#153 4-Step Plan to Overcome Analysis Paralysis and Achieve Success in Real Estate Investing

Hey everyone, quick question for you. Are you someone that deals with analysis paralysis? It's where you get in your own head and you analyze things to death and you can't make a decision and it keeps you from moving forward or taking action. If you like me at all, you've dealt with it a ton. Well, I have a four step plan to overcome analysis paralysis and achieve success in real estate investing. Let's get to that. Enjoy this episode. Welcome to the Passive Income MD Podcast where we talk about creating your ideal life through multiple streams of income. I'm your host, Peter Kim. If you enjoy hearing about this stuff, make sure to hit subscribe so I can bring it to you every week. Now let's get on with the show. All right, everyone, before we get to today's meat of the episode, I just wanted to say that it's just been an awesome pleasure meeting so many of you on the road in the last three, four weeks. I think I've said it before already, but just meeting people is what brings me a ton of joy hearing your stories. I get inspired by it. Hopefully many of you have benefited from just meeting each other, connecting in the space, and ultimately seeing what's possible out there for us as physicians. If you're not plugged into a community, make sure you are, because you don't have to do this alone. People out there who are in your similar situation, with a similar mindset, who have achieved things through the help of other people, whether it's through mentorship, through modeling someone else, or just being part of a community, look out for places to get plugged in in that way, whether it's through our conferences, our courses, our communities, our Facebook groups, whatever it is, we have a place where you can feel at home and feel comfortable with like minded people who ultimately push you, keep you accountable, and support you along the way. On today's podcast, we're going to be discussing how real estate investors, they can sabotage their own success and ultimately how you can tell yourself the right kind of story to achieve that success. If you don't know what I'm talking about, stay tuned because in this episode we're gonna explore how investors get stuck in this thing called analysis paralysis. Now, I don't know if you ever heard of this phrase, but it's where you get literally paralyzed from over analysis. And as doctors, oftentimes we can sit there, think about the risks and benefits to death, rely on our spreadsheets, and honestly, it takes away our focus and that keeps us from moving forward. However, we need to figure out a way to shift our focus away from just the numbers, from trying to be perfect in the situation and then figuring out how we can actually move to the right place mentally and in the right mindset to take action. Ultimately, it's about how to tame or train that inner voice inside ourselves to think positively, to think optimistically, obviously consider the risks, but do all that and figure out how to take action. Now, to tell you a little bit about my story. When I first started learning about real estate, I wanted to get into it. I listened to probably hundreds of podcasts. I went to conferences, local meetups. I wasn't doing anything in terms of investing because it was scary. I didn't want to lose money. I had worked hard for that income. And having never before invested in real estate, it seemed like a scary thing. Very risky is what I thought. And I didn't know how to take my first investment or where to invest in first. But then sitting there month after month doing nothing, I realized that nothing was changing. And all of us were very, very good at worrying about the consequences of what happens if we take action. What if we invest and it doesn't go well? We're very good at understanding the downside of that, but I think oftentimes we don't consider the other side of that, which is if we don't take action at all, what's going to happen? Well, I already know the answer to that. Nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to change. And in fact, if you look down three to five years from now and you've done nothing, probably going to end up in either the same or worse situation than you are in when you first considered investing. And to me, that was a scary thing because I was in a bad place in terms of my career, my income, and kind of thinking about life. So thinking through the consequences of not doing anything, that actually ended up pushing me. Now we'll talk all about that. But today, let's again talk about those four steps to recognize and change the story that we need that we tell ourselves to achieve success. I don't know if you ever heard yourself saying, I'm not good at investing. I'm not very smart when it comes to these things. I've carried these same stories in my head. I always told myself that I was bad with finances back in college and medical school. I was one of those people that signed up for every credit card, would come across your plate, all those booths, because I wanted the free T shirt or whatever it was. And so I got so many credit Cards. And what did I do? I used them. And I accumulated so much debt through college and medical school on these credit cards, I didn't really understand the concept of insurance minimum payments and things like that. So the debt kept accumulating, but I would always push it off and push it off. I'd even tried day trading and I remember trying to pay back some of the debt. But again, I lost money there too, and tired of trying to day trade. And I told myself this story. I'm just bad with investments when it comes to money. And it's so funny, when it comes to finances and especially in the world of real estate investing, the stories we tell ourselves, it can make all the difference in our success for many investors. I mean, like I was, maybe it's you. It's easy to get stuck in, like these different limiting beliefs you might have heard about and hesitations that hold us back from