In a perfect world, we all want to get more done in less time and with less stress. But how does one stay productive when there are so many responsibilities to tackle, goals to accomplish, deadlines to meet, and distractions to dodge? It can be overwhelming and frustrating sometimes for mere muggles like us. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible, though! Following are five productivity strategies that have changed my life. 80/20 Rule aka the Pareto Principle The 80/20 rule is also known as the Pareto Principle. It is sometimes called “the law of the vital few” or “the principle of factor sparsity.” The man behind this principle is Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto, an Italian economist. Apparently, one day while gardening, he found out that only 20 percent of his pea plants produced 80 percent of the healthy pea pods. He then associated this discovery to uneven distribution—particularly about Italy’s overall wealth and population. He observed that 80 percent of the land in Italy belonged to just 20 percent of the population. He later examined various industries and discovered that 80 percent of production originated from only 20 percent of the companies. In a nutshell, the 80/20 rule or Pareto Principle simply states that 80 percent of results will come from only 20 percent of the action. And that most things in life are not equally distributed—aka life is not fair. The 80/20 rule can translate to the following: 20% of the activity generates 80% of the result 20% of the employees produce 80% of the outcome 20% of the clients provide 80% of the income 20% of the features cause 80% of the benefits And so on… A little caveat: the percentage will not always be exact. Oftentimes, it will be 79/21 or 83/17 and so on. The point is that only a small amount of your tasks will bring great results. Related: The 80/20 Principle: How to Be More Efficient & Successful at Everything How to Apply the 80/20 Rule? The 80/20 concept is practically ever-present and applicable to almost any kind of situation and to all areas of your life.  This is a perfect way to reduce to-dos that make your day unproductive. Currently, only a few of your daily or weekly activities have the biggest impact on your life—whether in your professional or personal life. The takeaway of this rule is to be constantly aware of how and where you spend your time. Regardless of the responsibilities or tasks you need to accomplish, there will always be a few that will yield incredible results. Some methods will be effective, while the rest will just be time-wasters. The key is to determine these activities that work well and focus your attention and energy on them and forget about or minimize everything else that’s just sucking your time. The best thing about understanding the Pareto Principle is that you become more intentional with your time and you learn to concentrate on the 20 percent that offer the best outcome. In short, you do more of what really matters. Learn From The ONE Thing The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results is a book written by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller of Keller Williams Realty, the world’s biggest real estate company. Keller has previously written bestselling business books about succeeding in real estate. In The ONE Thing, he talks about what it takes to achieve your professional and personal goals to truly live a productive, enriching, and purposeful life. At its core, this book teaches you how to identify your ONE thing—the most important thing in your life and how to invest all your energy there. This isn’t a way to get more done in less time; being productive simply means focusing on the right tasks. How to Apply The ONE Thing Begin with the focusing question: “What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” Jot that down. This book is based wholly around that one question and the efficiency of managing each aspect of your life around that one thing (per area). It doesn’t mean your one and only thing. It’s your one thing right now. Create a domino effect To be successful long-term, you want to determine your one most important thing in your career/business, relationships, health, etc. Visualize this as a “someday” goal. Once you’ve discovered that, you need to find out the steps to get there—the dominoes you have to line up—and then knock them down one by one. Your one thing is always connected to your destination or “someday” goal. Thus, your first domino is your most crucial action that gives you the most bang for your buck. Do one thing that matters most at any given moment. Time block As per Gary Keller, you must block out at least four hours per day to work on that one thing, one specific goal. Utilize these hours to tackle things that move you forward—steps that you need to perform for the day to get you closer to your ultimate goal. Ideally, block out time at the very start of your day when you’re freshest and most energetic. In short, prioritize and do the most important thing first of all. You can look at it like you’re going to the movies. You’re there for one thing: to watch the movie. And because you’re certain about that one goal and you want to avoid distractions, consequently, you turn off your phone or put it on silent/airplane mode, you get popcorn and drinks in case you get hungry, and you go to the restroom before going in. You do all these just so you can ensure an uninterrupted experience. Learn to say NO To stay more focused and productive, say “no” to people, places, and most other things unless they’re related to your one thing and/or you’ve already accomplished your one thing for the day. Sure, constantly focusing on that thing can sometimes be boring. And it’s tempting to distract yourself with doing other tasks or more fun activities—like grabbing brunch with friends. But keep in mind that once you’ve given your undivided attention on your one thing for the day, then sooner or later you’ll be available to do whatever else you’ve planned for the day. Use the 80/20 rule Gary Keller is a huge proponent of the Pareto Principle. In fact, he used it to take his real estate business to the top of the industry. Keller believes that we don’t need a to-do list. Instead, we need a success list, which is a list designed around your biggest result-generating tasks. You can determine this using the 80/20 rule. Theme Your days What Does It Mean to Theme Your Days? To theme your days is simply batching relevant types of tasks together and working on them on a single day to be more productive. For example: Mondays = Administrative Tuesdays = Marketing Wednesdays = Creative Thursdays = Meetings Having a theme gives you a guide or map for your week, so you can then easily create your task list every day, providing you more control over what you get done. Theming your days also adds consistency to your schedule, making things much more efficient than going back and forth between different and totally unrelated stuff. Plus, themed days eliminate unnecessary guesswork and reduce decision fatigue. You know precisely what needs to be taken care of depending on the day of the week. Related: Here Are 25 Productivity Hacks That Actually Work! How to Apply Themed Days Determine the tasks you regularly do Do you write blog posts? Deal with customer service? Social media management? Conduct meetings? Prepare meals? Write them all down. This also gives you a chance to jot down the tasks you’ve been meaning to do but haven’t had time for. Discover themes within your tasks Evaluate your list of tasks and group related ones together. Your themes will vary depending on your situation, so be sure to carefully assess the kinds of tasks you perform on a day-to-day basis. That way, you can come up with your themes. For example, you can group paying bills and grocery shopping under “Home Maintenance” or “Errands.” Or you can group content creation and product design under “Creative Work.” And so on. Assign a theme to a day of the week Dedicate a theme for all seven days of the week, or you can have lesser number of days and allot some rest days. Feel free to customize what works for your specific situation. You may also want to add your chosen themes to your calendar or planner to further help you manage your themes, therefore remaining productive. Outsource Tasks If you follow my three strategies above, you would’ve automatically eliminated a lot of unnecessary or unwanted tasks to save time, energy, and resources, thereby becoming more productive. For others that you can’t totally get rid of or automate (more on that later), well, you can outsource them—especially if you hate doing them or are not good at them in the first place. Or perhaps they’re just too time-consuming, laborious, boring, repetitive, or all of those things combined. Outsourcing will not only decrease your stress levels, but it will also give you more time to concentrate on much more crucial tasks or pressing issues in your business or personal life. And if you’re anything like me—a parent of two kids, as well as an entrepreneur—I really value my time. As a real estate entrepreneur, it is easy to get into the hustle mentality and get on a hamster wheel of never ending to-dos if one is not careful. Hence, I outsource some of my miscellaneous tasks to reduce the number of hours I work per day, so I can then dedicate attention to my family. Slashing your work hours doesn’t translate to being less productive, especially if you’re going to have someone else do it for you. It’s a win-win situation. You gain more time for yourself and other things that matter to you while also providing jobs for other people. How to Outsource Tasks Determine tasks that you deem too tedious or unexciting, and get them off your plate. If you’re procrastinating a specific task, chances are you have zero to limited resources, knowledge, or skill to handle it well. Or you’re just really not passionate about it. No worries. Have someone else do it. You can outsource a lot of tasks nowadays—from writing, cleaning, researching, designing, scheduling, etc. You name it, and it can probably be outsourced. You can hire a daily or weekly housekeeper or cleaner to tidy up your home regularly. You can order daily meal deliveries if you’re not much into meal prep and cooking, for example. Many of the administrative tasks like researching, data entry, social media marketing, scheduling, and other relevant tasks can be delegated to an all-around assistant, for instance. You may need to hire separately for others that need specific skills and knowledge, like accounting, graphic designing, writing, etc. Nonetheless, if you’re keen on designating some of your chores, you can hop on various outsourcing sites like Upwork, People Per Hour, and Freelancer to find workers who are experts in their fields. Check reviews from their previous clients and choose carefully to ensure you’re only getting quality work. Automate Tasks Progress and success come from prioritizing essential tasks—the 20 percent from the 80/20 rule or The ONE Thing. But that translates to letting go of several minor activities that you deal with on a daily basis. That’s where automating tasks comes in handy. Automating tasks means using an application, tool, or service to lighten your load. By utilizing a program or app that will automatically do specific tasks for you—like paying your bills, syncing your calendars, publishing social media content, or handling customer support—you can definitely save time and effort and use them instead on more important matters. With a bit of strategic thinking