Deprogramming the Guru Mindset
[I wrote this rant to a friend of mine some time ago, and it seems that some people here might agree with me...]
Lies They Tell You In Real Estate Seminars
Don't Listen To The Poor People Like many effective lies, this has a grain of truth in it. But in the way a grain of sand may feel larger than it is when it's caught in your shoe, a grain of truth can be made to 'feel' larger than it is in the confines of the sales pitch.
Listening to someone who knows nothing at all about real estate when you're looking for advice on whether or not you should get into real estate is, by all accounts, kind of pointless. This is true. And if you have a circle of friends who only seem to want to keep you at their level and get resentful if you dare to advance beyond your station, you might do well to keep your bright ideas to yourself around them.
HOWEVER. Ever so subtly implied in that sentence is an unspoken conclusion. You should listen to ME, the millionaire. So if your friends balk at you spending thousands of dollars on courses and boot camps, well, what do they know? They're poor, remember?
Don't fall for that trick. Listen to the poor people, the rich people, listen to everyone. Weigh what you know against what you learn and draw your own conclusions.
Work Sucks Real Estate Investing apparently offers a dream life of uncharted bliss, where you don't have to answer to bosses or timeclocks. Spending forty hours a week for a salary is a colossal waste of your time and energy, to hear them say it. You'll never get RICH working a JOB, you moron.
Maybe you won't. And here's a concept--maybe it doesn't matter. Despite what they try to pound into your heads, it is actually possible to work a regular job and enjoy your life. If you're working towards your dreams and goals, why should you care how you make your money while you're doing it? There's also a concept that they kind of avoid mentioning--that there are other ways to make money beyond salaried employment and real estate. It's not an either/or proposition.
College Degrees Aren't Worth Anything Many people wind up getting a degree in one discipline and wind up making their living through a different one. This is presented as some kind of punchline to a bad joke instead of evidence that human beings have this funny habit of changing their minds and adapting to circumstances instead of plotting rigid irreversible courses with their lives. Learning how to think, how to present ideas and how to research are never wasted lessons. You may not remember much from Physics class, but how on earth would you have learned that science wasn't ideal for you without actually learning something about it first? And for that matter, how are you supposed to learn new information without a grounded base of knowledge to build on? Knowledge is not always called upon consciously--you don't have to remember every detail of the day you learned a new word to retain its meaning. College is the one time in your life that you are allowed to submerge yourself in the world of the mind. It is an honor and a privilege and small wonder that people pay so much for it. Complaining that a degree didn't magically get you a job is like complaining that a Faberge egg doesn't have any chocolate in it.
You Must Act Now! This advice messes up more beginning investors than anything. And in a way, it's just collateral damage.
The reason you have to Act Right Away Or Rot Away In Loserville is because if you took the time to think about it, you might wind up not buying their crap. It's good advice to sell you courses, but incredibly crummy advice for, oh, actually investing. It's the reasons investors wind up in over their heads, because they buy houses in the same impulsive blinded rush that they bought the how-to course with. There will always be houses. There will always be people to buy them from and sell them to. Taking the time to make sure you know what you're doing will make you more money in the long run than rushing to make your first Big *** Check ever will.
(Then again, what do I know? I'm just one of the poor people, right?) :wink: