Hustle or Knowledge: What’s More Important for Real Estate Success?

Each week, we post a new question to the Best Ever Show Community on Facebook. The Best Ever Show Community is a place where real estate entrepreneurs of all stripes and sizes can come together to interact with each other, me, and the guests featured on my podcast with the purpose of everyone helping each other reach the next level in their businesses and their lives.

What better way to add value than to ask you, the community, for your Best Ever advice on a variety of different real estate topics. This week, the question was “which is more important for success as a real estate investor: hustle or knowledge?

Hustle beat out knowledge with 15 votes to 9 votes, while 4 others said both and one rebel said neither are important (although their responses was my favorite one!). However, the margin was much smaller than I expected. While the majority of the active real estate professionals think that hustle is more important than knowledge, which I believe as well, the knowledge voters made a strong case for their side.

That being said, the poll is closed, the responses are in and here are the results:

Hustle is More Important

Personally, I am of the belief that hustle trumps knowledge for the same reason as Slocomb Reed. He said that hustle will naturally lead to knowledge, but knowledge will not naturally lead to hustle. Similarly, Ryan Groene said that knowledge can be acquired while hustle is hard to teach. Anyone can become knowledgeable of real estate though books, blogs, podcasts, seminars, consultant/mentors and various other educational means. However, I don’t know of any course that teaches you how to hustle and persist when the going gets tough. You either have it or you don’t.

The other camp of investors who think hustle is more important than knowledge came to that conclusion because taking action is the only thing that brings you closer to achieving your goals, period. Grant Rothenburger said all the knowledge in the world means nothing with no action or hustle. Evan Holladay provided a powerful quote from a book he is reading, Born to Build by Gene Glick, on the importance of hustle: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts; persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” If you are the most educated, talented genius in the world, without hustle, persistence and determination, it’s all for naught. And we see this time and time again when we hear the stories of the college or high school dropout who built a real estate or business empire or the athlete who was cut from their high school sports team (Michael Jordan comes to mind) and become a professional sports legend through hustle and grit alone.

Knowledge is More Important

I still believe that hustle is more important than knowledge when it comes to real estate success, but some of the active real estate professionals in the Best Ever Community made a strong case for knowledge being more important. One of the most common arguments is that hustle without knowledge is like a sailor without a compass or a driver without a map. Dan Handford said you can have all the hustle in the world but if you don’t have knowledge, then the hustle is just busy work without results. Glen Sutherland said he has friends with no knowledge but plenty of hustle. They don’t know what to do or how to create a business for themselves, so they end up working for someone else who has the required knowledge.

The other common argument is that hustle is only important in the short-term, while knowledge is vital to long-term success. Nathan Nuckole said hustle is temporary and applied knowledge is long-term, which is the difference between active and passive investing. He would take passive (which comes from knowledge) all day. Charlie Kao said hustle is important at the beginning but knowledge is important later on because you hustle to acquire the knowledge and use the knowledge to work smarter, not harder. Lastly, Michael Beeman said with knowledge and no hustle, you can grow slowly over time. He buys real estate from mom and pop landlords who built a portfolio of 20 to 25 units over the course of 30 years and who are all financially free in their retirement years. Also, Michael voted for knowledge because he’s seen investors who lack knowledge but have a lot of hustle make horrible mistakes which lead to burn outs or quitting entirely.

In summary, for the knowledge argument, Curtis Danskin said knowledge is power.

Both are Important

Of course, as you can see from the previous two sections, both are important. Julia Bykhovskaia said knowledge without taking action is useless and hustle without knowledge is like a high-speed, rudderless boat. It will just run aground. Chibuzor Nnaji said to have knowledge and add hustle to it, because you can know everything you need to know but what good does that do for you if you sit on your hands.

Neither are Important

I think my favorite response to this question was Adam Adams, who said that it is impossible to be successful without both. However, if you have knowledge, you can partner with hustle and if you have hustle, you can partner with knowledge. I am a firm believer that everyone has a unique talent and skill set, and that they should focus on applying that to their business while finding team members and partners who complement them.

What do you think? Comment below: What is more important to success in real estate, hustle or knowledge?