and planning, you can quickly automate those tasks that are burdening you, so you can then get right back to doing meaningful work—whether that is running your biz or taking care of your family. Related: 6 Financial Apps to Automate Bookkeeping, Tax Deductions, Savings & More How to Automate Tasks Depending on your particular needs, you can find countless apps and tools that allow you to automate many of your unwanted tasks. Let me share some of my favorites, including a few hacks that may also help improve your productivity and efficiency: Todoist It’s a to-do list application designed to help you do more. Todoist is teeming with productivity features, so you can organize tasks and set schedules and deadlines. It syncs on your phone and computer, so either can be updated in real-time. It also offers a ton of plugins and apps for your gadgets, emails, and browsers. And it does have a free version! Syncing calendars If you’re like me and have more than one calendar, it’s best to sync them so each one is updated and you can avoid overlapping schedules and appointments. I find Google Calendar the most useful. I sync it with my phone’s calendar and Outlook email. Filtering emails I get junk emails all the time. Instead of having them land in my inbox, they go automatically to a dedicated folder that I set a rule for. For example, if an email contains the word “unsubscribe,” it goes to a separate folder that I check two times a week to sort out any important emails and unsubscribe to those spammy ones. LastPass LastPass is a password manager that lets you store and encrypt all your usernames and passwords online. The best thing about this program is you only have to remember one master password to log in to all your online accounts. It also comes with many plugins for different browsers and apps for various smartphones. This feature is especially handy for all of those websites that do not offer an application on your smartphone. Auto-payment bank feature Most banks nowadays offer an auto-payment feature so you don’t forget paying your bills, utilities, subscriptions, and what not. I take advantage of this, so I don’t have to worry about bill payments ever. Check with your bank about how to enroll in auto-payment. QuickBooks Online QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based accounting software designed to minimize the time you spend sorting out your business finances. It lets you create estimates and custom online invoices, monitor sales and cash flow, manage suppliers and customers, etc. The best part is every week on my themed day for finances, my accountant and I log in and view the account together and update anything we need to in real-time. Tenant Turner As a real estate entrepreneur, I find Tenant Turner useful for scheduling showings. More than just a scheduling software, Tenant Turner helps property managers decrease vacancy by listing your rental properties on all major listing sites, pre-screening leads, and finally scheduling showings. Before using Tenant Turner, I was about to hire someone on a part-time basis to answer phone calls from leads, follow up email requests from various websites where my listings were posted, schedule showing requests, send showing reminders to reduce no-shows, and then follow up with an application once the showing was complete. Tenant Turner does all of this for a fraction of the cost. What are some of the productivity hacks that you have benefited from? Share in comments below.   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

It’s 5:30 a.m. The kids are still asleep, and so is Patrisha. I am sitting in the backyard at my Arizona house hack, enjoying the reflection of the blue skies in my sparkling pool. It’s quiet. It’s blissful. And being that it’s the day after the Fourth of July, I am thinking about the sacrifices so many have made to protect my freedom. So, before I go any further, a big thank you to all of the veterans out there! Now, back to the purpose of this writing. How You Can Amass $40MM of Real Estate In the last 10 months, my company and I have closed $40 million worth of apartment acquisitions. We bought three apartment communities in Phoenix, and we are on the lookout for many more. Per our business plan, we strictly buy significant value-add assets, whereby we can project a $300 per unit increase in revenue within 24 months. If I am right about the re-positioned net operating income (NOI), the value of the three assets we currently own should capitalize to about $65 million when we are finished with repositioning. Here’s the thing. Unless you are independently wealthy and have $15MM just laying around, in order to be able to buy $40MM of real estate as we did, you will need to syndicate equity from partners. Therefore, in describing the steps to get there, what we are really talking about is what it would take for you to be able to mature as an investor to the point of syndicating large assets. Here we go. Step 1: Study You have to study. To get to this level, you have to become an intellectual. Even if your first purchase is a rental house or a duplex, try to understand the process on the deepest level you can. You must be able to see yourself in your mind’s eye as a person with $40 million of assets before you can actually be that person. Study is a critical component to give you the confidence to envision yourself larger than you currently are. Your intellectual worth has to always supersede your net worth. Step 2: Experience I’ve said this many times before. Underwriting numbers is nothing more than a process of describing the dynamics in a lifecycle of an investment. As such, we don’t start with the numbers; we back into them. Your job is to start with the dynamics (the “story”) and boil them down to the numbers. The more you can envision and predict the dynamics, the more accurately you’ll be able to express those with numbers. Guess what? You can’t internalize the story from a book. You have to experience it. Thus, start small, get smarter with every deal, and build upward. The more you can envision every little aspect of that story, the more dialed in your underwriting becomes. Related: To Syndicate or Not – This is The Question (What Would You Do?) Step 3: Network You just don’t know when and how a door will open. Be available to people. Connect with people. But be careful who you listen to… Step 4: Teach You don’t start learning until you begin to teach others! The reason for this is simple. A lot of what we do is subconscious. This is specifically the case for those of you who are truly talented, as talent can hide a lot of analytical deficiencies. This means that, in a lot of cases, we are not aware of the exact intellectual processes underpinning our decision-making and execution—they are intuitive. Things just work out. Well, you may be brilliant at doing something, but in order to teach it in a way that a student can internalize, you have to break the process down and bring it into the consciousness. This is the only way someone who is not you can retrace your steps. Bringing that which would otherwise be accomplished subconsciously into consciousness illuminates all kinds of elements and dynamics that the teacher themself may have been unaware of. It’s actually a really cool process for the teacher—one that provides perspective on how to hone your skills even more. This is why I’ve always taught. Every time I learned something new, I taught. At first, I taught students to play the violin. Then I taught students how to buy small multifamily with nothing down. Now I teach syndication. And somewhere in there, I managed to write a book on house hacking. Step 5: Learn More and Learn Differently Once you begin to teach, you start to learn all over again. This is where your knowledge transitions from mechanics (a lot of which may have been unconsciously executed by you in the past) to academia. You need to think deeper to grow! But… Step 6: Eventually You’ll Hit a Wall—Recognize It! Now that you really are a thinker—one who will continually learn, refine, and implement—I can guarantee that you will eventually hit a wall. At this point in your cycle, you’ll more than likely be the smartest guy in the room. You’ll know the answers to all of the questions anyone can ask. And yet, you’ll know that something is really off with you. Despite having achieved all of those things, something is missing. You won’t be able to put your finger on it, but you’ll know that something is wrong. I describe this condition in the following way: Imagine yourself standing in a cornfield. The corn is tall and you can barely see above it. It’s dusk. All of a sudden you hear church bells. You strain your eyes, spinning 360 degrees looking for the church, but you can’t see it. It’s infuriating—you can clearly hear the bells. You know the church is near, but you can’t see it… It is this feeling of so close and yet so far away that I describe as hitting a wall. And believe me, if you are as smart as you think you are, you will eventually hit that wall… This is going to be your greatest test! Related: 5 Ways to Jump Up to Large-Scale Multifamily Investing Step 7: Forget Everything You Knew and Learn the New Way I know this sounds a bit on the liberal arts side, but such is life. Figuratively speaking, the cup that you were yesterday is overfull. There is no more room for anymore knowledge—at least not such as you’ve always known it. So, this is the time to empty out the cup and fill it with something new. You must be reborn as an investor and as a thinker to move forward. You have to question and reimagine everything. It’s a painful process. You will eventually accept that almost everything you know is wrong, but you will not know a better way. This is indeed painful, but in order to be the big investor you want to be, you’ll have to go through this. Then when it’s your time, you will find your path and be ready to operate on another dimension. The Bottom Line This cycle will repeat more than once in your career. Every time you hit that wall, you’ll have a choice: either take the off-ramp and call it a day or forget everything you knew and start over. Each time that wall will be thicker and taller. And each time the process of reimagining everything will be more brutal. At some point, you’ll be done—with all of it—having accomplished everything you are meant to. Until then, this is the life of a thinker. Good luck to all! What do you think about the steps I’ve outlined above? Where are you in the cycle?  Let’s talk in the comment section below.   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

