Early on, we found a property that felt perfect. Great street, right size, a price that looked like a deal. The pro forma said it worked — barely. The four tests we now teach said it was marginal at best. But the excitement said yes, and we went forward.
It cost us. Not catastrophically, but enough that we remember it every time we look at a new deal. The margins we hoped would appear never did, and we spent the first year working to make a thin deal thinner.
The rule that came out of it is simple: if the numbers say no, walk. Excitement is not a strategy, and hope is not a line item. The deal-analysis worksheets we teach in Phase 3 exist because of that property. Run the numbers, run all four tests, and let the math make the decision before your heart does.
We share this one because it is the kind of mistake that costs real money — and the kind you only have to make once if you build the discipline to listen to it.
