When I was getting started, I read every real estate book I could get my hands on. Most of them were pretty dumb. A few were helpful.
One, the name of which escapes me, contained some advice which I found really odd at the time. There was an entire chapter devoted to the importance of regular exercise.
I have a clear memory of rolling my eyes when I got to the chapter and then quickly skipping ahead to the chapter on buying with no money down or whatever. Who wants lifestyle advice from some real estate deal junkie, right?
Now, having been in the business for a while, I think his advice was dead on.
Why?
Well, I think about life according to the second law of thermodynamics: “The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the state of entropy of the entire universe, as a closed isolated system, will always increase over time.”
Basically, everything tends towards chaos / decay and the only way to prevent this is to exert energy.
You can see examples of this across our entire business. The buildings we buy are typically falling apart because no one took care of them for decades. Internal business processes we design fall away from disuse. Renovated buildings get a little bit worse every year due to weird choices by maintenance personnel, etc.
A big chunk of my day, every day, is about pushing back on this decay, or, put a different way, organizing chaos. And this requires energy. And exercising every day is the best way I know to maintain the energy level necessary to do what needs to be done.