7 Ways to Avoid Failing As A Real Estate Investor

One of the reasons I really like real estate is because it's simple. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy. And there's a lot of reasons out there why someone might be failing in their real estate efforts. This week I want to talk about seven. These seven principles for failure aren't something that I came up with. I'm taking them from perhaps one of the most influential books on success and motivation in our lifetime, a book by Napoleon Hill. You've probably heard of it. It's called Think and Grow Rich. So stay tuned as we jump seven reasons straight out of the book that apply directly to your real estate efforts and why they might not be working out. Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches. We'll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals. Quick, actionable items to acquire, manage and scale your portfolio. I'm your host, Tim Hubbard.

Welcome back to the Short Term Rental Riches podcast. I'm happy you're here again. Today we're talking about seven reasons why your real EST might not be working out. And these are reasons straight out of one of the most timeless books in history, a book that was written almost 100 years ago. Yeah, it was published in 1937. Now you might be thinking, tim, that's crazy. I don't want any advice from a book that's almost 100 years old. But this is timeless advice. There's a reason that the book Think and Grow Rich is one of the most influential and widely successful books on motivation and success in our lifetime. So I want to break down seven of the 30 reasons that Napoleon Hill gives for business failing or for you failing as an individual. But of course, I'm going to relate these back to short term rentals. So let's just go ahead and get right into it. Number one reason for failure and why you might be failing with your real estate efforts. I hope you're not. But that comes down to your education. And an insufficient education is one of the top 30 reasons Napoleon Hill gives for failure. Now, if we look back almost, you know, 90, 100 years ago when he actually wrote this book, we didn't have a lot of sources for education. Right. We could go to college, we went to school. But we didn't have YouTube. We didn't have podcasts, we didn't have so many conferences and the ease of travel to get to these conferences like we do now. So this one is one that we can definitely overcome. And with that said, I hope you've been enjoying the podcast. And it's provided a little bit of value for you and helped you with your short term rentals so far or help you get to the point where you're about to pull the trigger. If it has, I would really appreciate it if you wouldn't mind leaving us a review on Spotify or itunes, or just taking a screenshot of your favorite episode and sending it to a family member or friend or a loved one to help them hopefully get them curious on the industry, but also help our channel grow. I'd really appreciate that if you haven't already done that. So we have access to amazing information these days. One of the points he makes though is that it's not just necessarily collecting a whole lot of information. Right? I'm just going to read the exact quote he says. Men are not paid. And of course this was written a long time ago. So this goes for men and women, but men are not paid for what they know, but more particularly what they do with what they know. So of course if we have a whole bunch of information but we're just sitting around not doing anything, well, then we can't put it into action and it's not going to do a whole lot of good for us, unfortunately. So I learned this like a lot of you. I went to college, I went back and I got my MBA and I spent a boatload of money on that and unfortunately I didn't see any real value come after that. Now, I'm not saying it's a bad idea to go to college. Just saying if we don't do anything with the information we get, then it doesn't really help us. I think one of the best ways to learn information the quickest is to find a mentor. So if you can be part of a mastermind group, if you can be mentored by someone that's already doing really well in the real estate space, well then by all means I would jump on that opportunity. If you're trying to get in and you're trying to get some deals done. Now this leads me to number two, the second reason. And these are not in order. I cherry pick these out of his list of 30 and I will say that his list of 30 is very comprehensive. It would be hard to find another reason that didn't really fit in those 30, but I just picked seven. So the second one, big cause of failure in our endeavors, our business endeavors, is lack of capital. And I know this is a huge one that pops up in the real estate world, right, because we need money to be able to purchase property. The beautiful thing about real estate, however, is that we can partner with people. There's also a lot of people out there that have a lot of money. They just don't have a lot of time. So I'm sure you know some of these people, if you're not quite yet in real estate, well, reach out to some of these people, get educated about a space and deals will come to you once you put your foot out there. Another advantage we have in investing in real estate is that we can use mortgages, right? And now there are some mortgages that are available with very little or low down payments. Most of the time these are primary home loans. But you could get into it just like I did a long, long time ago by buying a multi unit property. I know this isn't going to work for, But I bought a 4 Plex for example, I lived in one of the units and rented the other ones out. You've probably heard this out and about referred to as house hacking, but I only put down 3.5%. So there are loans out there. Get out there, get educated, see what's available to you. If you don't have the money, well, where there is a will, there is a way you will be able to find it. You will be able to find deals and you'll be able to get your foot in the door. Number three reason why you, you might be failing in real estate endeavors, your efforts. And that's if you just have a lack of persistence. So if you get out there and you're looking for deals and you just can't find anything and you give up, well, then you're never going to be in the industry. And so I know that today's economic times are a little different than they were a year, five, ten years ago. But if we don't stick with it, then we're not going to see results. