Tim Bell outlines the three primary personal characteristics he considers essential for a successful 21st-century real estate investor: persistence (continuing despite discouragement and obstacles), flexibility (creative problem-solving and finding workarounds), and courage (acting despite fear). He warns listeners they will face pushback from others—including industry professionals—and urges adopting these traits throughout the course.
Chapters
First thing I want to talk about is the three primary characteristics of a successful 21st century investor. It's important you understand these concepts because you will run into challenges in your real estate investment business. As you go out there in the marketplace and start working with people, start doing things, you're going to find there's going to be some challenges just like anything else in life that's new to you. You're going to have things that you're unfamiliar with. You're going to have some people are going to object to what you're trying to do because they don't understand or they have various different perspectives that don't allow for what you want to do. So I want to prepare you mentally so that you can understand the personal characteristics that you need to adopt in order to be successful in your real estate investment business. So let's talk about the first one. The first one, of course, is persistence. Persistence is the ability to continue in spite of other people trying to discourage you, in spite of you being discouraged by your perceived failures, your lack of knowledge, various different things like that things are going to happen. In fact, it's likely that some people who are close to you in your life, maybe even people who care about you, may try to discourage you from working in your real estate investment business. It's something that's foreign to them. They may not understand it, and as a consequence, they may try to discourage you also. You will find that, unfortunately, ironically, many people who are involved as professionals in the real estate business will be some of your biggest detractors. They will be some of the most negative people you will meet in regards to real estate investment. It sounds incredibly ironic, but in many cases, real estate agents, mortgage loan officers, title people, title companies and title attorneys, appraisers, inspectors, various other people that will be involved in your real estate investment business in some cases will be negative about what you're trying to do. They won't support you. It sounds crazy because you do need a team, you do need some people to support you. But you have to understand that you need to persist through all, all of the obstacles, all of the challenges, all of the pushback that you may get from various different people in your life and in your business. So persistence is an incredibly important characteristic for a successful 21st century real estate investor. The second characteristic is flexibility. Now you've got to be flexible. You've got to be flexible. There are lots of different ways to do things in real estate investment. And so instead of saying, oh, well, that can't be done because Back to number one, persistence. There will be some people that will try to tell you what I'm going to tell you to do or what I'm going to suggest you do. Can't be done. It's not true. It can be done. You need to find a way to do it. Flexibility doesn't say, oh, it can't be done. Flexibility says, how can I do it? There's different ways to do things. There's always a way around everything. There's always a way to make things work. So instead of conditioning your mind to shut down and say, oh, it can't be done, you need to condition your mind to say, how can I do it? How can I make this work? Where is the workaround? Where is the path? So that's why flexibility is so important. Flexibility is your new middle name. You've got to be incredibly flexible with everything you do in your real estate investment business. It includes creativity. It includes figuring out ways to get things done in spite of obstacles. You've got to, as a real estate investor, figure out how to go around an obstacle or over an obstacle, or under an obstacle, or through an obstacle. You've got to figure out how to get where you need to go. And it will require some creative thinking on your part. In spite of the fact that you're going to have a lot of knowledge and a lot of information from this program, you're still going to run into obstacles. You're still going to run into things that will get in your way. So you've got to be flexible to figure out how to make things work. Now, the third most important characteristic for a successful 21st century real estate investor, of course, is courage. And some people say, wait a minute. Courage. Courage. That's what firefighters have, that's what police officers have. That's what our military people have. Courage, right? Well, they do, it's true. But the thing you have to remember is that courage is an important characteristic for you as a successful 21st century real estate investor. Why? Because you will have fear. This is new. Something is new. This whole thing that we're getting into here is new for many of the people who are listening to this recording. And as a consequence, you will suffer. Fear you will experience, will arise, it will come up, it will happen. Every human being experiences fear in new things that they do. There's always fear. But the difference between courage and fear. Fear is that feeling that you get that may prevent you from doing something. Courage is the ability to overcome that fear and do what needs to be done in spite of the fear. That's courage. A firefighter, for example, firefighters, intuitively, when we're experiencing a burning building, everyone else runs out, everyone goes away. We get away from the fire. That's our natural instinct. Firefighters, they overcome that natural instinct. They go in, they go into the burning building because they know it's their job and they know that they've been trained and they know that it's what they need to do. So all of our military people, all first responders, firefighters, police officers, and other folks that respond to our things that happen to people in our society, they all have courage. They have to. Courage, again, is not the lack of fear. They experience fear. It is the ability to get yourself to do the right thing, to do what needs to be done in spite of your fear. That's courage. Those are the three most important characteristics of a successful 21st century real estate investor. And I strongly recommend that you think about these things and you remember these things as we go along throughout our lessons.