In the past two years, I have read a lot of books—118 to be exact. Almost all of them have been on the subjects of personal finance, real estate, business, and self-help. Needless to say, I feel like I have earned my MBA in many of these subjects (personal finance, in particular). Despite having read so much, I am always thirsty to learn more and gain more wisdom. If a book has one nugget in it, I think it’s worth every penny. However, after reading so many books, I find that it is getting harder and harder to learn things that I did not already know. The Best Book I’ve Read in a Long Time Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required by Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung from Millennial Revolution is different. This book was a groundbreaking read for me. Before I get too far though, I should clarify that the content is NOT about real estate. It is about attaining financial independence by getting down to the nitty gritty—increasing your income, reducing your spending, and investing the difference in index funds. Once the balance of your index funds reaches a certain level (say… $1 million), you can retire and live off the capital gains and interest from your investments. The problems and questions everyone has are, “How do I retire in seven years? How do I sustain my portfolio after retirement? What about health insurance? What about kids?” This book answers all of these questions and more. Not only is it super insightful, but it is also a super easy read. Kristy and Bryce are very relatable. By the end of the book, you will feel like they are your best friends. Who Is This Book For? Again, if you are looking for a book on real estate investing, this is not for you. However, are you interested in achieving financial independence in the next seven to 10 years (or fewer) and perpetually sustaining it? Then this book is for you. All About Author Kristy Shen Although the book is written by both Kristy and Bryce, you will quickly realize that Kristy is the main voice. Why is this? Well, no offense, Bryce, but her story is much better than yours. Living in China Kristy grew up in mainland China in the late 1980s, early 1990s. Her family was poor. In China, there aren’t any homeless shelters, so they lived in a dilapidated home. The winters were cold, the summers were hot, and the clothes they wore were poorly made by her mother. They simply did not have enough money to purchase clothes from the store. As a family, they lived on the equivalent of $0.44 per day. Needless to say, it was a rough few years of Kristy’s life. But at the time, that’s all she knew. Related: BiggerPockets Money Podcast 59—Playing with FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) with Scott Rieckens Living in Canada When Kristy was seven years old, her father was fortunate enough to get accepted into college at the University of Waterloo in Canada, studying to be an engineer. One year later, Kristy and her family were able to leave China and start a new, first-world country life in the Toronto area. Kristy went from being afraid of tapeworms and playing in trash heaps to living a semi-normal childhood. The move was not easy though. She spoke hardly any English, so it took a few years for her to be able to make good friends. (You know how mean middle and high school-aged kids can be.) Kristy followed in her father’s footsteps and attended the University of Waterloo, studying engineering, as well. This is where she met Bryce. After four years of studying, they graduated with high marks and were able to get jobs as engineers. They worked hard and saved a ton over a seven-year span and retired with $1 million at the age of 31. Living Everywhere and Nowhere Now, they are retired, travel the world, write a blog, and pretty much just do whatever the heck they want. They have been doing so for three years. In that time, their net worth has increased to $1.3 million. Not a bad deal. So, how can you do what they did? This is exactly what the book is about and what I will touch on briefly in the next few sections. What I Learned From Quit Like a Millionaire Regardless of where you are in your education journey, Quit Like a Millionaire has a lot to teach—from choosing the right college to attend, to making more money and spending less, to investing the difference wisely. This book has all of the tips. However, as a person who considered themselves very knowledgeable on this subject already, I want to share with you my key takeaways. How to Access Retirement Accounts Early The first groundbreaking thing that I learned was how to access your retirement accounts early through what is called the Roth conversion ladder. Popularized by the Mad Fientist, Kristy and Bryce explain this concept very clearly and concisely in this book. The idea is that you are able to obtain funds from your retirement accounts penalty- and tax-free before you hit the ripe age of 65. How? I’ll give you the three to four sentence overview here, then you can read the book for further details. In essence, you invest money into your 401(k), which is a pre-tax account. When you become financially independent and do not work for an entire year, your income is effectively $0. Since the standard deduction in the United States is $12,000, you are able to move $12,000 from your 401(k) (pre-tax account) to your Roth IRA (post-tax account). The IRS does consider that $12,000 you move from the pre-tax to post-tax account as taxable. However, since the standard deduction is also $12,000, the IRS sees the taxable income as zero. $12,000 income – $12,000 standard deduction = $0 taxable income Voila. There is now $12,000 in your Roth IRA that has not been penalized OR taxed. After five years, you are able to take that $12,000 out of your Roth penalty-free. Now you have $12,000 in your bank account that has neither been taxed nor penalized (although you will still be taxed on any capital gains from your Roth IRA). “Whoa! Is this legal?” That was my initial thought. The answer? As of 2019, it is 100 percent legal. This is one of the differences between the rich and the middle-class or poor. The rich seek loopholes and ways around government regulations, whereas the middle-class and poor give in to them. Related: How Two 30-Something Twins Achieved FIRE in 5 Years on Rental Income The Concept of the Yield Shield In 1998, a bunch of finance nerds (aka professors) at Trinity University performed a study where they determined how much one needs to save in order to live off the returns from their portfolio for the next 30 years—including the cost of inflation. They determined that if an individual withdraws 4 percent of their entire portfolio each year, there is a 95 percent chance that the portfolio will last for the next 30 years. The only problem here is that many of us are striving to retire in our 20s and 30s, so we need our portfolios to last much longer than that—perhaps even 50 to 60 years! In order to get that 95 percent chance up to 100, Kristy and Bryce introduce a concept called “the yield shield.” The basic idea is that you allocate a certain percentage of your portfolio to higher-yielding assets, such as preferred shares, real estate investment trusts, corporate bonds, etc., so that your return is almost guaranteed. How much of your portfolio do you allocate? That is up to you and your risk tolerance. However, if you determine you need $1 million to retire—or $40,000 per year—I would recommend putting the entire $1 million in these types of assets and anything in excess into higher-risk assets. That way, you can generate what is likely to be a high return on anything over what you need to live. I think of it like a responsible person going to a casino. If you go to a casino with $1,000 and you make $1,000 in the first hour, I would keep $1,000 and only play with the winnings. Once the winnings run out, I am done. Then there is no way I could possibly lose money; the worst-case scenario is that I got a fun and virtually free trip to the casino. Make sense? Final Thoughts The helpful concepts discussed in this book do not stop there. Kristy and Bryce are incredibly smart individuals and spend much of their lives researching and learning ways to save and invest wisely, using unique strategies and techniques. The book is littered with saving tips, as well as different ways to invest, that you can implement to expedite your timeframe to retirement—and increase your odds of remaining retired once you’re there. It’s not every day you stumble across a book that is fun to read AND packed with good information. But Quit Like a Millionaire is just that. Enjoy the read! Are you striving to achieve early retirement? What are you doing to get there?  Share in a comment below!   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

So, you want to be an entrepreneur—a successful real estate investor. My advice to you: get a job. Huh? There are certain people for whom (and even certain seasons for which) it makes the most sense to start down the path toward real estate world domination by—yes—getting a job. Yep, I’m talking about earning a good old W-2 paycheck. This is a path that most of the baby boomer and prior generations saw as the only option. However, it’s a path that seems like an increasingly scorned option for many today. Successful Real Estate Investors Who Once Held Regular 9 to 5 Jobs Before you mock and sneer at my opinion, consider that many of the great real estate investors of our day started off on the traditional path. I recently met Rick Graf, who owns a lot of large apartment complexes and is CEO of Pinnacle, one of America’s largest property management firms. Rick is one of the leading voices in commercial real estate. Rick started out as a porter at a local apartment complex. He worked his way up from there. Gary Keller, the world’s most famous real estate broker, went to college for real estate and took a role as a Realtor before starting Keller Williams. Or consider my friend Andrew. Andrew worked as an asset manager for years at Equity Residential, Sam Zell’s company. He managed about half a billion in commercial real estate assets for Sam. In time, he got the attention of an awesome entrepreneurial commercial real estate syndicator in Virginia. They brought him on board in a similar role with one important difference: Andrew has an equity stake in everything he manages. Related: 6 Ways to Gain Experience in Real Estate as a College Student Ideal Jobs on the Path to Full-Time Real Estate Investor I’ve struggled a bit with those who ask what the best jobs are to have on the path toward becoming a full-time investor. I haven’t seen a lot of people work this out successfully. But I’ve narrowed it down to five ideal positions, and I’ll be glad to elaborate on each if you reach out to me. The five potential jobs include: Property Manager Asset Manager Financial Analyst Commercial Real Estate Broker Commercial Real Estate Lender Though there may be other occupations that will get you on the path, I think these five cover most of the bases. This post will focus heavily on path No. 1. I’m going to share a real-life story about Joe, a friend of mine who took a pay cut to learn the self-storage business from the ground up. How Working a 9 to 5 in Real Estate Could Help Your Investing Business Many multifamily and self-storage syndication firms manage their own facilities. Others use third-party management firms. These firms employ a variety of staff, including frontline managers, regional managers, accountants, and more. By taking a job as a property manager, you will learn the detailed ins and outs of this business. You will learn all about: Marketing Sales Customer service Pricing Maintenance and repair Capital projects Grounds Inventory (point of sale items, etc.) Bookkeeping Legal (evictions, auctions, etc.) There are other benefits to this path, as well: You will get to know and prove yourself to middle and senior management. You will get to know competitors and others in the business. You may get to attend industry tradeshows and business events in your community. You may get significant training and education. You may have a chance to work your way up to regional or senior management over time. Real estate investing has become very popular, and there are many entrepreneurs in this space. There are surprisingly few in commercial real estate who did the hard work to learn their business from the ground up. But this path to becoming a successful investor could give you an advantage over many. Living Example of a Property Manager Turned Commercial RE Investor Last year