Every Choice Counts
Over the weekend, I kicked back with some holiday cheer and watched Red One on Prime Video. You know, the action-packed Christmas movie with The Rock and Chris Evans. I fully .. and received .. the expected explosions, festive absurdity, and cheesy holiday lines.
What I didn’t expect was to find myself struck by a nugget of wisdom delivered by The Rock:
“We choose every day who we want to be... the big decisions and the little ones... and every one of them matters.”
At first, I laughed it off—seriously, a life lesson from The Rock?
But I couldn’t shake the feeling of just how true that line is. Every single day, we make choices that steer the direction of our lives. Sometimes it’s obvious—like choosing to start a business or what we put in our bodies.
I see this pattern in so many aspects of life. It’s not usually the one big decision that derails us. It’s the accumulation of small ones, left unchecked.
Case in point: Friday afternoon, I ratified a contract with a seller facing foreclosure. He came to me as a last resort, scrambling to salvage a dire situation. He wasn’t in foreclosure because of one catastrophic mistake. He wasn’t gambling away his mortgage payment or splurging on luxury vacations he couldn’t afford. Instead, it was a series of seemingly inconsequential decisions that quietly stacked up over time.
One month it was this .. the next month it was that .. the following month it was something else until eventually he realized how deep he dug himself and the hole was too deep to climb out of alone.
I structured a contract with the following terms:
I’m making upfront payment of $50,000, of which about $32,000 is going directly to the mortgage company to bring the mortgage current.
I’m making a second payment to him of $10,000 in 2 years
He is still responsible for making the mortgage payments. If he goes 90 days late again, then he forfeits the second payment.
Over the last couple weeks that I’ve been putting this deal together, I connected with 2 long-term, buy/hold
investors and presented the deal to them. Rather than become a 3rd partner in this deal, I suggested they provide me a finder’s fee and take down the deal for themselves.
They agreed to my $10,000 finders/assignment fee and we close on December 23rd.
It’s a win-win-win .. the seller is netting roughly $15,000 in a week and another $10,000 in 2 years if he can keep the mortgage current .. the investors are getting a long-term rental property for pennies on the dollar .. and I’m collecting an assignment fee for roughly 10 hours of my time.
I’ve learned that seemingly small daily decisions work in both directions.
Small, positive choices—made consistently—can compound to create something extraordinary.
AIG Home Buyer wasn’t born from a single burst of inspiration. It grew from years of small, deliberate choices: reading one more article, making one more phone call, talking and learning from one more investor who was just a fit farther down the path than I was.
Day by day, those decisions compounded into the systems and successes I rely on today.
The quote from Red One got it right. Every day, we make choices—big and small. Some days, we’re deliberate about it: setting goals, planning our actions, staying disciplined. Other days, we let autopilot take over, and before we know it, we’re caught in the momentum of past decisions.
The seller I am helping out with didn’t end up in foreclosure overnight. It was the sum of his daily choices. The same way I won’t cross Spartan finish lines—or grow my business—without the sum of mine.
So here’s the question I’m asking myself today—and I hope you’ll ask it too:
Are my choices today steering me toward the person I want to be tomorrow?
Whether it’s deciding to push through that last mile, tackling a tough conversation, or even just taking five minutes to reflect, every choice matters.
Because in the end, life isn’t shaped by one giant leap.
It’s built step by step, choice by choice.
