We dream about success, we talk about it, we put the very word on a pedestal. Almost as if only the special ones can achieve it. In this era of the click revolution, you don’t have to look very hard to find successful people living their so-called perfect lives. All you have to do is log on to Facebook or Instagram to see the endless barrage of pictures ranging from celebrities to your average Joe showcasing their successful moments.
Our minds are on success overload. We don’t even give ourselves a chance to process half of these staged clicks. Needless to say, do we ever think about or question what type of adversities are behind the real success stories.
Raj Brar is a serial entrepreneur in multiple countries with investments in real estate and other assets. He started his first bricks and mortar business at the young age of 17. Being well versed with the ups and downs of being in business, he speaks openly about learning and growing from his many failures along the journey.
Life is the greatest teacher one can ask for. However, you must first decide to become the student. Sounds easy enough doesn’t it. Yet this decision must be made during our darkest and most painful adversities this wise teacher hands us.
Life Happens For You Not Against You
One thing we can be sure of is that life will throw you curve balls just when everything seems to be going well. Instead of asking what can I learn from this situation, we panic. We are quick to ask the questions of why me? What did I do to receive this? Why is life punishing me?
Raj was no stranger to adversity going right back to his childhood. Having faced being brought up in the inner city where gang violence and racial discrimination was prevalent. He grew up severely obese most of his life, which led him to study the mind. Using his learnings, he was able to show amazing results with the loss of over 100 pounds in one year.
In his mid-twenties he decided to leave the small city in which he grew up, to pursue his dream of making it in the world. By this time in life, he had already started three businesses from scratch. Being confident in his skills, he sold his most recent venture and headed for the big city to explore new markets.
Burn The Ships
As with any up and coming entrepreneur, the journey is full of failures and lessons. Being young and aggressive he invested all his money into one deal that looked like a winner at the time. Banking on that deal going through, he left little money aside to fuel his journey in this new city. The deal went bust. He lost all his savings. He was left with no furniture, leaving him to sleep on an air mattress. He had one month’s rent and no money put aside beyond one week’s living expenses.
Humans have a survival instinct called the fight or flight mechanism, in situations like this when your back is against the wall it naturally kicks in. There are many choices one can make in such a predicament. Accept defeat and go back to their parents home or put up a fight and go to battle. This is the true test of an entrepreneur when you have to dig deep and pull out the warrior in you to survive.
Raj picked the latter, being a student of the mind he analyzed the situation over and over asking himself for a solution. He called the list of so-called best friends to ask for a loan and quickly came to know this list wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. It’s in situations like this you remember who stands with you and who turns their back.
He did however come across one friend who saw an opportunity for himself in the situation. He asked Raj to sign over the last belonging he owned which was his truck as collateral. At the same time charging him double-digit interest rates that make credit card companies look like angels. Having confidence in himself, Raj made the deal without hesitation. He knew this was a chance to keep his dream alive
In 1519 there was the great battle of Veracruz that went down in the history books. Captain Hernan Cortez ordered his men to burn the ships they arrived on. There was no option of retreat. They would either win the battle or die on the shores of that island. Similarly in life when you put yourself into the situation of having no option but to succeed you will see the endless opportunities everywhere you look.
The hustle began for Raj. He started off with buying and selling cars which he knew well having started his entrepreneurial career in the auto industry. He hit the pavement going to auctions. Calling all the classifieds looking for deals not only for cars but anything he could get a deal on.
Hustlers Ambition
A true hustler knows the product is interchangeable. It’s business 101. The process of hustling has been the same since the Stone Age days. There is a demand for a said product. You find the sellers and negotiate a bargain. Add value to the product and then resell it.
The real estate market was on the rise. Having previous knowledge in this space with having bought his first bricks and mortar business at the age of 17. Raj naturally began studying this game in depth.
Raj Figured out how to leverage properties into the hundreds of thousands of dollars by putting them under contract with a 5 to 10 percent deposit. This allowed him to leverage his money by only putting down the deposit and locking in the price. Then flip it before the closing date for a profit. Before he knew it he had gone from sleeping on an air mattress with no money into playing a game of millions on the line.
He kept reinvesting his money right from the beginning when he started with hustling cars. Naturally, your portfolio will start to expand. You learn the next step of the game. You expand your hustle by buying properties cash from people who are in distress. Each industry has many verticals to play just like at the blackjack table. He started diversifying the different verticals from flips, buy and renovate, land deals, and pre-buys.
Raj used this same blueprint in different markets eventually spanning his portfolio across the country. This process has led him into becoming a sophisticated investor, diversifying himself beyond real estate. Using this experience as a foundation, he is continually learning and studying world needs to make informed decisions and is developing new businesses and networks that extend Worldwide.