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that one of my favorite favorite books is called the Slight Edge. And it's exactly this. It's doing little things each day. Little things add up to big results as long as we stay persistent. There's also a great documentary out on Netflix right now if you haven't seen already. It's about Arnold Schwarzenegger. And I think this is an excellent lesson in persistence just to look at Arnold's journey. So if you check out the documentary, you'll see if you don't already know that Arnold came over from Austria, he was a foreigner, entered into the U.S. he, he was a bodybuilder, one Mr. Olympia multiple times, which is basically the best or the biggest bodybuilder in the world. So after his bodybuilding days, he became a famous actor. We all know him from Terminator, right? And then for those of us that live in California or from California or that live in the U.S. well, we also know that he became governor of California. So none of these were easy feats, but they were all accomplished by being persistent. So if you haven't seen that documentary yet, check it out. I think it's a great, great documentary. The fourth reason in Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich for Failure. And again, these aren't in order of his reasons, but these are ones I cherry picked is when someone is overly cautious. So if you've been trying to get into real estate for a while, you've been thinking about it, but you're just a little scared and you never pulled the trigger. Well, obviously you're not going to have real estate success. You're not gonna see any rewards coming back from that. And we see this a lot of time, people just analyzing and analyzing or looking at a whole bunch of markets and never narrowing down. We have to take some chances out there. If we don't, then we're never gonna see any results. And I know it's scary sometimes taking chances. I've definitely been scared on my journey along with real estate, you know, signing contracts, moving to different countries, I mean, all of these things, I definitely wasn't 100% then. The reality is, is when we're taking chances, that's exactly the same time when we're learning and we're growing. The fifth reason why your real estate efforts might not be working out, and I hope this is not the case. But again, these are some of the most common reasons for failure in anything. We know that the majority of businesses that start up don't make it again. This is why I like real estate. Because it's simple, right? It doesn't necessarily mean that it's easy, but it's simple. So as long as we're taking appropriate measures and educating ourselves, we can overcome these failures or these potential failures and we can get some really good deals, but we're not going to be able to get really good deals if we're guessing. If we're guessing if a market's going to do well or guessing if a short term rental is going to rent well, or guessing in any way whatsoever. We need data, we need facts about our investments before we pull the trigger and get into them. Napoleon Hill says that most people are too Lazy to acquire facts with which to think accurately. So we educate ourselves, we acquire the facts, and then we can make good decisions based on numbers, based on metrics. And it's not a guessing game, right? We've talked about that before. We run the numbers. The numbers tell us what to do. The sixth reason why you might be having trouble in your real estate efforts or just in general with whatever business endeavor you happen to be getting into is if we have negative thinking. And this one's hard, this one, you know, if we're having lots of challenges, we can sort of go down this rabbit hole and change our attitude. And when we change our attitude, it changes our outlook on everything. So I like to practice gratitude. I know that sounds kind of hippie ish or whatever you want to call it, but the reality is thinking positively is a habit and we can train ourselves to do that. So I like to write down several things I'm grateful for every morning. That helps me to stay positive. That helps me to believe that the goals that I set out to do I can achieve. And that also helps with my real estate endeavors and my real estate investments. The other thing to note on negative thinking or a negative personality is that we can't have that in the short term rental space because this all comes down to hospitality, right? So after we have our properties, if we're responding in some sort of negative way or no one likes hanging out with Debbie Downers, right? No one likes to walk away from some sort of conversation just feeling drained, we don't like that. So we can't have that in the hospitality industry. So if you found yourself in a tough spot, try to practice thinking about things you're grateful for. And there are a few books out there that are really great. One that comes to top of mind is the Happiness Advantage. I love that book. It really changed my mindset. So check that one out if you happen to be in a sort of dark, negative thinking time in your life. Number seven. The seventh reason that you might be failing or not achieving the success that you want is your inability to cooperate with others. So maybe you got an excellent property, but you're having trouble keeping housekeeping staff or you're having trouble working with your property manager. Real estate is a team sport. Unless we just have one property, which is going to be a little easier to manage. The more properties we acquire, the more difficult this gets. It is a team sport. We can't do it alone. And so our ability to cooperate with others is going to be a big reason for our success and the opposite is true. If we don't have this ability, well, then we need to learn. Communication is the name of the game. So if you find yourself constantly looking for new providers and contractors and team members, well, there may be something on your end that you need to work on a little bit and that it all really comes down to communication. Okay, so there it is. Seven reasons straight out of Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. If you haven't read his book yet, I highly suggest it. It's amazing how relevant all of the information in there still is. And I didn't mean to go on a spiel here to try to say that, you know, people are failing from left to right. There's. There's lots of opportunity out there. We just need to find it. I just wanted to relate a few of these common things because we all go through these. I go through these things all the time. Our moods shift, our environment shifts. And so check out his book if you haven't already. It really is a blueprint for success. And remember, when we're having our failures, failures are really just an opportunity in disguise. Right? They're the times where we learn the most. One of the things I really like about the short term rental industry is that when we fail, when we have an issue, we get feedback from it and we can improve. We can make our properties better, we can improve our decision making in the future and hopefully we overcome all of our challenges, we have a lot of success and we keep on growing and learning. So until next time, I hope you're having a wonderful week out there and I'll talk to you soon.

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