me for the problem
15. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I feel like dying!!!

That seems like such a short and simple list compared to all the emotion I felt... but perhaps that is the power of making a list? By creating a list it forces us to consolidate our challenges into concise statements, instead of staying stuck in an emotional quagmire.

Step 2: Personal Responsibility; & Step 3. Ask Empowering Questions:
1. I gotta EARN... "How can I find a way to earn lots of money in a smaller amount of time, and still spend the time I need to deliver on the other promises I have made? (How do I find some "time & money leverage" to create personal income?)
2. Probably can't deliver on all of the promises I have made at once, so I had to prioritize which promises I focus on now, which ones I simply break, and which ones I postpone. (I went to people and gave them the option to wait for me to be ready, to move on without me because I could not deliver at this time, or simply quit altogether. Generally, people appreciated my candor.)
3. I enlisted the help of the banks in ensuring subcontractors that they would get paid for doing the work... this came as a result of asking: Who else wants me to get this work done as much as I do, and would be willing to vouch for what I am doing? The answer was simple - the Bank!
4. What can I do to cut down on the budget, AND ensure the work gets done right, and on time? In order to save money, and get work done, I actually went to work Myself, acting as an assistant to many of the skilled tradesmen on the homes. (My participation in the work allowed the Subs to cut their labor costs, and ensured they would show up to work with me... but there was a HUGE secondary benefit: This created a strong spirit of "teamwork" with some of my Subs, and we all went to work together... sometimes working on things that might normally have been outside of our skill set - like my HVAC guy, my Countertop Guy, and a finish carpenter working side by side with me to do everything from helping the Plumber install toilets and lids to helping the Electrician put cover plates and switches on everything, even down to trash pickup, etc. These subs once enlisted in the cause were even calling their friends and contacts getting them to come help out, and so on! AMAZING!)
5. Stating the challenges AS THEY WERE to my previous equity investors FINALLY helped us draw some "lines in the sand" and move on from a stalemate of "who flinches first". This got some momentum moving forward, and helped us stabilize a deal that should have been resolved back in May.
6. The entire mood of the effort changed... instead of me looking for people to blame, and others following my lead, EVERYONE either checked out completely, or enlisted in the cause... which they could do because they could see and feel that we were on a MISSION!

Step 4 & 5: Learn from others, and TAKE ACTION.
I have eluded already to some of the specific actions that I took, and how sometimes the actions I took yielded a result that was different or better than I intended. In the process there was plenty of calling around and asking what others had done. One specific example of this is a 13 acre piece of ground we had purchased for several million dollars... and was now because of the housing market - worth a fraction of the price we paid. I had read several articles in my favorite Real Estate publication, Builder & Developer Magazine, that encouraged me that more affordable housing was a trend that would stand a chance at survival, and when in a conversation with an officer at my bank he indicated he would support a density change, I immediately took action and began Re-Developing the land we had acquired. Literally we had nearly finished the development as 50 single family lots, but I stopped the construction THAT DAY and began amending the project. We started with increasing the density from 50 to 90, and have proposed versions as high as 225 units... the final unit count is currently around 187... but I definitely learned from others, and took action... and those two concepts have saved the deal.

Step 6: Everything Serves a Purpose Toward the Goal.
I still get bad news every day. An investor withdraws capital or support from a deal, a bank had previously committed to fund payment to subs now has changed its story, new business partners I was excited about opted to go a different direction, or a renter who is helping to cover a mortgage on a home we are carrying loses his job and can't or won't pay rent... all impacting the PLAN. Not too long ago my wife's vehicle was repossessed by the Bank, leaving us with only one car. (This is embarrassing to share, but should help clarify the realities of the situation we are in.) I could have dwelt on the negativity, and seen the glass as half empty... or as half full. The way we both chose to see this was that large SUV's had gone down in value significantly, and that the car was not worth what we were paying on. Now we had a monthly savings of her car payment, the insurance on that vehicle, and other fuel and maintenance costs! Now we had more money to dedicate toward the goals we had... and I have not given it much thought since. (We will surely have to deal with the deficiency and other things, and I completely regret that circumstances have become so dire at times... but all that is left for us to do is keep going!)

Step 7: Repeat.
Now on to new and different challenges! Like "My wife doesn't have a car", LOL! While I am unsure just what these new challenges will be, I am confident that I will face them head on and wind up victorious, because I have done this in the past. And so have you!