According to the always fantastic real-estate investor and coach Joey Ragona:

"Would you be surprised to learn that 80% of Real Estate entrepreneurs fail within the first 5 yrs b/c their business is chaotic?

Did you also know that of the remaining 80% ... 80% of THEM fail in the next five years? Thats 96% failure in 10 yrs."

How would you measure success?

What would be considered a failure? Bankruptcy?

Paula Findlay - one of our great medal hopes at the Olympics in triathlon - finished last in her race. Did she fail? She did not achieve the result she set out for but I can guarantee she learned some BIG lessons about her team, her training and herself in the process. To me she would have failed if she quit, but she didn't. And it sounds like it was a brutal race for her. Most average people probably would have quit.

I think she probably gained more from that race than she would have if she did hit the podium.

In 2009 we were hit with an ugly reality - for the 6 years prior to that we'd been raising money for our deals thanks to the market being all hot & heavy for real estate not because we were brilliant at raising money. When we had 2 new deals on the go and tried to do what we'd always done in 2009 we found out the banks didn't want to make the same loans and the people didn't want to just throw their money at real estate like they had.

We experienced over 100 rejections of various forms before we figured out what to say to raise money in the new world of global uncertainty and bank rule tightening.

Did we fail? I don't think we did. Maybe we were a little slow to figure things out but I think our experience of LITERALLY trying everything we could to raise money made us pretty kick ass at money raising now and at helping other people raise money for their deals. 3 days ago we hopped on the phone and raised $350,000 for one deal. That's the second time this year we've done that .... one phone call = over $300,000 for a deal. And even more importantly we're able to show other people how to do the same. That came from our experience of being rejected over and over, and then finally figuring it out.

Failure (& success) is an interesting subject because it's something that is in the eye of the beholder. Bankruptcy isn't failure if you learn from it and come back to be something great. One great deal or getting one JV partner signed up or one great tenant situation doesn't mean you're a success either. It means you succeeded at that deal or that one situation.

I don't think everyone should be a real estate investor. I think a lot of people get into it and then realize it can be really crappy sometimes and they don't want to put in the work that is required to create a successful real estate business so they get out. They didn't fail. They tried it and then they succeeded in realizing what they want from their life and what they don't want. I'm not saying everyone that quits is in that boat but many are.

Whether it's one deal, twenty deals or no deals at all - I think the most important thing is that you're living a life you really love, you are contributing to others and aren't worried about what someone else thinks is success or failure.