One bright, bone-dry day in 2009, I hiked 3,600 feet down to the bottom of the Colca Canyon in Peru. My wife and our Peruvian friend Lizeth were my hiking companions. For some reason, we also climbed back up that same day!
By nightfall, I finally stumbled back into the village at 10,926 feet above sea level. I was hungry, dizzy, and deeply humbled. I had learned a valuable lesson about life and investing that I now call the Philosophy of the Climb.
The 3,600′ Hike Down to an Oasis
Our official reason for hiking to the bottom was an “Oasis” complete with pools, palm trees, and beer down on the canyon floor. This Oasis was a stark contrast to the bleak, cold scenery at the top.
As we hiked down we chatted with a local Peruvian guide and his two German tourist clients. He was funny and friendly, and we enjoyed joking with each other as we walked.
We reached the bottom, took a swim in a pool, and had a snack. After lounging around for a couple of hours, we then decided to head back up to give ourselves plenty of time before nightfall.
Our Peruvian guide friend and his clients rested about 20 minutes longer before beginning their hike. This put us far ahead of them.
My wife and I were both confident, fit hikers. At home and many times on this same trip, we enjoyed walking fast and steady up steep inclines. Our pace for the first half of this hike seemed to be no different.
I was feeling so good that I even looked back down the hill to catch the eye of our new guide friend. I motioned with my hands “Come on! What’s taking you so long?” They were hiking at a much slower pace, so we continued to move farther away from them.
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Little did I know that the joke was about to be on me.
A Confident, Fit Hiker (Me!) Gets Humbled
About 75% of the way up the path, I started getting light-headed and weak. My wife and our hiking companion were also very tired, but I was the one really dragging. Our pace up the path slowed to a shuffle. Every 50 feet we had to stop so one of us (mainly me) could rest and lean against the rock wall.
At each resting point, I looked back down. The guide and his clients were moving slowly but steadily. And they continually got a little closer and a little closer. Eventually, we were moving so slowly that the guide and his two clients walked right on past us.
I was too exhausted to be humiliated. And the guide and his clients were too kind to turn the earlier joke back around on me. They disappeared up the path and were back in their rooms taking hot showers long before we got back.
Several times I contemplated just sitting and sleeping right on the trail. I was too exhausted and dizzy to go on. But somehow we kept walking and eventually made it back to the village. Nightfall was near.
We followed our nose to a restaurant with delicious, steaming vegetable and chicken soup (it even had a chicken foot sticking out of the bowl.) Perhaps an hour later, still sitting dazed in the restaurant chair, I could finally think clearly about what just happened.
Altitude sickness & lack of food probably explained part of my dramatic physical letdown. But our attitude and our choice to climb too fast was the part that stuck with me and my wife the most.
Inexperienced and naive, we had overestimated our abilities and underestimated the conditions of the climb. If we had slowed down and paced ourselves, we would have been just fine. The experienced guide, of course, already knew this important lesson. He and other experienced climbers have internalized the philosophy that we were just learning:
The Philosophy of the Climb: On the tough, long climbs of life, a slow and steady pace is faster (and more enjoyable).
Our climbing experience that day would burn this new philosophy deep in our minds. And we would soon have another chance to test it out.
Testing Our New Philosophy on the Inca Trail
A couple of weeks later, we tested our new philosophy while hiking for 4 days on the Inca Trail to the fascinating ruins called Machu Picchu. The second day we hiked from 9,000 feet to over 13,000 feet (a climb of over 4,000 at one time).
My wife, the more disciplined and patient hiker, took the lead. We took painfully slow steps as most of the fellow tourists sprinted ahead.
To our surprise, we were not fatigued at all. We did not have to rest long at the designed break stops. We also noticed that we enjoyed more of the interesting sights, sounds, and smells along the way. The backdrop for our hike was breathtaking!
About halfway through the hike, we started walking right past the others who had started so fast. Their hands were on their knees, and their faces were pointed to the ground instead of at the amazing scenes around them.
As we reached the high point of our climb at 13,829 feet (aka Dead Woman’s Pass), we soaked in the best view yet.
And we also looked back down to see 95% of the other hikers climbing like little ants far behind us.
Getting to the top ahead of other hikers wasn’t the point. But we were both struck by the power of the Philosophy of the Climb. We enjoyed the experience, maintained our health, and still climbed faster than most of the others.
Pace Yourself on the Climbs of Investing & Life
Just like my hikes in Peru, your life and your investment projects have plenty of steep, long climbs. It takes courage and wisdom to slow down when you really want to hurry up. It seems like a faster pace will get you there sooner, but most of the time it won’t.
For example, I constantly remind new investors to focus on the first baby steps of real estate investing. Too often they are trying to do too much, too fast. And like I did early in my career, they’re usually making big mistakes in the process.
This doesn’t mean you can’t use hustle (the entrepreneur’s secret superpower). It’s just that with longer projects like investing and business, hustle is more about showing up consistently, day in and day out. And when you move too fast, push too hard, and don’t rest enough, you burn out. And that takes you out of the game, which is the worst thing that can happen.