while I was attending one of Scott Meyers’s self-storage academies, I met a young guy who really impressed me. And he made me laugh hysterically. His name is Joe Mascow, and he lives north of Dallas. Joe is part of Scott’s mastermind, and he has taken bold and costly steps to succeed in the self-storage arena. Before Joe discovered self-storage, he was a successful residential mortgage broker. He was making over $100,000 annually, but he was trading hours for dollars. He realized that being a self-storage owner would create true wealth for him that would supersede his current occupation. The question was how to get there. Joe took a leap of faith by taking a significant pay cut (over 60 percent) to become a self-storage property manager. His goal was to learn the business from the inside out. Joe told me, “I got this idea from the book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker. In it, Eker told a story about wanting to buy a property and start his own restaurant business. So, he got a job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant in order to be able to get an understanding of how everything worked on a day-to-day basis.” Joe saw a parallel in taking the property manager job. He said there are three major factors to keep in mind if you decide to follow his approach: Understand that this is not a glamorous job. You may not feel as valuable or affirmed as you could in other roles, but that is not your goal. Your goal is to learn how to run a commercial real estate property from the ground up. Have your financial ducks in a row. You need to be sure you can live off this relatively low-paying job. Realize that this is your education, and you are setting yourself up for a future of success as an owner yourself. As a property manager, you are doing the vast majority of functions you will need to someday do as an owner. Start with a smaller property. Joe started out with a property of 1,000 units with a wide variety of customer and unit types. Though he learned a lot and was very successful, he was pushed to the limit daily just to keep up. He had little time to reflect and learn all he could. He feels it would have been smarter for him to manage a facility with about 500 units. Then he would’ve had time to implement new marketing strategies and test new ideas, rather than just run hard all day, every day, just to keep up. Joe said it is important to keep a journal and reflect on your thoughts, strategies, successes, and failures. He said that it is easy to disagree with the owner on strategy and tactics. Therefore, it’s good to sit down and reflect on why the owner might be doing things a certain way and why your opinion differs from his. This journal could be very valuable in your next role, potentially as an owner. Joe said it is also important to keep track of tangible ways that you have increased the income and the value of the property. For example, he said you should be able to tell the owners something like this. “In the first four months of my employment as the property manager, I took the physical occupancy of this property from 68% to 79% by personally introducing myself to as many of the current tenants as I could and notifying those tenants that I would lower their monthly rent rate by 10% for each new tenant referral that they could give me!”   Joe said it was important for tenants to see him carefully taking notes about their suggestions to improve the property. Equally as important was letting them know if and when he did what they suggested. Related: Young, No Money, No Credit? Work for Experience The Bottom Line By taking a job as a property manager, you could be well positioned to be an owner of a facility yourself someday. You’ll build your credibility in the industry, make a variety of contacts, and be in a better position to convince lenders and brokers to take you seriously. Plus, you’ll know answers to questions like these firsthand: How do you find and/or know if you have a good property manager? Do you want to run your property yourself or pay someone else to do it? How large of a property do you want? How do you keep the property manager happy and motivated? How do you keep your customers happy? What type of unit mix, marketing strategies, operations policies, and so on will be best for your facility? As I consider what Joe did, I must say I’m a bit jealous. I’ve never had this experience, and I don’t see how I can get it without walking in his shoes. It’s another benefit of taking risks while you’re young, single (Hey, ladies!), and flexible. Are you in a position to take a job as a property manager? Or an asset manager? Or a financial analyst? Or a loan broker? Or a real estate broker? If so, you may be positioning yourself for decades of future success. I’ll let Joe close this post in his own words. “Remember, the first thing I said was that being a property manager isn’t the most glorious job you will ever have. Oftentimes, I started my days by picking up other people’s trash or trying to kill rats with a broomstick or a spray bottle of Pine-Sol. “I stuck with it because I was determined to have a well-rounded understanding of the investment that I was going to be putting my capital into. Ultimately, even though I took a pay cut, the firsthand knowledge I obtained helped me gain the credibility and familiarity I needed to be considered an expert in the self-storage investing niche in the market.” What sacrifices are you willing to make to get where you want to go? Share in the comment section below.    Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

While reading Grant Cardone’s book The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure, one particular section caught my attention: “The 10X Rule requires that you take action in massive quantities and immediately. Anyone who puts off doing what he or she can do right now will never gain the momentum and confidence that result from doing so… You cannot allow even one second of worry or analysis to delay you in situations like these—because every second you spend thinking is a second of action that you’re wasting! You will be amazed how much you can get done when you quit thinking, calculating, and procrastinating and just get on with it and make a habit of acting now” (Cardone 172). Often our own minds can be our worst enemies. Over-analysis is a big problem. I have noticed in myself that inaction tends to breed further inaction, and action tends to breed further action. There is an inertia in whatever state you are in that builds upon itself. Related: 5 Highly Actionable Steps to Make REAL Progress Towards Your Investing Goals Indeed, I believe many people get stuck in a rut where they want to fix something or figure something out, but never actually do anything to fix it. They look for solutions, but they don’t act. In many ways, this is going about things backwards. Are You Addicted to Learning? Anyone who has been to a real estate seminar (or just about any business seminar for that matter) knows the type of person I will call the seminaraholic. Such a person has been to countless seminars, spent thousands of dollars on guru material, read dozens of books—and yet, hasn’t bought a single house or moved one step closer to doing what needs to be done to become successful. As Bill Walton once said, “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.” Don’t get me wrong; it’s important to read books and blogs and listen to podcasts and all the rest before you jump into real estate or any other new venture. And it’s important to keep doing so long after you’ve jumped in. Never stop educating yourself. But you don’t want to settle in for just learning while always putting off the date of beginning. Even if it’s nothing more than attending the local real estate club meetings or calling contractors, agents, and other vendors to start building your team, get on it! Activity builds on itself, and there is simply no better way to learn than by doing (and later teaching, for that matter). Don’t Run Away From Fear Fear is something we all deal with, but you should embrace it. Don’t run away from it, but instead constantly lean just outside of your comfort zone. As Susan Jeffers put in her book Feel the Fear… and Do It Anyway, “…fear will never go away as long as [you]continue to grow.” The moment you stop feeling any fear, you should start to wonder if you’re doing something wrong. It very well might be a sign that you are stagnating in your business or personal life—or perhaps both. But fear can also be alleviated by constant action. Sometimes, when I have an uncomfortable call—say, I need to call back an employment prospect to tell that person we’re offering the job to someone else or make what I know is a low offer—I stack that call between easy calls. Then I just start blasting through those calls. I don’t even give myself time to hesitate or become nervous before the difficult one. Related: 4 Steps to Get off the Sideline and Take Massive Action Action begets more action. Kill Fear With Proactivity If there is something that is lingering in the future—say, a speech you have to give—then this mindset wouldn’t help as much. Even still, if you move from one thing to the next (say a workout to speech prep to the speech itself), you give your mind less chances to cause you any strife. That being said, the tools Dale Carnegie outlines in How to Stop Worrying and Start Living can be a great additional aid. For example, if you can’t get something you fear out of your mind, write down a list of the absolute worst things that can happen. Generally, they are nowhere near as bad as that vague but omnipresent fear we feel in our stomachs before such events. The mere act of explicitly writing down the worst case scenario will often alleviate such concerns. But throughout the flow of your day and life in general, both business and personal, be as proactive as possible. If you approach life this way, many times before you even have a chance to fear something, it will already be done. Of course, this doesn’t apply to times you are trying to relax or hang out with family and friends. But when you lean toward action during work time, that will create a greater differentiation between relaxation and work and make the time you’ve devoted to relax all the more enjoyable. Err on the side of too much action and you will notice a marked improvement in your business and life as well as a lot less fear to go with it. How do you pursue action in your real estate investing business? Let me know your experiences with a comment. Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

