Real Estate Investing: 10 Ways to Motivate Yourself
How can more aspiring real estate investors thrust themselves into action and achieve their dreams? Even knowing the big benefits of real estate, knowing you absolutely need it to survive, and having gained some real estate education simply isn’t enough to move some aspiring real estate investors to the action they need to take. It sounds crazy, but it is true. And without action nothing is going to happen. Nothing will get better. In fact, the opposite it much more likely. Yet, there always seem to be an endless pool of excuses and ‘justifiable’ reasons to procrastinate, if you want them. So how do you increase your propensity to action? Set goals. Set big goals. Set emotional goals tied to your success in real estate. Keep them visible and refer to them every day. That will help you generate a growing drive to move forward. Goals and a plan are good, but that isn’t always enough. It has to have a timeline, and deadlines. Start laying out milestones with dates. Then starting working real estate into your daily schedule. It may begin small. It could be attending a real estate seminar next month. Then one lunch a week with a new real estate professional, driving neighborhoods one day a week, making 5 offers a day, and so on. Carve out a day a week, or better an hour or two first thing every day. Telling others creates positive peer pressure. Tell your friends, family and coworkers about your goals in real estate, and that you are in the business. This can create immediate leads. It also means they’ll likely ask you about real estate and how it’s going. Then you’ll be driven to making progress to report. Who knows; they may bring you a whole round of deals fast. Two or three are better than one, and they are far less likely to quit. This is why most angel investors and venture capitalists prefer investing in startups with multiple founders. So bring in a spouse, child, parent, cousin, or friend and launch on the journey and propel each other. One may even become a capital partner. That may add some good pressure. This may not be the safest move on the list for everyone reading it, but it is an option that will create a lot of motivation. Keep in mind it may take 30 to 90 days to get your first real check in hand depending on your real estate investment strategy. But if you can make that, then go for it. When you’ve got to, and it isn’t just a nice bonus, then you’ll make faster progress. It quitting your current work cold turkey isn’t a viable option, then consider cutting back over the next 6 months. Stop taking overtime. Go part time. Or stop taking new projects. For some the pain and fear is what drives them. For others it is navigating towards more pleasure. So set up ways to reward yourself for each milestone. This might start with arranging meetings at your favorite coffee spots and restaurants. Then it could be carving out a piece of each check to fund a hobby you’ve always wanted to engage in, tickets to a sporting event, or a dream vacation. Create a bonus structure for yourself. Get pumped up with positive and inspiring success stories every day. Find uplifting blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, or audio books and listen to how others have made it, blew it, overcame challenges and how they are winning now. Joining investor Facebook groups, and local groups can be a good way to augment this too. The successful all have coaches. Period. Keeping themselves on track and taking action is one of the main reasons leaders have coaches. Yes, they can help with better ideas, strategy, and more. But having an accountability partner and someone to push you to your best is invaluable alone. Go get the lease on your dream car, put a down payment on your dream vacation or boat, or buy that home. It’s amazing what you can produce when you need to. It’s also equally amazing how much people underperform when they don’t have the pressure. Be smart, and don’t bankrupt yourself, but adding a little motivation can help a lot. Visualization can be so much more powerful than text goals alone. So create an oversized vision board at home, make it the screensaver on your laptop or tablet. Keep it in front of you, and you’ll be surprised at how fast you blow through those goals, and on to bigger ones.