So, even if you feel like you’re behind or want to get there fast, remember the Philosophy of the Climb. Take slow but steady steps. Keep moving forward. Pace yourself. And ignore the others who insist on sprinting towards the top.
In the long hikes of life and investing, you’ll get there faster by going slower. But just as importantly, you’ll also enjoy the climb.
Happy hiking!
Have you moved too fast with a climb, your investing, business, or other life experience? How did your experience turn out? What other life and investing lessons have you learned from an outdoor experience? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
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GREAT article. I want to push forward as fast as possible since I didn’t begin investing in Real Estate until age 43. Buying 9, buy and holds in 4 years. I’ve decided to slow down a little and I hope my patients allows me to do bigger and more profitable deals.
Thanks for coaching!!!!
Hey Steve, great job with your 9 buy-hold in 4 years. But congrats to you also for recognizing it’s time to absorb those and be patient for the next more profitable deal. I like the approach of just getting a little bit better (more profitable) with each deal so that by the end you’re consistently doing much better deals.
Thanks for reading and commenting. It’s great to hear from you. Hope to see you down in Wilmington sometime soon.
Thanks for sharing Chad! The wisdom in “slow and steady” is a principle of life that I must remind myself of from time to time. Beautiful pictures. The view is always nicer from the top. I’m inspired to keep climbing.
Thanks Howard. I must remind myself to take it slow and steady more than anyone! That’s why I use this story often:) Yes, the place was gorgeous. I highly recommend a trip to the Colca Canyon if you’re ever in Peru.
Great story, and sound advice! I count myself as a newly started real estate investor and can’t stress this enough. I heard about the ‘symptom’ of the need a deal syndrome on a BiggerPockets podcast, where many investor look no further then the next deal. Since then I always keep in mind to look ahead, and understand the trail that’s still in front of you.
Ah, yes! Need a deal syndrome and it’s evil, opposite twin analysis-paralysis syndrome. Both are momentum killers for real estate investors. And I think the slow and steady pace is a solution to both.
Thanks for stopping by to read and comment! Good luck with your next steps!
As a boomer who loves passing gassed millennials on extreme hikes I appreciated your post. It is all a matter of knowing your abilities. In hiking that is pretty easy and if you know you are in beastly strong shape you can go fast, but in investing, nobody really knows enough to go super agressive. While it is embarrassing but usually survivable in hiking to bite off more than you can chew, in your financial life recovering from hubris is often impossible. Really nice post, I’d compliment the elegant prose but I’m too much of a hack to be qualified to praise a master. Appreciate what you do in this community Coach, you are amazing.
Ha, Ha – there is some satisfaction in being the person who passes the younger person who overestimated his abilities (me in this story!). And I totally agree – you’ve got to know your abilities and how they match with the conditions. Altitude, in particular, will humble anyone if you’re not acclimatized. And so true about the lasting impact of hubris in finances.
And thank you for your kind words. Really happy to have you as a part of it. Thank you for reading and commenting.
I will second that comment about altitude. Here in flatland Arkansas we are at 220 ft above sea level so when we get above 10,000 ft it kicks our tails pretty much. Last year on a impulse we hopped in the car and drove six hundred miles to intercept the total eclipse alone in a Nebraska corn field,which was amazing. Then we drove to Colorado and hiked a 14’r (Mt. Princeton) with no aclimatization at all. It was a beast. We made it but I had a bad fall at the very top and nearly blew out my knee. It was a very hard five miles out on a busted knee. We didn’t pass anybody that is for sure! I kept thinking how it was going to cost $5,000 if a helicopter had to come get me.
Great article and philosophy Chad. I think the current market requires patience and persistence like never before. Slow and steady is the way to go!
Good point, Brent! There are a lot of investors sprinting ahead right now, aren’t there? We will just keep climbing steadily along.
Great advice, Chad, especially about not moving too fast into real estate. I think I needed to hear this one today. Perhaps you also learned to respect mother nature a bit more. If you have never camped in Alaska, that will do the trick in a hurry! Be well.
Yes, mother nature has my respect! I did go camping in Alaska once but it was like luxury camping with people cooking us meals! It was one if the most beautiful (and intimidating) places I have ever been .
LOL! Luxury camping in Alaska. I’m sure that is huge. I confess I never thought about Alaska in those terms. When I was there I was a dumb college kid hitchhiking across long distances solo. That can be an edgy experience, including the people who pick you up!
Enjoy those Galapagos tortoises ;).
I’ve done the Inca trail and loved it….and it’s a great lesson in taking advice from experts…if your guide has taken tourist along the route for years, they are going to know better than you.
Chad, quick question. What do you think about buying real estate without using a real estate agent? Especially for simple properties, I don’t think this is all that complex. The trick is you need to get in to see the properties. You can ask the seller’s agent to show the property to you, but then would they ask for more than the 3 percent commission they usually get from the seller (since they did a big of extra work)?
I am planning to scale up buying properties to rent, and am not too keen on having an agent gobble up 3 percent when I haven’t found them to be hugely value-added (unlike the inspectors whom I swear by). I welcome your thoughts.