I’ve never fully understood the obsession with figuring out why other people fail to take action when it comes to real estate investing. It seems like a lot of people genuinely look for justification not to start.  “If Jimmy didn’t start because he had no money, and I have no money, then I’m justified in not starting yet.” This is entirely the wrong mentality! Why not focus your energy on figuring out why successful people DID take action? Regardless, I’m going to tell you the real reason some who are interested in investing never take action. It’s something that isn’t discussed very often. But first, here are some of the most stereotypical excuses. Why Some Wannabes Never Take Action: The Typical Responses Don’t get me wrong. All of these excuses are pretty understandable—yet unfortunate. Let’s briefly discuss each. Fear Fear is a beast. And taking the plunge into real estate isn’t easy.  That being said, everybody experienced the feeling of fear when they bought their first property. It may not have been crippling, but it was there. Anyone who tells you they weren’t at least a little scared is probably not being completely honest with you. This is why it’s important to make decisions based on numbers and bounce the analysis off experienced investors. Don’t bring your emotions into the deal at all. Emotions are dangerous—leave them out of investing. Lack of Experience This excuse drives me nuts! NOBODY had experience before they took action—you gain experience BY taking action! If this is your excuse, either quit or work under somebody for free to gain the experience you so crave. This is a silly excuse to me. Just take action! Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Finding a Real Estate Mentor No Money This is an understandable excuse and probably the most common. I have been investing since 2015. To date, I have never paid more than 6 percent down on a real estate transaction. Leverage is wonderful. It is risky but wonderful. I house hacked my first duplex for less money than most of my cars have cost.  Theoretically, you could sell your car and buy a house.  You can overcome the “no money” issue by utilizing FHA loans, VA loans (if qualified), seller financing, purchasing subject to the existing mortgage, partnering, other people’s money, hard money lenders, etc. My point is this: While having no money is scary, if you have knowledge and time, you can invest in real estate! Not Enough Time YOU HAVE THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME AS EVERYONE ELSE! Set your priorities, and either make REI a priority or find someone with time and provide money/knowledge! This is a cop-out excuse.  I purchased a property while spending six weeks on a remote island and only having access to the internet through my cell phone a couple of times.  Figure it out. Why Some Wannabes Never Take Action: The Least Discussed Reason We have ruled out the most common excuses. And yes, they are just excuses. Now let’s talk about the least discussed reason some wannabes fail to take action (and how to avoid it). You’re LAZY! That’s it. The number one reason some people fail to take action is the amount of work required. This excuse is behind the time, fear, and experience excuses. You know it’s going to take a lot of time and energy to make this happen. You’re afraid because it takes a lot of work, and you don’t fully understand what to expect. You don’t have experience because you haven’t done it yet. In the military, there is a common phrase we use in combat: “Complacency kills.”  Although the meaning is a little different when applied to real estate, the message is the same. It’s not the one morning you sleep in or the one day you get nothing done that hurts you. It’s not the hassle you avoided today or the excuse you used today in order to procrastinate. However, if you ALWAYS avoid hassle, procrastinate, and sleep in, you will never succeed. Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins. If you want to succeed as a real estate investor, or in life in general, you need to kill the urge to be complacent—before it kills you! Related: Getting Started In Any New Real Estate Business Start Investing NOW: Here’s How Goals The first step to conquering the excuse of laziness is to sit down and set goals.  You need to long-, medium-, and short-term goals. These goals should be similar to a five-year plan, yearly goals, monthly goals, and weekly goals.  Think of the cartoons you watched as a kid where a rider would tie a carrot to the end of a long pole and dangle it in front of a stubborn horse/mule in order to motivate them to move forward. Goals are the carrot you dangle in front of yourself. No matter how driven you are (or aren’t), there will be days when you lack the motivation to do any work. At these times, it is important to have a carrot (goals) to chase in order to stay on track! M.I.N.S. Some of you may have noticed I didn’t say you need daily goals. You may have even been bothered by this and decided to tune out (haha).  The reason I didn’t mention daily goals is that, while they serve a purpose, I prefer to think in terms of the “most important next step.” This is sometimes called M.I.N.S. M.I.N.S. should be determined every night before you go to sleep. This will ensure you knock out the most important next step toward your weekly goal(s) first thing the next morning. If you can knock out the most important next step toward your goal every morning, it will snowball into accomplishing your goals quickly! The key is determining what this step is the night prior, and then doing it first thing the next morning! Accountability Most of the actions you take to achieve your goals will not be fun or easy. It’s easy to find “busy work” to use as a distraction. This busy work is more fun and often easier than accomplishing the most important next step would be. Since we are all human (I think), it’s safe to assume that you will have days, weeks, months, or even years when you fail to do the difficult task(s) that need to get done. This is human nature and a hard habit to break. And this is why accountability is crucial to your success as an investor.  You need to find some people who are on the same path as you, as well as a few who are farther down that path, and get together to grow and hold each other accountable! A common way to do this is through mastermind groups. A mastermind group is comprised of people who have lofty goals for life and are determined to achieve these goals. They meet regularly, whether in person or on conference calls, and talk through their struggles, successes, and so on in order to help each other progress. These mastermind groups are great for helping you grow and holding you accountable to achieve more! Systems Real estate investing isn’t easy at first (most things aren’t). Imagine REI as a large flywheel, and every step you take gets it to move just a little bit faster. As the flywheel speeds up, it takes less and less effort to keep it moving. This is the power of systems! Every time you complete a task, remember how you did it. If you complete that task a second time, create a system for streamlining the process. The simpler you can make tasks in real estate, the easier it becomes to buy homes! For example, one of my favorite systems to date is my Google Drive folder for lenders. Every time I have applied for a loan, I needed to provide the previous two years’ tax returns, W-2s, bank statements, photo IDs, verifiable income, etc. I created a folder titled “Lender Documents” in Google Drive that has all of this information in it, separated by tax year. Now, when I apply for a loan, I simply email a link to this folder to my lender and wait for them to tell me if they need any more documentation (which is minimal, if any)! Talk about streamlining the lending process. Don’t forget to create systems as you journey down the path of real estate investing. It will make your life so much easier! Use Laziness to Your Advantage Lazy people will often find the easiest way to accomplish a task. Use this mentality to succeed as a real estate investor—without losing all of your hair. Real estate investing isn’t easy, but it is extremely rewarding. Embrace your laziness, and use the safeguards above to continually attack your goals. Take the time to put in a lot of work now. You will be happy that you did! Have you stutter-stepped instead of starting? What’s holding you back? How will you overcome it? Leave a comment below!   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

The best way to succeed in investment is to learn from the strategies (and mistakes) that other investors have made. And while it’s easy and free to learn from the investors in your network, your network has limited knowledge. Utilize your network, but also consider reading books about investment—or at least consider listening to them. I am guilty of spending a lot of time in my car driving to meetings or to check out new investments. I like to take advantage of that time to listen to Audible, Amazon’s audiobook service. It turns the time I used to waste in the car into some of the most educational points of my week. And it’s not exclusively relevant to car rides, you can use the app on a train, plane, at the gym, or really, anywhere. While Rich Dad Poor Dad is on every new real estate investor’s list of must-listens, you might struggle to figure out which of the other 290 investment books in the Audible archive to listen to next. Consider this list I’ve curated by comparing listener reviews for real estate investment books. Make it your new year’s resolution to listen to the top six real estate investment Audible books for 2019. 6 Audiobooks Investors Should Listen to in 2019 6. The New Investor’s Guide to Owning a Mobile Home Park This book has withstood the test of time and maintained a high rating since its in late 2013. The book was written by Laura Cochran and has earned a 4.5 star rating based on 82 reviews. The four-hour book details why mobile home park ownership is a good investment and provides step by step instructions on how to buy and manage your own park. Related: 10 Absolute Must-Read Real Estate Books for Beginning Investors You can purchase this guide to mobile home investment for 1 Audible credit, $10.46 for Audible members, or $14.95 for non-members. 5. The Book on Negotiating Real Estate This book not only has the most ratings of any book on our list, it has more reviews than all the other books combined. This means that while the book is only the fifth highest ranked on our list, a much larger quantity of investors has listened to its advice and found it valuable. It deals with expert strategies for getting the best deals when buying and selling investment properties. The book is filled with anecdotes that highlight strong negotiation and instructions on how to emulate them. You can purchase The Book on Negotiating Real Estate by J Scott, Mark Ferguson, and Carol Scott for 1 Audible credit, the member price of $13.96 or $19.95. 4. High Cash Flow Real Estate Investing: Learn the Secrets to Creating Hassle-Free Profitable Cash Flows in Real Estate Investing This book highlights the importance of knowing your local market and how to expand beyond it in order to create simple and profitable cash flows in real estate investing. This book includes both volumes of the series. It lasts for an hour and 45 minutes. It has earned a 4.8 star review based on 33 ratings. You can purchase it for 1 Audible credit, $4.96 as an audible member and $6.95 for non-members. You may also want to consider ValleyWide Real Estate Investment’s other audiobook on flipping houses, which is similarly priced and has also earned strong reviews. 3. Real Estate Investing: The Ultimate Guide to Building a Rental Property Empire for Beginners This book has earned a 4.9 star rating based on the reviews of 22 people. It provides instructions on real estate wholesaling, property management, and financial freedom. It includes advice on negotiating techniques, financing sources, how to add value to your investments, and proven ways to find reliable tenants, in addition to other suggestions. The audiobook is more than five hours long and was written by Brandon Anderson. You can purchase the book for 1 Audible credit, $13.96 for Audible members, and $19.95 for non-members. Related: 5 Business Books That Changed My Real Estate Investing Life 2. Real Estate Investing: How to Make Your Riches from Rental Properties and Flipping Houses, and Build Passive Income by Mastering the Property Investment Game This late-2018 book aims to help listeners journey to financial freedom by giving them a basic understanding of the market and market strategies. The book walks a new investor through their first deal and helps investors take advantage of the flipping trend. The book is only three hours long and was written by Bradley Watson. It earned 4.9 stars on Audible based on 23 ratings. The lowest reviews were four stars, but all three reviewers left positive feedback within their commentary. Many reviewers commented on the strong strategies within the book and how helpful the book is for beginners. You Can Purchase Real Estate Investing: How to Make Your Riches from Rental Properties and Flipping Houses, and Build Passive Income by Mastering the Property Investment Game for 1 Audible credit, $10.46 if you’re an Audible member, and $14.96 for non-members. 1. Passive Income: Passive Income Strategies to Start Making Money with Little to No Investment A short, three-hour listen, this book, by Joseph Samson is the only real estate investment book to earn 5 stars on the platform. It has earned 25 reviews thus far. The book provides investors with a comprehensive path toward buying and holding real estate. It’s particularly helpful for new investors looking to transcend perceived socioeconomic class. You can purchase the book, which was released in November of last year, for 1 credit, the Audible member price of $10.46, or the non-member price of $14.95. What books would you add to this list? Comment below! Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

