There are times in every business and every career when we experience failure. At age 30, after initial success with Apple, Steve Jobs was fired. Jobs found himself unemployed. But he persevered and years later said, getting fired from Apple was the best thing to ever happen to him, because it allowed him to think more creatively and re-experience the jobs of starting a company. This attitude enabled him to rise again and build what is today arguable the most successful company on Wall Street.

A Real Estate business is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Sometimes you would be ahead and sometimes behind. Sometimes you would feel like you can’t go on. But like Jobs, there are times when we have to dig deep and seek a second wind. This tenacity to not give up, to keep on going despite seeming failure is perseverance and it is an integral ingredient to success in any venture.

Milton Hershey started three unsuccessful candy companies in Philadelphia, Chicago and New York. But Milton was not about to give up and persevered until he succeeded in building the Hershey’s Chocolate Company. So it must be with you, in your quest to build a career and business in Real Estate. There would be moments when the wind against you gets strong, the water is rough and many around you will suggest you give up. But, if this is your mission and purpose, it is then that you have to persevere.

In the book, the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Santiago is told by ‘Melchizedek’ that everyone has a ‘personal legend’ to attain in this life. And that there is only one thing that makes it impossible to achieve, the fear of failure. It is a great book and one every aspiring Real Estate professional should read. It tells the story of Santiago’s journey to achieve his personal legend and all the failures along the way. But he persevered and in the end he realized his dream.

The Japanese have a saying ‘Something mended is more valuable that that which never broke.’ This speaks about perseverance. Your Real Estate career or business will become broken at times but with perseverance you will mend it and it would go on to becomes more valuable than if it never broke.

There is the famous story that Edison made hundreds of failures before he made the light build and he is quoted as saying “I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.” This is perseverance and it eventually led him to succeed in building such a light bulb.

Probably one of the most inspiring stories of perseverance in business in that of Walt Disney. As a young man, Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper because his boss thought he lacked creativity. He formed an animation company called Laugh-O-Gram which failed and he could barely pay his rent and even resorted to eating dog food. He later created a cartoon character named Oswald the Rabbit which the Universal Company secretly patented and hired his artists away from him, and continued the cartoon without his input and without paying him. Yet her persevered and because of this, we have the Disney company which today entertains us with so many memorable movies.

So it must be with you and your Real Estate career and business. To succeed you must persevere when you encounter failure. In fact it is most likely that without failure and perseverance one cannot build a truly great Real Estate business.