In this 30‑minute YouTube presentation Dr. Toby Potter, a veteran real‑estate coach with 30 years of experience, 13,000+ clients and $1.8 billion in funded transactions, outlines the five most damaging mistakes he repeatedly observes among aspiring investors. He explains why waiting until you feel “ready” is a fear‑based excuse, why consuming education without taking action leads to frustration, why going it alone without mentors or a supportive community invites failure, why making decisions without hard data (relying on gut feelings or outdated spreadsheets) results in costly mis‑calculations, and how fear often masquerades as a strategic rationale (e.g., blaming market conditions). For each mistake he shares personal anecdotes, concrete examples (such as a 94‑unit acquisition for $3,757), and the systematic tools, coaching programs, and analytical frameworks his firm uses to avoid those pitfalls. The talk concludes with a strong call‑to‑action: subscribe, join his newsletter, attend a weekly webinar, and enroll in his mentorship program, promising that participants can secure a contract within 45 days and have a property ready to sell within 90 days.
Chapters
The 5 worst real estate investing mistakes that I've seen over 30 years. These 5 mistakes have crippled individuals, basically destroyed their dreams of getting into real estate investing. And I'm going to talk to you about them right here, right now. Hi, everybody. This is Dr. Toby Potter, The Unshakeable Investor. And today I want to talk to you about the 5 worst real estate investing mistakes that I've personally seen. Clients engage in time after time after time, which literally destroys any hope of having a career in real estate. Let me share with you a little bit about me. 30 years in the real estate industry as a— coach, worked with over 13,000 clients. I funded over $1.8 billion in transactions.. And we've seen it at every angle that you can imagine. I've been there, I've done that, I've seen it, I've watched it, I've coached it, I've mentored it, I've corrected it, and I've also watched it burn to the ground. So let me share with you these 5 mistakes. Those are the most common mistakes out of all the transactions, over 20-some thousand transactions. I want to show you the most common 5 that resonates across the industry, and perhaps it'll stop you from losing on any deals moving forward. Mistake number 1: waiting till you're ready. See, that's, that's not, that's not a strategy, that's fear. I ask investors all the time, how long have you been looking to get into real estate investing? How long have you been trying to get into this game? And they'll tell me 1, 2, 3 years, 6 months, 8 months. You know, there's always a different number, but I'm asking them, what are you waiting for? Well, I'm just not ready. Well then, let Let me ask you this. What would you need to look like, or what would it need to look like for you to say you're ready? Because you're never going to have all the answers. I've been doing this for over 30 years, well over 20,000+ transactions, and I still see things today for the first time. So you can't ever say, well, I just need to know it all. You'll never know it all. And here's the biggest mistake. Is you don't know what you don't know until you get in the trenches. There's no magic book that says, that spells out every scenario and every solution. There's no coach that knows every scenario and every solution. But there are people who have been there, done that, like myself, that have ideas and understandings to be able to work through all situations. So don't think that you have to be an expert, a perfectionist to start. In fact, Zig Ziglar says, you don't have to be great to get started, but you have to start to become great. And this is where you need to make that decision. Mistake number 1, waiting till they're ready. Education without execution is frustration. Going to courses, watching YouTube, Being on networking events, getting educated without ever executing is only going to lead to frustration and devastation. Just remember that. Take the knowledge you have, start executing so you'll know that you're going down the right road. What good is it to have all this education when it's not even the path you're going down? Because once you get into the trenches, you might want to go a different direction. So don't wait till you're ready. You're ready when the heart says, I want to be in that. Mistake number 2, going it alone. Never, ever, ever go it alone. See, I built this amazing empire from 1995 up until 2008, and we were doing real estate fix and flips, lending, had a RE/MAX franchise, title company, all this with no mentor, no partners. And when the storms of life came, I lost it all because I didn't know how to handle it. In fact, more importantly, I tucked tail and ran. I might have been able to weather the storm if somebody would have told me how. I might have been able to continue carrying on the legacy that we had built. But because I was by myself and I was scared, I was uncertain, and fear became a part of my everyday life, I tucked tail and ran and lost it all. If you have a mentor, who can tell you, no, no, no, this is not disaster. This is not Armageddon. This is not the end of the world. Here's how we maneuver through this. Then you don't lose what you've built. This is the one thing that I love having today through all this turbulent times. I have other people in our space that are bigger than me, that have been here longer than me. And they say, you know what, we've seen this before. And all you got to do is pivot from here to there and then wait it out and you'll be fine. To one of the things I love the most is having my, my roundtable of, of other executives that guide and direct me, and I can feed off of them and they feed off of me. This is something that you must implore yourself to do is get part of a community, a coaching, a mentorship to guide and direct you through every phase of it, or you will fail. Decision number 4. Mistake number 4, um, decisions without data. Decisions without data. One of the things that we primarily, almost exclusively talk about is you cannot make a decision with emotions. Being able to go into Zillow and look what Zillow says and all this, and then having a gut feeling does not guarantee success. Most times when we see somebody's in trouble, they underestimated the rehab because they tried to cut corners. They tried to say, well, I can do it on this cheap, until they get into it and they didn't have a coach, they didn't have a mentor. And so then by the time they got ready to put on the