How Can You Achieve a Mindset for Investing Success?

Where are you now? Some of the worst days of your life can hit you out of nowhere, and you do not see them coming.

My introduction to real estate was as I was growing up, and I didn’t even realize it. My dad managed a high rise apartment building in the Hyde Park area of Chicago. The building had two towers and over 1,000 combined units. My dad started off as a security guard, and for the last 10 years of his working there, he was the manager of the managers of both those buildings. Basically, he reported directly to the owner of the building.

He was a great employee and earned his way up the ranks. The building’s original owner loved the building and loved my dad (I think a lot of it was that my dad was a profitable employee), but the owner eventually sold the buildings.

The group that owned the buildings kept everyone on board, but five years after they bought it, that group sold it yet again, and this time the new owners brought in their own management. As my dad likes to say, “easy come, easy go.” Just like that, after giving his blood, sweat, and tears to a job for 24 years, he was let go.

This all happened while I was in college. At the same time that was happening, a friend of mine, Tim Heck, gave me a book titled Rich Dad Poor Dad. I think someone was trying to tell me something because I realized that no job is ever really secure.

Robert Kiyosaki’s book and my dad’s end to his job really jolted my mindset from, “I have to get a good job to make a good living to retire when I’m older,” to, “I have to learn all I can now to create the opportunities I want, so I don’t have to depend on others for my wellbeing.”

You might be sitting there thinking, “What does this have to do with me? I am already an entrepreneur and taking risks myself and have my own company.”

My point is that even though you are past that hurdle of being your own boss, are you willing to do what it takes to make your entire business run on systems and be profitable? You will have to learn and grow more, and you have to make sure you want to do this.

Do You Want to Grow?

One of the best character traits of entrepreneurs is that they constantly are always looking for ways to grow. If you have lost that fire or it has diminished, you need to pick up some good books that will motivate you or hang around people that will light that fire back under you.

If you truly want to be a more profitable business, you are going to have to learn some things that may not be your area of expertise. I am not saying you have to become a bookkeeper or an accountant, but you may need to know how to read reports or be able to interpret what your numbers are telling you. A lot of real estate investors I have worked with focus very little on the finance/numbers part of their business for a couple of reasons:

They don’t enjoy that side and find it confusing.
They want to focus on sales (which I am 1,000% for) at the cost of not focusing on anything else.

I am here to tell you that you should always be focused on selling and generating your revenue and income. I am also telling you that if you are making a ton of sales and have nothing to show for it, or worse, you have to close shop at the end of the day, then you’ll wish you had paid a little more attention to what your numbers were telling you.

I want to ask you, do you want to grow or are you happy with where you are?

Are You Happy Where You Are?

If you are happy with where you are financially and know your numbers, then maybe you need a system that makes sure you are keeping your profits. If you aren’t happy with where you are financially, don’t know your numbers, are living month to month (or paycheck to paycheck) in your business, and are stressed about your business’s finances, then please keep reading to see there is a way out of this financial rat race that you are running.

Home Life

Before we dive even deeper, I want to ask, are your business finances a sore spot for you in your home life? Does your spouse wonder where all the money you make goes? Do your children get to see the hard work of their parent’s labor pay off? Is everyone in your household on board with what you are doing, do they know the hard work that you put in, and is there something tangible for them to see at the end of all your hard work?

You want to make sure that you have a system in place that can easily communicate your business finances to your significant other, your children, and anyone else with whom you discuss your finances. The easier you can convey it and make the important people in your life understand your financial picture, that you know the system really is working and is simple, the more peace of mind you can have at home with those you love.

I apply all these principles to my business and personal finances. I am telling you that having a system for your finances really takes a lot of pressure off you and your business and gives you that peace of mind that entrepreneurs desperately seek.

Oh, and the story with my dad does have a good ending. He started working with a local real estate investor. He worked with him for about eight years buying and selling houses and is now working with a local property manager and helping him grow his property management company.

How do you feel about your current position? What do you want to work on?

Tell us your strategies for finding a success mindset in the comments.

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.