Brant Phillips Show 20: Hindsight is 20-20
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Welcome everybody to The Brant Phillips Show. Yes, this is the show that helps you create results in your life and in your business. The topic and focus of today is Hindsight is always 20/20, Hindsight is always 20/20 my friends. Please, please don’t get stuck like I see so many people looking back, looking back rather than looking forward. Yes, looking forward, we don’t know what the future is going to tell for us and our vision is not always 20/20 looking forward especially as entrepreneurs, there are so many times that we are taking steps on somewhat unsolid and shaky ground and uncertainty sometimes moving forward. Even moving forward is a sign of power, is a sign of confidence because whenever you are looking back, you are just going to continually stay stuck.
This has been on my mind lately because here in Houston, Texas, the time of this recording we’re in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and the flooding. It’s so easy for me to say that hindsight is 20/20, looking at the results from this hurricane and all the flooding that we experienced about so many things that could have been done differently in terms of the things that the city could have done with roadways, with floodplains, with creating retention ponds in areas. They could have required builders to build higher, that’s something that we’ve already began seeing over the last few years, not just in terms of standard elevations like we’ve got standard elevations we have to meet which may be six inches to and a foot higher but there’s literally areas of Houston now where they’ve began lifting homes four, five, six feet up in the air. That’s going to become a really big thing now, thanks to hindsight after seeing what has happened.
Whether or not you have flood insurance, and me as an investor, I had multiple properties that were damaged and affected by the floods without flood insurance. I’m not going to get into why I will continue to invest without flood insurance, that’s another topic for another day, because it makes financial sense for me is the bottom line and investors that I know that are doing a substantial amount of real estate, they don’t have flood insurance. For homeowners, there were so many homeowners in the Houston Area that were impacted by the floods, they weren’t in a flood zone so they didn’t have flood insurance and so there’s just a lot of really a lot of really sad depressing devastating types of things that have happened because of this storm.
What happened, it is what it is. At the time of this recording we’re about a month removed from the storms and from the flooding and what has happened and so really, we only have a couple of choices as people and collectively as a city and more, I’m more focused for investors for entrepreneurs. We have a choice to sit in stew and bitch and mourn and cry about what has happened or we have the opportunity or we can look back, people are looking back, should have, would have, could have, “I should have had flood insurance. The city should have done this blah, blah, blah.” Victim stuff. It’s hard for me to use the word victim because I understand that people suffered some substantial losses. There were people who lost their lives or people that lost their belongings and I get it and it is hard. That doesn’t remove the fact that they still have the opportunity and the choice to begin moving forward with their life.
I don’t know if you all saw the stuff that was happening on the news with Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen and how people wanted to, they opened up like The Houston Convention Center, they didn’t open up Lakewood Church until the floods began to recede because those who saw some other pictures that I did, I know some people, I attend Lakewood quite frequently. There was flooding where that it was up to the brink where it was about to fill the church essentially. A lot of people don’t know this before when the Rockets used to play there, it flooded, that building actually flooded.
Whatever, good choice, bad choice, I don’t know all the details. I know the thing was about to flood and I saw video and pictures of it but there were all these people that were hang up on Joel Osteen not opening the church. Then you hear people getting hang up about City of Houston should have done this and they should have been informed that they should have had in flood insurance and all this kind of stuff, all this kind of stuff.
My friends we can do that for the rest of our lives with just about any situation, we can look back in our hindsight and whine and cry about things or we can look forward. Immediately after the flooding, the rains began to slow down on Monday although it was massive destruction at that point in time, really on Tuesday and this all started back on the previous Friday and so four, five days. This whole time I’m starting to see opportunities like man, there are so many opportunities with this so very not ideal situation. Yes, as an entrepreneur, there are so many opportunities to prosper in our market right now. It is insane the amount of deals that we’ve been doing and the business that we’ve been closing and the houses that we’ve been buying since the floods have occurred and that’s great and that’s awesome.
Guess what? If I could pick, I would say, “No floods, no thank you, I don’t need this business.” I would have preferred to not have the flooding or the chaos it’s caused and the destruction but I also saw opportunities to help and serve. There were so many teaching examples for my children. There was even opportunities for my wife and I to get together and get a lot of stuff out of our homes. We immediately were locked up in our home or trapped up in our home, saw the flooding, we’re getting out trash bags, we were putting bags and bags and bags of clothing to give away and toys to give away, cleaned out our pantry. We had food that we had just like old canned goods and just gave us an opportunity to clean house.
A few days later, I took my son and my nephew, we went along with another church to go do, they call it “Mark Out” I just helped people rip out sheetrock and flooring and countertops and whatever they need help with to just demo these houses. It was a great opportunity to experience some things with my children and give them opportunities just to learn from this and see what happens, like this is life, this is just what happens but there’s immediately opportunity there.
The most important thing in life and in business is whenever we have setbacks, whenever there’s times of destruction and when there’s times of natural disasters or just internal disasters, meltdowns and relationships and businesses and deals, the quicker that we can extract the lesson like, “What happened?” And apply that lesson, whatever it is that you learn, extract it and apply it to the here and now and use it in moving forward, we will be so much better prepared whenever that next Hurricane Harvey hits in your life or in your business. Then when we have time to reflect in the future, you may just experience more satisfaction because you did the work, you prepared yourself to the best that you could.
That’s all that we can do is move forward not always with 20/20 but just in our best efforts right here and right now, roll up our sleeves and do the work that you’ll find out that whenever these experiences come that there’s going to be opportunities in them and the more time you spend in hindsight looking back at 20/20 should have, would have, could have, had I just known, guess what? You’re never going to know what the future holds. Roll up your sleeves each and every day, do the work, go out and create results now and you will be so much better prepared in the future when trouble arises.
Well, that’s all I got for you today my friends. I love and appreciate each and every one of you. I want to thank you for listening to the show. Until next time, I look forward to helping you create results in your life and in your business.