What’s Your Excuse For Not Real Estate Investing?

If you have been around the real estate investing game any length of time, you've obviously heard multiple stories of people who have gotten into the business and made money. The average Joe/Jane who had little, learned about this incredible business, and broke-thru to start making a few $1,000 … $10,000 … even topping $100,000 plus their first year in the business.

Yet, what many of us do – despite hearing these true stories – is we keep up an invisible wall of “difference” between us and them. We never fully step into the fact that “they” really are just like “us”. It's easier and more convenient to tell ourselves, “Well, yeah, they did that, but there must have been someone helping them, or something special about their situation that makes them different from us, or it's the bad real estate market, or the economy is bad, I don't have a job or money, etc.” We want to be like them, but we never really believe that they are like us, or that they have it as tough as we do. Of course, “our” situation is much harder than what they had to go through. How could they ever relate to us?

Oh come on, seriously? Is that the BS stuff you want to keep telling yourself to make yourself feel better, or do you really want to know the truth?

There is no difference between them and you, they did not have it easier than you, and your situation is not the worst in the World, it just feels that way because you have to live it. It's always that way, when we are emotionally involved, a situation always seems much bigger than it is. It's time to step out of that.

That story you just heard … guess what? It's true, and it CAN happen to you … if you want it. The only difference between them and you? They wanted it more than you, and they took action and did something about it.

How do I know this? Because, “I”, was “You”. I literally was the average person, attending college to get a “job”, and finally – after hearing about it for years and making excuses (when I get the money to invest, when I get a good job, when I get the time, when, when, when, etc. ), I finally took action and just went for it. Was it easy? No … heck no! Was it hard? No to that too. Hey, it certainly beat working for a living. Was it worth it? OH MY GOSH!!! Was it ever.

When I started out, I learned about the business and just fell in love with it. I KNEW it was what I wanted to do and there was never any thought of trying it and giving up if it didn't work right away. I went into it head first and had no intention of looking back. I figured that if I just kept at it and plugging away, there was no way that I wouldn't eventually get a deal. I mean, hey, there are so many houses out there and so many opportunities that there was enough for everyone to get involved. But you know what really drove me at the time, what literally scared the heck out of me when I thought of it?

What really scared the life out of me was … “if I do nothing, what will my life be like 5 years from now?”

It would be exactly the same. That really kept me up at nights. Nothing would change. I would be living the same kind of life I was, and making the same amount of money I had then. But, if I just worked this business even a few hours a week, made a dozen calls on weekends, did something … then eventually I would hit upon something, some deal that would change everything. There was no way I could work this business for a long time and NOT find a deal. I literally lived the idea that Yoda said to Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back …

… Yoda instructs Luke to use the Force to lift the Spaceship out of the swamp …

Luke: “I'll … I'll try.”

Yoda: “NO, there is no ‘try' … do, or do not!”

You're either going to go into it with the attitude that you were going to “DO” it, or don't bother making the effort. That was so definitive for me and stuck with me. If we go into something with a “try” attitude, it gives us permission to fail. “Well, we tried” we say. But if you go into it with the absolute mindset that we “… are going to do it, we are not going to give up, we want it and nothing is going to keep us from it”, it totally changes our state in our minds and bodies to one of certainty, tenacity, and drive.

THAT is the main difference between them and you. They finally had enough of normalcy and decided that they were going to make their dreams happen and no one or nothing was going to stop them.

The hardest part of this business that you will encounter, is the time between starting, and getting that first check. It is that period where the majority of people give up their dreams, and succumb to a mediocre life. But for those that hang in there and get through to their first check … for them … something major clicks inside of them, and they become unstoppable. Once you know it can be real, and that it can be real for you, it leaves you with the confidence and certainty that anyone can do this business. If they want to. I've seen everything from a single mom who worked full-time and went to the courthouse with a sack lunch to research foreclosures, and kept it up for months until that first $40,000 first paycheck. To a blind man who had a friend read the real estate books to him and be his eyes for looking at his houses, and made over 6-figures in his first year.

People overcome great obstacles to get going in this business, and succeed. If they can do it, what could the average person do? Hummmm … what could you do?

So … what's your excuse?