When I first started getting into real estate investing years ago, my enthusiasm for learning the business couldn't have been higher. I started researching and learning all I could. I planned and then revised how I wanted my business to operate, I reviewed my local markets and talked to local investors who were doing a lot of business. But after a year, I still owned no properties, I had done no deals, and had spoken with very few actual sellers. Why? Because I fell into a common trap that snags many aspiring real estate heavyweights.
"The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise." - Publius Tacitus
As much as I wanted to be successful in real estate, as much as I wanted to be my own boss, the plain and simple fact was that I was afraid. I was comfortable in my current situation and even though I had a strong drive to succeed, it didn't override my fear of the unknown and my fear of failure.
This is a big problem that affects lots of new real estate investors. There is no easy way around it, but there are steps you can take that will help you overcome your fear. Heather O'Brien has a chapter in the upcoming Be a Real Estate Heavyweight book that devotes some discussion to this very important topic.
I had a lot of "what if" fears when I got into this business. I worried what I would do if a tenant didn't make his lease payment. What if I took a house ‘subject to' and then it got destroyed by Mother Nature? What I learned was that "what ifs" plague pretty much everybody, but you can minimize their affect on you by effective planning. Worried what will happen if an investment house gets swept away by the Missouri River? Don't let it paralyze you: either don't buy in the flood plane or make sure you have the correct kind of insurance. Lesson: take action against the cause of these fears and don't let them just sit and eat at you.
Even more poisonous to new investors is the fear of success. Some of you may think this sounds crazy. I did at first. But it's a fact that many people suffer from it. Maybe something in their past makes them feel like they don't deserve success, or maybe they've allowed a past failure to influence them to think that they're not good enough to succeed. This is perhaps the hardest type to overcome because there really is no easy way around it. You simply have to recognize it and let... it... go. You have to train yourself get past it.
This is a very important topic and I would recommend everyone take a good, long look at whatever fears they might have before pushing ahead in this business. Your fears can make you procrastinate and cause you to miss great opportunities. Working past them is one of the first steps toward becoming a real estate heavyweight.
This article is based a chapter of book Be a Real Estate Heavyweight, entitled He Who Hesitates Waits and Waits and Waits by Heather and Alan O'Brien. For more information on the book, be sure to check out www.RealEstateHeavyweight.com.
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