Let’s talk about networking. This will be a mix of local and digital networking tips, but all are actionable and useful. Most people I talk to are eager to ramp up their real estate investing business, but they just don’t know enough people to help them. Worse, they aren’t making a big enough effort to fix it. They usually know this to be the case. So, here’s a short list of tips to point you in the right direction. How to Be a Better Networker 1. Socially acceptable internet stalking You know you should go to your local REIA or meetup, but when you’re new, it can be daunting. Trust me that I’ve gone to plenty as a new person, and I know that it can be awkward, frustrating, and unproductive. It’s awful to go alone, and it almost universally leads to the most uncomfortable beginners there connecting with the other uncomfortable beginners. This is not what you want. Here is the easy fix: find people on BiggerPockets who are going to your next local REIA and make a quick online intro. A few emails later, you have at least one to two people’s hand to shake when you get there. This removes so much of that early discomfort. Plus, you never know who they might introduce you to! If you want to invest out of state, you should still spend a lot of time at your local investor groups, because the principles of investing are the same regardless of region. What you learn from locals can be applied anywhere. I don’t invest in Las Vegas, but I’ve helped plenty of locals here invest out of state. The same can happen to you if you go meet the right people. Networking is an artificial talent like any other. It’s not a natural, biological trait, but it can be learned by anyone. It’s not necessary to become a master to benefit from it. For those who are more on the shy side, you especially should use the internet to break the ice with strangers. You can do so without risking as much discomfort or rejection. The internet is the great equalizer of extroverts and introverts to find success in networking. Related: 10 Simple Actions to Substantially Build Your Network — Starting Today! 2. E = E – 30% The effort you put into cold emails is the effort you get back minus around 30 percent. Full transparency: I made up the 30 percent figure. But it’s a reference to explain that no one is going to care more about your success than you—just like you don’t care about anyone else’s success more than them. If you put a really low-effort email out to someone, you should always expect them to reply with even less effort. Here’s a low-effort example: “Hey Alex, I saw your content and I wanted to invest in your area. Can you give me the name of your contractor, property manager, and lender, please? Also, can you explain delayed finance to me? Thanks.” Now, I’m a pretty charitable guy, and I will give all that information out to people for free—no problem. I do it all the time, but what’s my incentive here? My team makes money when I send them business, and I do like that. But from this approach, I can’t tell if you are a very serious investor or just a leech. Are they looking to build a long-term relationship? They seemingly put in little to no effort. This person clearly didn’t look through enough of my content to find that I post most of this stuff online already. So I will give no effort in return. You need to consider this when you reach out to people. Back to part one, internet stalking. Find the person you think can help you, and then see if they have a website/podcast/social media account/etc? Have you looked through it at all? Are you considering what that person might need in return? Or what their goals are? When you take a bit of time to look at least some of this stuff up, the receiving party will be much more willing to help you. Those who post on the BiggerPockets Forums love to say that networking works off a trade of value, but I disagree. And this is not the first time I’ve written about my position on it. If networking was a trade of value, then beginners with few resources and little experience would have no chance to make connections. This isn’t the case by any means. The evidence is obvious: BiggerPockets itself is littered with folks who provide information to help to beginners all the time with no expectation of a return. What do they want instead of trade of value? Simply, they want to invest in the next rockstar, and rockstars put in effort. Remember: E = E – 30%. So when you’re putting in MASSIVE effort, people will notice and they will happily invest in you. They’ll do so because they know their efforts will be utilized well. The next time you want help from someone, you should absolutely ask them for it. But you should also look at yourself first and ask what effort you’ve put in beforehand. Related: The Ultimate Guide to Building & Maintaining a Powerful Real Estate Network 3. Manage your closing ratio I talk to people about how to improve their networking all the time. Most people know they have to step up, but they can’t get past a certain mental hurdle. Instead of throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks, approach it like a sales quota. Start with closing ratio and work backward. If you could get 10 superstar real estate investors who are just ahead of you in your close network, you would be a success in no time. Let’s assume you have to send out 50 emails for every one real connection. Well, you’re only 500 emails away from your goal right? Some people will say that sounds over-simplified. But how about you send the 500 (genuine, high-effort) emails, and tell me if it works? Do this as opposed to assuming that it won’t work. I only provide this advice because it’s worked so well for me. I know it’ll work for you, too.  4. Practice every day This is my favorite advice: do all of these things a little bit every day, and you’ll become faster and more comfortable than you’d ever imagined. BiggerPockets is the best real estate resource on the internet. People use it mostly for education—which is good—but they under-utilize it for networking. Use BiggerPockets to search for people in your area (and the area you want to invest in if it’s out of state) who are doing what you want to do. Send them a high-effort email, and watch your network expand quickly. What’s holding you back from networking? How can I help you overcome these hurdles?  Let me know in a comment below!   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

So many of us are always seeking more skills, more tips, more ways to gather real estate knowledge. That’s great, but working with people all over North America has shown me very, very clearly that the space between our ears is by far the most important. Yes, it’s more important than skillsets. The eight points below are just a few of many mental training tips from which most people could benefit. They are not designed to be done once or twice. Rather, they are designed to do daily! Try to make them a habit, part of your morning routine. You can edit and customize each as you see fit, but work toward making them habitual. 8 Ways to Get Your Mind Right in the Morning 1. Meditate and visualize your goals. This can be done while working out, before starting your day, and/or before going to sleep at night. A good friend of mine, Dr. Joe Vitale, really helped me perfect my technique and has done amazing work on the subject. He’s also authored over 70 books—many of which deal with this. Together, we developed a course called “The 31-Day Billionaire,” which has nothing to do with real estate and 100 percent to do with the space between your ears. 2. Do some sort of exercise. Take a walk, lift weights, do yoga—do something—daily. This creates more discipline and more energy to accomplish your goals while lowering your stress. For me, this means heading to Anytime Fitness two days per week at 3:30 a.m. for yoga or meditation. If I start my day without one (or a combination of a couple things), I’m off rhythm in every way. Call it a morning ritual, daily discipline, or whatever you want, but give it a try. Related: 5 Transformative Productivity Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read [Video] 3. Review your life plan and business plan. Do this daily, for four to five minutes minimum. Of course, this one requires you to have a life/business plan first! This can be as simple as an index card, which I keep inside my journal, where I’ve written my top four goals for the month and top six to eight for the year. There’s something about reviewing those daily and embedding them into your subconscious that does wonders. 4. Read something inspirational. There are several thousand incredible books out to keep you motivated, focused, and intense. What’s really cool now is you can utilize Audible, Blinkist, and many other apps to listen or read anytime, anywhere. For me, I read physical books at home and while on the stationary bike at the gym, and then listen to audiobooks while in the car, running, walking, or working out on the elliptical machine. See, it’s actually easy to combine a few of these eight game-changers. By the way, Blinkist provides a 15-minute summary of 3,000-plus books. Who doesn’t have time for that? 5. Listen to something motivational. This can also be done while working out or while driving in your car. Play something motivational or educational whenever you can. Your automobile can literally act as a university if you choose to take advantage of it. What are you working on in your business or life this year? Get the audio files for the training(s) and immerse yourself in them. 6. Recite affirmations out loud. You can even take it to the next level and create your own affirmations audio loop. Affirmations are extremely powerful, and almost all successful people use them to their advantage. Two fabulous books to get you started with affirmations are Affirmations of Wealth: 101 Secrets of Daily Success by V. John Alexandrov and What to Say When You Talk to Yourself by Shad Helmstetter. John was a very close friend who passed away over a year ago, just before his 60th birthday. His work lives on, and I actually was asked by the family to purchase the rights and continue his legacy, which I did. Related: The One Thing Every Real Estate Investor Should Do Each Morning 7. Develop healthy lunch habits. Eating lunch is obviously not something you can do in the morning, but you can use the a.m. to set yourself up for success. Try to have lunch at the same time daily, and eat something designed to give you some energy for the afternoon. Shortly after waking up, pack what you’re going to eat midday—or at the very least, make a plan so you can avoid resorting to fast food if in need of a quick bite. How many of you are dragging in the afternoon? There’s no need for it. Redesign how, when, and what you eat. 8. Visualize and execute. When you wake up, for a moment pretend as if you’re unemployed (in the sense of income generation). You have to do something productive or waste the day. It’s super easy to get comfortable when things are going well. But if you’ve broken down your yearly goals into daily bite-sized pieces—and regardless of the progress you’ve experienced thus far, you do that one thing every day—you’ll have an amazing year. Don’t get complacent with success. Do you work on bettering yourself daily? How so? What results have you experienced? Share in a comment below!   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