market, they were so far out of budget, it was unreal. And they were hoping, hoping to not lose everything on it. One of the things that we have seen in today's market is that you have to be able to analyze properties quick. You can't do old school where you're, you're going through Excel spreadsheets and you're trying to manifest numbers out of just imagery and all this, or thoughts or theory. And you can't go back and forth to the property with contractors 2 and 3 times. This is old school. You'll lose out. You got to get into a system. Like what we offer that allows you to analyze a property in less than 2 minutes. You'll know within 2 minutes whether this deal works or not under the absolute worst case scenario. And if it's not that bad, you just make more profit. So we've been there, done that. And we built tools and systems that helps you ensure success and profitability by simply removing the emotion, putting science into play. And when you put science with money, you have success. And I need you to understand that. We took this theory, this philosophy, this strategy, this structure, and literally bought almost 300 units last year in 12 months and implemented all this that I'm teaching you and that I'm giving to you, that same understanding. When people say there's just no good deals out there, we acquired a 94-unit complex for $3,757. That's the exact amount of money we brought to the closing table. And it was a 94-unit, 60% occupied, valued around $3.5 to $4 million. And we bought it for less than $4,000 using the same structure, same strategy that I'm here to show you. And real quick, before we go any further, I want to say, if you like what you're hearing, I want you to subscribe. I want you to hit that subscribe button and then DM me, "I want more." Go in there and message me, comment, "I want more," and I'm going to send you more stuff, put you into our newsletter, our mailing list, so that you can continue getting this information. But help us grow and build this channel for those that need to hear more about this. Subscribe and share and let people know that this information is valid to you, because it's valid to you, it's valid to many others. Okay, now let's get back into this. The other mistake on this decisions without data is people are just begging for a deal. They're just begging. They're just trying so hard to get a deal done and they hope that everything works out. And you can't use emotion in real estate. It has to all be logic. And when you have the right tools, you have the right systems and you have the right coaching, mentoring, you run the numbers and it's either a go or no. Plain and simple, nothing else. We work with you on that and we show you exactly. And when you follow that platform, when you follow that protocol, you have tremendous success and an amazing way of life. Mistake number 5, letting fear dress up as strategy. It sounds like the market isn't right. I need to wait and let rates come down. I hear this so many times. In fact, it's been the biggest battle since 2022. Rates are too high, valuations are too high. Sellers are just asking too much for their properties. There's no good deals out there. And I heard this time and time again. And as I just shared with you, I went and showed them that there are amazing deals out there. You just got to know how and where to find them. Don't let fear and excuses and the noise in your head, the noise around you, stop you from having the empire that you deserve. That's not a strategy. That's a fear dressed up in a suit. Every objection is a fear. Every fear has an answer. The real question is, what does your bank account look like in 5 years from now if you do nothing? See, that's the actual risk. If you do nothing, where are you going to be 6 months, 1 year, 3 years, 5 years from now? Stop letting fear stop you from having everything you ever want in life. Investors winning right now weren't smarter than you. They just made a decision to execute. They just made a decision to align themselves with the right people, the right program, and then execute on that playbook that ensures success. When they made that decision, they then made that move. Here's all 5 mistakes wrapped up, one clean list. Waiting till you're ready, mistake number 1. Mistake number 2, education without execution. Having all this knowledge, having all this network, but never implementing it is just frustrating. It's frustrating. Number 3, going it alone. There's not a person in the world that says they built this real estate empire themselves, not one. So don't be the first and don't try to be the first. There's no reason for that. Mistake number 4, decisions without data. Remove the emotion, remove the gut feeling, remove the hype, go scientifically with logic, make decisions. And when you have a plethora of opportunities through our program, we'll give you 30 to 40 to 50 projects a month to look at that Therefore, you can cherry-pick the best ones, which then ensures success every time, month after month. And then mistake number 5, fear disguised as a strategy. Fear disguised as a strategy. In 90 days, when you come and join our community, enroll into our program, our coaching, our mentorship, in 90 days, You're going to have a contract, you can have a property, and it should be on the market ready to sell. Doing it right, you should have your first property under contract in 45 days, the rehab done in the next 30 to 45 days, and it back on the market ready to cash in. Deals have always been there. There's an unlimited amount of deals out there if you know where to look. You just need someone to show you where to look, how to walk through the deal, how to analyze the deal, how to structure the deal, how to execute. On our webinar on Tuesday nights, I want you— I wanted you to read this. I wanted you this to soak into you. I want you to watch me fix those 5 mistakes. I want you to watch me go live and demo out how we use our tools and analyze out of 3 to 4 million properties that are off market, break those down, filter those down to off market, vacant, non-owner occupied, and distressed seller, meaning they're in probate, they're foreclosure, they're short sale, there's tax liens, there's something wrong with that deal, where that seller is about to lose it. That's a distressed seller. Let me show you how we can go from 4+ million properties down to the closest 100 in your neighborhood, and then you analyze them, show the ones that are good and the ones that are bad, and start making offers on them. Watch Standard Time, click the link below, join that webinar, and I'll see you then.