taking action. But by recognizing and just squashing those ideas that don't really serve us, we can move forward and achieve our goals. So looking back at my years of investing now, all of that leads us to step number one. We all need to catch the automatic stories that come into our head. What do I mean by that? This first step, it's crucial to acknowledge that the stories in your head, they may be the things that are holding you back and then learn how to tell yourself the right ones. When I look at others who become really successful as real estate investors, I see that the most common factor or the biggest factor in achieving that success was their ability to overcome these limiting beliefs, to have that rock solid mindset. Now, when you start out, you might not even be aware that there are stories out there that are like either could hold us back or push us forward. I mean, I've learned that we need to actively work on those to help us achieve our goals. Now what's an example of this? I told myself again, if I invested, most likely I would lose money. I would tell myself that whenever I tried to invest money, I just didn't do well, I wouldn't be successful and I would lose. And that's based on experience in the past. And many of us will do that. We'll bring in the experiences from our past when we are younger, when we are less experienced, when we made poor decisions and use that as what is going to happen in the future. So much pressure on myself when I was faced with my very first real estate deal or opportunity, or at least I got to that place where I wanted to invest, that again, the pressure would get to me. And I'd be so deathly afraid of making a mistake. I put so much pressure on that first deal, but eventually I got over that. And how? By simply taking action first. I realized that as a doctor, I understand this whole concept of learning. And as you go, I mean, how many of us figured things out during our training? I mean, we all did. There's no way that we all came into being a physician with all the skills that we needed, we learned on the job. I mean, if any of us were definitely afraid of doing any procedure until we mastered it, we would never do anything. An example of that is maybe just even placing IVs. As an anesthesiologist, that's a core skill that you got to learn. I can't tell you how many IVs I've blown over time, but it's not like after the first couple blown ones, I. I stopped and I said, I'm not good at this, or I just can't do this. I mean, what if I'd done that? I would never have actually gotten to the place where I felt comfortable throwing those in, especially under difficult situations. And how did you get through it? You just kept doing it again and again and again. But the story I told myself, yes, maybe in the beginning, was, hey, I'm not very good at these. But I was able to take that story, recognize that, and say, look, I may not be good at these yet, but I know I'll get to a better place. So it's crucial to identify when we're telling ourselves these stories and. And then really address these. What they call limiting beliefs as they arise is the first step and again sets the foundation for overcoming analysis paralysis. So here are some examples of someone limiting beliefs for a real estate investor that you might have said yourself or that you might have heard some say, like, wrongly believing that maybe you don't have enough money or resources to invest. Maybe you believe that you're not experienced enough or knowledgeable enough to make a good decision. Maybe you think the real estate market's bad time, it's too competitive or saturated, you can't find good deals right now. Maybe you could say, I've never done it before, so I don't have the experience to do well. Maybe in the past you had a bad experience where you were like an accidental landlord, like you bought a new place, kept the old place, and it didn't do well. Or maybe somebody in your family invested in real estate but didn't go well, and you use that as a story to tell yourself. That you can't be successful or maybe even say, real estate investing. It's good for them and they can do well and amazing, but there's no way I could do it. All right, so when these beliefs come in your head, the first thing to do is recognize it. Maybe you hear it. A lot of these things are not unique. That's when you need to pause, and then we're going to move on to step two. Step two is really analyzing the story in our head. It's to change our mindset. We need to identify the story. Then we need to understand where it's coming from and why it's present. We actually question it. Is it actually true? We have to determine its validity. Right. And whether it serves us positively or negatively. So when you recognize that, I would ask yourself and challenge yourself to ask these questions. Number one, is this absolutely true? Do I have all the evidence that. That I need to really support this belief? Is it based on facts or assumptions? How has the opposite been true in the past? Again, is this belief holding me back in some way? If I could get rid of this belief, what new possibilities or opportunities could open up for me? And then what steps could I take to challenge and overcome this belief? And maybe what support or resources? Maybe it's a who also a person or people that can help me overcome this belief. So by asking yourself questions and you're starting to chip away at these beliefs that you can maybe identify that you've held on to so long. I guess the metaphor here is that if you have this, like, tabletop of limiting beliefs that you've held onto so long, there are legs under it that you've probably strengthened over time or that somehow have appeared because of your past experiences. By recognizing them and then questioning them, you're essentially getting rid of these legs right under this table. That allows you to build a new table of beliefs, actually more empowering story that you can back up and put strong legs under based on new beliefs and experiences. Number one