I love listening to podcasts! A podcast is the most direct way to learn from experts in any given field. Think about it—many podcasts, particularly those related to real estate or personal finances, are structured like this: for 30 to 90 minutes, a guest takes you through their journey to become the successful person they are today. They talk about failures and how they dealt with challenges. They talk about current struggles and what they’re doing to overcome them. They talk about what worked and what didn’t work for them along the journey. By listening to podcasts, you can avoid many costly mistakes and streamline your own journey to success. And the best part is you can listen to them anywhere—in the shower, car (my favorite while commuting), walking down the street, cooking in the kitchen…literally anywhere! But there are so many great real estate investing and/or personal finance podcasts out there. Where should you begin? Here I’ll break down some of my favorites for you! Related: How I’ve Made Over a Million Dollars Listening to Real Estate Podcasts Real Estate Podcasts Real estate investing is a great way to build wealth, but without a guide, it can be complex. Want to become the next Manny Khoshbin, Grant Cardone, or Donald Trump? You need to listen to these real estate podcasts as frequently as possible! The BiggerPockets Podcast – Brandon Turner and David Greene (and Josh Dorkin for the first ~250 episodes) With over 50,000,000 downloads, the BiggerPockets Podcast is the most successful real estate podcast in the world. I attribute much of my own success as a real estate investor to this very podcast. When I first became interested in real estate, I started listening to an episode every day on my commute. Since then, I’ve listened to almost all of the episodes that have been released! My favorite episode was No. 281 (because I was a guest). Joking, of course.  I can’t pick a favorite episode, because every week they come out with a new one that is just as amazing as the last. If you like real estate investing—in any capacity—this podcast is for you! Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever – Joe Fairless Joe is an absolute beast. The Best Ever podcast (shorthanded) produces a new episode daily and currently has 1,740 episodes released. (I can’t imagine recording that many podcasts!) I like this show because there is ALWAYS a new episode to listen to. With nearly 2,000 produced, Joe most likely has covered any real estate topic you’re curious about. Millennial Real Estate Investor Podcast – Ben Welch and Dan Mackin I had the opportunity to appear as a guest on this show (episode No. 35), too, and really enjoyed the hosts. I prefer shows with two knowledgeable hosts. It makes the flow of conversation better and allows for even better questions to be asked. That means better content for the listener! Like the name implies, this podcast is geared toward millennials. So if you’re a young real estate investor, this podcast is for you. The Military Millionaire Podcast – David Pere The Military Millionaire is a real estate podcast specifically geared toward service members and the working class. It features many guests who are military real estate investors, including several who transitioned from active duty to civilian through real estate. Yes, this means it discusses VA loan investment strategies, as well. There are also several very successful real estate investors who got started in the working class. The goal of this podcast is to show that with education (not formal), creativity, and grit, you can build wealth through real estate investing! You don’t have to start with a huge income or inheritance. If you are in the military, this podcast is for you. The Investor Mindset Podcast – Steven Pesavento This is a newer podcast, with only 16 episodes at the time of writing. However, they have already reached 20,000 downloads and are growing at an exponential rate! Th Investor Mindset focuses 80 percent of their content on the motivation and mindset that leads to success and 20 percent on the investing strategies and tactics that will get you there. I like this podcast because I believe mindset is incredibly important in order to become successful. Steven has already had some killer real estate investors on this show, and I look forward to watching it grow! If you want to improve your investor mindset, this podcast is for you. Personal Finance Podcasts Personal finance is the foundation of real estate investing. Without understanding your own finances, it is very difficult to build (and keep) wealth. This is why most lottery winners find themselves broke very quickly. For this reason, I recommend listening to personal finance podcasts, as well, in order to become well-rounded. You want to build a foundation that allows your real estate income to compound without needing to draw on it to pay your personal bills. BiggerPockets Money – Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench The BiggerPockets Money show is newer than the real estate podcast, but they already have 75 episodes to date. One of the most common questions real estate investors ask is, “How do I get started with no money or bad credit?” This podcast talks about managing your personal finances and improving your credit score in order to build a solid foundation for investing. They also talk about the financial independence retire early (FIRE) concept and how to obtain this by optimizing your personal finance behavior. If you want to improve your finances or your credit score, this podcast is for you. Related: No Credit? Bad Credit? 6 Steps to Fix Your Finances Choose FI – Brad Barrett and Jonathan Mendonsa With 130 episodes to date, the Choose FI show is one of the best-rated financial independence (FI) podcasts out there! They discuss reducing expenses, crushing debt, building passive income, etc. The goal of this podcast is to give simple, actionable steps in order to help you speed up the process of reaching financial independence. If you want to obtain financial freedom, this podcast is for you. Financial Freedom – Grant Sabatier This show is all about the premise that “money is unlimited, time is not.” The goal of the Financial Freedom show is to help you become financially independent as fast as possible. Guests share strategies for mastering money and living a meaningful life. Grant reached financial independence and “retired” at the age of 30. If you’re interested in reaching financial freedom at an early age, this podcast is for you. What’s Up Next – Paul Thompson and Doc G This podcast is different. I think that is why I like it. It features a panel discussion with two hosts and two or three guests on each episode. The guests are (usually) top influencers in the financial independence space that weigh in on questions that don’t have clear answers. If you like to hear experts attempt to answer uncommon, difficult questions, this podcast is for you! Bonus These podcasts don’t fit directly into the real estate/personal finance realm but are equally interesting to me! Smart Passive Income – Pat Flynn Pat Flynn is an influencer in the online entrepreneur community. He hosts courses on building a business/brand, creating podcasts, affiliate marketing, etc. I like this podcast because Pat Flynn was a large source of information for me when starting my online community. Pat has achieved massive success but has managed to keep things simple. He’s also never stopped helping “the little man.” If you’re starting a blog, podcast, or community, this podcast is for you. The Tim Ferriss Show – Tim Ferriss (obviously) Tim Ferriss is probably best known for his book The 4-Hour Workweek. Tim has been referred to as “the world’s best human guinea pig” by Newsweek. In this show, he hosts world-renowned guests from unique niches. He asks difficult questions to discover tips/tricks from these professionals that listeners can apply to their own lives. If you’re interested in entrepreneurship or hearing about cool cultural differences across the world, this podcast is for you. Jocko Podcast – Jocko Willink This podcast is about leadership and discipline. The description of this show online is literally only three words: “leadership and discipline.” Jocko Willink is a retired Navy SEAL Commander and bestselling author. His podcast is a wonderful gut-check for anybody looking to become a better leader. If you want to take ownership of your life to become more disciplined and a better leader, this podcast is for you. BiggerPockets Business – J and Carol Scott BiggerPockets Business Podcast is new and started with a bang. They advertise this show as a real-world MBA, where entrepreneurs guide you through what it really takes to start, scale, and sell your own business. I like this podcast because it brings everything together for entrepreneurs. It brings the same great quality that BiggerPockets brings to all of their podcasts and has already had some awesome guests, like BiggerPockets founder Josh Dorkin. If you’re an entrepreneur (or aspiring to be one), this podcast is for you. My Favorite Podcast My favorite podcast is the one I’m listening to at that moment. I love any show that answers questions I have or adds value to my life. There are so many great podcasts and great episodes out there. I recommend you try out every one on this list that sounds like it might be useful for you and figure out a way to fit podcasts into your daily life. Listening will speed up your journey to success and allow you to speak the language of finance nerds, investors, and entrepreneurs alike! What are you waiting for? Go download some podcasts! What else are you listening to that I didn’t mention? List your favorites in a comment below!   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

