The best way to learn to swim

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Sometimes the best way to learn is to just get thrown in and have to do it yourself. Want to learn to fly a drone, to do accounting, to make a table, to file for a permit, or anything else? You'll learn a lot more if you jump in, ask questions, and do it yourself versus have someone tell you everything to do.

This is what's going on with my wife right now as our bookkeeper for our rental property business. She said, "I can do that." and so she's had to learn a ton in this past year and do a lot of things wrong in order to get things done right. I would say there's only one other partner in the business that really knows the best way to handle all expenses and taxes and he's super busy and hands-off. It's one of my brother-in-laws and I'm starting to think his philosophy on teaching might be similar to Chip Gaines in that he'd rather you do things wrong and learn from them than he spends a bunch of his time teaching you everything he knows.

My wife has been through our 2020 expenses three times in the past week and it's been a little emotional, but she's doing awesome and she's continuing to learn the business. She's able to ask questions and learn why we want to categorize different expenses in the best way.

It's tough and a lot of work to learn to swim by just getting thrown into the deep end, but you also learn a lot really quickly. It might not be pretty, but you're going to learn really fast how to keep your head above the water!

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