and two, you've identified or recognized that you have these stories that you're telling yourself. Number two, you're questioning those release and finding out whether they're true or not. Step three is actually a decision to decide that we need to tell ourselves a better story, otherwise we're never gonna move forward. This is a conscious decision to tell ourselves we need to do better to get the desired outcome that I want. You're not gonna get anywhere unless you decide that you want a better future, a better path. And this happened to me too, when I first realized that that things weren't going well at work. I was really bummed out by it and actually bummed out for it by it for a while. At some point I was like, no more. I'm going to do something different about it. That's when I decided to tell myself a better story. The truth is, in medicine, we've had so many setbacks. All of us have. We've had issues with our career. We've had procedures that maybe didn't go well or things that didn't go well. And then we found ways to overcome that. I mean, how many obstacles have you had to overcome to get where you're at? I mean, you're one of the top achievers, not just in your city, but in the world. Please recognize that you have this amazing ability to learn to utilize information, to take complex ideas and use them to help other people. And these are situations that are extremely critical at times. Again, under a lot of pressure, at some point, you told yourself that no matter what happens, you're going to be successful. That's what I'm saying here. For step three is to identify all these old beliefs, recognize that they're not helpful, question them, and then decide that you're going to create a new set of beliefs that are going to serve you and help you, especially when it comes to real estate investing. So step number four is essentially replacing those old stories with better, more positive, empowering beliefs that are going to help you move forward. Maybe for the belief that you don't have enough money or resources, you shift that into, say, I can create money, I can find money and be resourceful. For example, you can pull money and equity out of one property. Perhaps you can find ways to save more money to put towards a real estate investment. Maybe you can shift income or money from somewhere else to move into this. Maybe for the belief that where you're not experienced or knowledgeable enough, you say you can get there, you're the ultimate learner, and you can figure out through podcasts, through everything available to you, that there's so much knowledge out there that you can find knowledge, maybe for experience, maybe you don't have it, but you can learn with somebody that is more experienced so you can get over that hump. Maybe when you think the market is tough right now, that is a bad time, you tell yourself then this is the greatest opportunity. This is the best time to get into things, to learn when the market's down so you can ride the wave when it does get better. When you tell yourself you made mistakes in the past, tell yourself that every experience, it's a learning opportunity. It's not when you lost money. It's an opportunity to learn, and it will help you out in the future. And for that belief where, oh, it's only for some other people. Why not you? You hear from other people how they were in that situation where they felt it wasn't for them, but they figured it out. You're in the top elite when it comes to academics and learning. Why couldn't you learn how to do this and be successful? People say it's not med school hard, it's not residency hard in real estate. People who have a lot less experience than you, a lot less knowledge, a lot less degrees have figured it out. Why can't you? My encouragement to you is to write those out, whatever those limiting beliefs are that holding you back, shift those, come up with a new empowering belief, and figure out, how can you make this happen? Why can you be successful and figure that out? And. And then once you figure out, it can absolutely help you get past analysis paralysis, because you realize that without taking action, nothing will change, and you have all the tools already necessary to ultimately be successful. And actually, one thing that really helped me was that somebody told me that it's probably not going to be the first deal that changes your life. What if it's the third or fourth? But how can you get there without getting through the first couple? The first couple will be learning experience. So how quickly would you want to get to the third or fourth deal that might absolutely change your life? What if you knew it was sitting out there for you, but you got to get through your first couple deals? Would that spur you? Would that encourage you, motivate you to take action, especially armed with the new beliefs that you have? Again, this is. This is the number one thing I get asked all the time. How can I make my first investment? How do you get over that first hurdle? I hope this podcast has helped in some ways. I've seen so many people take that first step, and within that first year of taking a leap, so many things will completely change for them. If you're one of those people, pat yourself on the back. If you're one of those people that are still figuring it out, know that there's a community here to support you, especially taking that first step. Reach out to us. We're here to help you throughout that entire process. Thanks for listening and have an amazing week. Thanks, everyone. Enjoy the show. Let me know by dropping a review in the podcast app. You're listening to us in. And if you haven't already, make sure to hit subscribe Are you a part of our community yet? Join thousands of physicians who are also on this journey to creating their ideal lives through multiple streams of income. You can join us on our Facebook group Passive Income Docs, and you can always learn more at our website passiveincomemd.com thanks again for allowing me to be a part of your journey. See you next time.