Brandon Turner reads 27 books a day. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration, but he reads all the time. It doesn’t hurt that he’s a speed reader, but that man plows through books in a way that makes me quite jealous. (Of course, he doesn’t have a 10-year-old and 7-year-old currently trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Consecutive Hours Fighting like I do, but I digress.) I aspire to be like Brandon, and you should, too. He is brilliant, and he never stops learning. There’s no shortage of business books out there and there’s no shortage of real estate books, either. But sometimes you aren’t in the mood for a business book or a real estate book. (I know, crazy talk, right?) I asked around for fiction book recommendations for entrepreneurs, and I got some really great responses. Many of the same titles were suggested multiple times. Absolutely my favorite response was recommended by Brian Davis of SparkRental, who also writes for The BiggerPockets Blog periodically and Brett Bastello from Community Tax. Not only did I love this book, but the lessons you can learn while being entertained are numerous. The Martian by Andy Weir When an astronaut is accidentally abandoned on Mars all alone, he has only his wits and motivation to survive on. His fate is entirely in his own hands, and it is literally an innovate-or-die scenario. In a neat trick of thematic juxtaposition, Weir tells a parallel narrative of the massive collaborative effort taking place on Earth to try and bring the astronaut home. One narrative is about lone survival against all odds, and the other is about the power of collaboration and teamwork—and the lessons of each are necessary for entrepreneurs to succeed. As a bonus, the prose is witty, funny, and a pleasure to read. The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason Recommended by Chris Murray of Varda Kreuz Training, this is a fabulous, timeless book that reveals the secrets to making and keeping personal wealth. I also read this book after numerous people recommended it. It reads like the King James Version of the Bible, but the lessons it contains are so powerful that I had to stop highlighting it because I was highlighting entire pages! It was published in 1926 but is every bit as relevant today as it was then. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand Adam Jusko from Credit Card Catalog and Bryan Koontz from Guide Fitter both raved about this book. Adam told me, “I’m sure Ayn Rand’s name will come up over and over. My favorite is The Fountainhead, which not only espouses staying true to your vision but also warns about the naysayers who will try to bring you down. Atlas Shrugged is probably the better-known of Rand’s books, but it is basically a bloated version of The Fountainhead, which is the better read by far.” Jason Bauman from Trinity Insight shared a couple of books that I have not yet read—nor even heard about before—but I have put them on my list. Based on his description, they cover some pretty important business topics from the extremely timely privacy rights to basic business ideas of figuring out how to create a business by seeing what others do not. The Circle by Dave Eggers The Circle is near-future dark satire. I think it’s important for entrepreneurs to read because it lays out some pretty complex questions about the right to privacy and how easy it is to rationalize it away. In today’s connected era, business will have access to a lot of potential information about their customers. How they manage that data should matter. In general, I think that technology is a net positive, but it’s good to keep that optimism grounded in how radically a transparent society would change things. Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell Quarter Share is the first of a six-part series of short novels that follow the protagonist, Ishmael Horatio Wang, who leaves his home planet to try and build a life for himself in space. I think this is a great book because it shows how, even when he was just a lowly member of the crew, Ishmael identified how he could improve his ship and eventually make some cash by thinking of novel solutions to problems that others just thought of as a fact of life. Ishmael identifies underserved markets and then leverages what he has available to enter that market and become profitable. A light-hearted entry into this list is from everyone’s favorite, Dr. Seuss. I actually bought a copy of this book for each of my daughters and am having it signed by every teacher they have as they go through school and will give it to them upon high school graduation. While I’d love to take credit for this idea, I actually found it on Pinterest. It’s so fun for me to see the comments from each teacher and to follow their progress through the years. Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss “I recommend every entrepreneur read Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss. Is this is a kid’s book? Yep! Does it have a powerful message that resonates with all ages? Absolutely! Entrepreneurs are natural explorers. Just as it says in the book, they have brains in their head, feet in their shoes, and can steer themselves in any direction they choose. You’ll have great moments of success alongside your other fellow entrepreneurs, but you will also have moments where you’re left behind in a lurch and trying to figure out what road is best to travel with your small business. Being too hesitant to decide what to do may stick you in the dreaded ‘The Waiting Place’—it’s up to you to keep moving forward through the good and bad times alike. Just remember, ‘Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So get on your way!’” —Deborah Sweeney, MyCorporation The Alchemist by Paul Coelho I don’t think a fiction-books-for-entrepreneurs list would be complete without The Alchemist by Paul Coelho and neither did Jennifer Martin of Zest Business Consulting, Holly Stokes from The Brain Trainer, and James Sinclair of Trade Finance Global. The Alchemist is about following your dreams, making sacrifices, and not settling for a basic level of comfort. It isn’t the most practical book, but it does give you a sense of perspective about your problems and how to view each obstacle in your path. It is a short, simple, frustrating read—good for any entrepreneur. You Can Learn From Anything, Anyone, Anywhere The opportunity to learn surrounds you every day. Every single person on this planet can teach you something, and some of the best learning comes from non-traditional settings. Do you have a favorite fiction book you’d recommend entrepreneurs read? Leave your comments below! Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you

“People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.” — Samuel Johnson This is one of many quotes that stuck with me after I revisited Darren Hardy’s the The Compound Effect. I first read this book by the former Success magazine publisher a year ago, but it had more impact the second time. The book (reviewed on BiggerPockets in 2013) may have resonated more because I listened to the audiobook and related book talks repeatedly for a month. Or it may be because I was ready to hear its central message: that small, consistent action is the key to success. In either case, there are insights beyond this premise that we need to be reminded of. Two of those are to study more and fail fast. Learn Less and Study More In the conclusion of the audiobook, Hardy urges listeners to learn less but study more. He argues that information overload is stopping us from absorbing and acting on what we learn. I saw this firsthand at a recent real estate meetup. I asked a want-to-be investor what niche he wants to pursue. He said he wants to be a landlord. Then he mentioned that he might want to do wholesaling because the last podcast he heard was about wholesaling. Next, he said he might want to flip houses, too, since he’d recently read a book about flipping. So, yes, he’s picked up some knowledge, but he has no clarity. To reduce the information overload, Hardy suggests being more strategic about what and how you learn. For example, if you are a new investor, start with an overview of the real estate specialties. You can download and read “The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Real Estate Investing” for free from this website. Then choose one of those specialties, and study it. Read books, participate in forums, and listen to podcast episodes about that specialty. Some niche-specific BiggerPockets resources worth studying include The Book on Flipping Houses by J Scott, podcast #273 “An Introduction to Passive Income Through Real Estate Note Investing with Dave Van Horn” and The Book on Rental Property Investing by Brandon Turner. For consistency, schedule a day and time to study. And make it the same day or time every week. Hardy suggests studying anything you want to learn for at least 21 days, and then graduate to 90 days. He also advises that you take time to digest what you learn before you move to the next thing. Do this by taking notes, talking to someone else about what you’ve learned, or even blogging about it. But please don’t use studying as an excuse not to act. If you don’t like flipping, don’t spend 21 days reading about it. Move on to another specialty. Spend time studying the niche that you are interested in pursuing. But, don’t study endlessly. There’s no real way to know when you are ready to act, but if you find yourself still studying after a year, then you’re stalling. Related: 4 Tips to Combat the Analysis Paralysis That Comes From TMI (Too Much Information) Hurry Up and Fail If you want success on a large scale, Hardy suggests that you run, not walk, toward failure. Not so long ago, I asked a longtime REIA member about her latest deal during a club meeting. I was surprised to learn that she doesn’t own any rentals and wasn’t currently working on any deals. When I asked her why, she said, “I’m scared of making a mistake.” Fear is something we can all relate to, but you may not be as blunt about the reason you’re stalling. You may express your fear with these kinds of excuses instead: I don’t have enough money to invest. My metro area is too expensive. Hard money loans are too risky. If you find these and similar excuses running through your head, remember this quote from former IBM President Thomas Watson: “The key to success is massive failure.” In one of his book talks, Hardy explains how he tested this quote. He tells how, as a young real estate agent, he went after new clients by pursuing expired listings and properties listed as for sale by owner. He also knocked on doors and made cold calls regularly. He got plenty of nos and doors closed on his face. But he eventually got yeses, too. As a result of experiencing so much rejection, Hardy eventually became the No. 1 agent in his office. And then a millionaire in his 20s! He found that running toward failure, rather than away from it, led to more success. Related: 3 Ways to Succeed Despite Failure (Video With Tim Ferriss!) The Bottom Line If you’ve educated yourself enough but are hampered by fear, then you should make it your mission to fail. Remember that you cannot avoid making mistakes. And there is only so much you can learn from other people’s mistakes! So be afraid, and go fail anyway. The sooner you fail, the sooner you will have success. How have you approached your real estate education and failure? Leave a comment below!   Free eBook from BiggerPockets! Join BiggerPockets and get The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Real Estate Investing for FREE - read by more than 100,000 people - AND get exclusive real estate investing tips, tricks, and techniques delivered straight to your inbox twice weekly! Actionable Advice for Getting Started, Discover the 10 Most Lucrative Real Estate Niches, Learn how to get started with or without money, Explore Real-Life Strategies for Building Wealth, And a LOT more Sign up below to download the eBook for FREE today! Click Here to Download the eBook Now! We hate spam just as much as you