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| Q&A |
Peeble's Principles
01/01/2008
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And even as we stand today, the real estate market is better than
it was at its peak in the 1980s. Forget about the abstract statistics that say
we are down 25 percent from March of last year. Of course we are, because we
were at such a stratospheric level that it only could go one place—down. But if
you look at median price, you look at velocity of sales activity, we are still
better off.
Why write a book?
I knew there was a market for a
book like The Peebles
Principles because there are really not many
books like it. Real estate is an entrepreneurial business; every building, every
hotel is a new business. It has a lot of regulation to it, a lot of finance. It
has some interesting twists. And there hasn’t really been an entrepreneurial
book out there about how someone with limited education and resources, starting
off with no money, can build a successful business, create wealth and have some
fun in the process.
I made the decision that if I am going to ask people to take the
time to read the book and spend their money to buy it, I need to tell them the
truth. And the truth is, not every deal works out the way you want it to.
You’re going to make some mistakes—actually, you’re going to make a lot of
mistakes—in the process. It’s how you handle those mistakes and how you handle
adversity that makes you an effective and successful entrepreneur. It’s hard to
understand how to handle those types of challenges without experiencing them. So
the next best way to experiencing something is to read about it from somebody
who has been there.
You have to be convinced that you have something of value to provide to the world.
To be successful in anything—to
be a successful person, to be a successful teacher, to be a successful writer,
to be a successful businessperson—you have to believe that you are good at what
you do, and that you can do it. If you don’t, then you’re not going to get to
where you want to be.
You and your wife, Katrina, have two children, ages 13 and 4.
What do you teach them about wealth and affluence?
I’m not interested in giving
Donahue or Chloe all the things that I couldn’t have. I make sure that I don’t
spoil my children, and I also make sure that, at a very early age, they
understand that the world out there is broad and [there are people] from all
walks of life. So they travel with us quite a bit. We contribute toys and food
over the holidays to needy families, to needy schools, and Donahue has been
going with me to do that since he was 4.
I have made sure that I expose Donahue to kids from all walks of
life. That’s one of the reasons I coached him in basketball for seven years
now. And I bring kids from all different neighborhoods.
We talk about society, we talk about politics. Ever since he was
about 6, we read a section of the New York
Times every day. Every Sunday we would sit
at the table and pick a section, and I’d read him something about world affairs
and so forth.
Photograph by Carlos Miller.
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