While I’ve never personally lost money on a deal (knock wood), most people in our business have, and I’m sure it will happen to me, too. When that day happens, I imagine that my investors are going to have two questions:
- Did you do a thorough job investigating / underwriting the deal?
- During the whole process, were you a good steward of our money?
I know damn well that we have #1 covered. After all, no deal gets done in our organization without Jon and my intimate involvement. We may get things wrong, but it’s not because we weren’t careful.
It’s #2 where culture comes in. Inevitably, there are parts of each deal that Jon and I can’t do alone. We need bookkeepers, property managers, leasing agents, etc. to help us. And these people need to understand and buy into the idea that we are, at the end of the day, only in business because people trust us to be good stewards of their money.
If we screw up, that’s it. Career over. And I don’t plan on having another career. So everyone who works with us needs to get on board with the idea that we treat other peoples’ money as if it were our own.