Never doubt yourself. Anything is possible if you just believe. Let me share an example of a stupid startup that priced it's product way high and raised huge money.
As a result, its founders were able to cash out before it imploded.
Why You Should Never Doubt Yourself
Did you hear about Juicero, a startup that sold a $400 juice maker that shut down last week after raising $120,000,000+? The founder was able to convince some of the smartest venture capitalists that consumers would spend big bucks on a machine that would squeeze juice packets you could actually just squeeze with your own hands.
What's more, the founder convinced investors to believe that health conscious people would prefer to drink juice from a food packet instead of from a freshly squeezed or blended fruit!
Related: Baremetrics Case Study Show Why Startup Employees Get Screwed
Always Believe Anything Is Possible
The lesson from this latest story is to NEVER doubt yourself. NEVER think you are not good enough to create. People with the dumbest ideas are able to syphon money away from astute individuals.
If you look at the list of investors below, you see names like Kleiner Perkins, Artis Ventures, and Google Ventures. These are some prestigious firms run by people with the most hoity-toity resumes. Yet they all lost 100% of their investor's money.
I come across folks with great ideas all the time, but because they never take action, NOTHING happens! 10 years from now, they look back with regret, angrily trying to take anybody down who actually took the risk to make something happen. It's sad really.
Never doubt yourself! You've got to have the grit to keep on going.
Happiness is believing in yourself and taking calculated risks. Because if you succeed, you are thrilled. If you fail, you still feel a sense of pride that you at least tried. One of my regrets was waiting until 2009 to start Financial Samurai when I could have started the site in 2006. Better late than never I say!
Major Net Worth Shakeup
After dropping a big hint with the post, When To Sell Your Investment Property: Every Indicator To Consider, I decided to do just that and sell a single family home I bought in early 2005. I went through every indicator (added three more to the post since it was first published), and realized I met 90% of them. The post was really an “all the reasons I decided to sell” post to make sure I wasn't missing anything.
Here's the post going into detail about the harrowing selling experience: Why I Sold My Rental Home: Had To Live For Today. It's a long one, so best to get some water and go to the bathroom first. You'll get a good look into a private negotiation process that may help you maximize your deal when it's time for you to transact. The post is also my way of telling my son 20 years from now why I sold the house for so cheap.
A lot of readers have asked how I feel about my decision now that a couple months have passed. Frankly, it's too early to tell. I'm pretty sure the housing market will keep going up now that I've sold since supply is so dismal and I'm terrible at timing the market. But for the next 12 months, I feel like I got the best price possible. I'll demonstrate this in a post I have about various comps that were purchased and sold in a similar time frame to mine.
Made A Nice Return
Never doubt yourself because you can turn around and sell a property for much more just five years later.
It does feel great not having to pay $22,000+/year (!) in property tax anymore and not dealing with tenants. Further, I just realized I don't have a $3,500 automatic debit coming out of my checking account this month since there's no more mortgage to pay! Whoo hoo! Now the rent check from my other property ($4,200) goes straight to savings instead of paying down my old mortgage.
As for what to do with the proceeds, I decided to reinvest $550,000 into real estate crowdfunding. The idea is to keep some of my proceeds in real estate, diversify away from expensive San Francisco, earn a higher return, and simplify life.
When you have a large windfall, it's best to take your time reinvesting so you don't make any foolish decisions. I'll be publishing a more detailed post about how I reinvested the rest of the proceeds. My favorite real estate investing platform is Fundrise. It is the pioneer of the stable eREIT.