Do you know what the biggest mistake real estate investors make when they are getting started?

And, no, it's not buying the wrong deals. Let me share a quick story to explain this.

My daughter was about 2 years old when we found out that we were having another baby. We were excited and scared.

More importantly, my wife wanted to stay home to raise our kids.

That moment redefined so much about me. I was a bank manager at the time working to build a career in the banking industry.

The problem was that we needed my wife's income to help support us?

I made her a promise that I'd find a way to replace her income so she could raise our kids.
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Initially, I shifted my position in the bank to commission based income working as a mortgage loan officer. That gave me the potential to earn more. I was able to quickly retire my wife within six months.

Things were going great for several years. Our girls were growing, and my wife started homeschooling them giving her more opportunity to mold and shape them.

I started to see the potential to invest in real estate to create passive income streams so I could stop working. I thought surely I could replace my income in a short period of time. Then the housing markets crashed around us and I used our savings to survive until we lost it all, including the house.

I tried everything from Amway, Credit Repair, Pre-Paid Legal, and other multi-level marketing systems to break away from our debts. My wife took on part-time work for awhile. Things got dark really fast.

​As if that wasn't enough, I started gaining traction and more business writing more loans. I thought that surely I could get us out of this mess. Then the Government changed the rules of the game making underwriting next to impossible for several years.

I'd write eight loans and close 1 or 2. I didn't get paid on those 6 that didn't close. It seemed hopeless and impossible. I could go find another job making less than we needed to keep her home or find another way to bring in cash.

I still believed in the real estate game, but now I didn't have the money, so I had to think hard about how to move forward when I was flat broke. I continued to "practice" writing deal scenarios and playing them out on spreadsheets to learn the game.

Then one night at dinner, a friend of ours asked me a question about real estate. We talked for a few hours. At the end of the conversation, he invited me to be his partner flipping houses. He put up the cash, we both had skills to do the work, and I found the deals.

We flipped our first 4 houses those first 6 months and did well. I felt like I was back in the game.

That's when my partner and I parted paths. He took his cash and I was left with a real estate license, so I started selling real estate which ultimately proved to be a strong solution. I eventually found a few other cash partners and continued flipping houses. That's when my friend gave me a Big aha.

He told me, "Flipping houses is great, but we're working for wages." He went on to explain that we needed a regular steady stream of revenue to sustain us. I'd heard about passive income for years, but I didn't have the capital to buy real estate like that.

I did however go back to the drawing board and asked a question. "How do wealthy people create passive income streams?" Let the brainstorming begin. I wrote every possible idea I could.

I realized from that experience that the secret to passive income was not in the vehicle of real estate, but rather it was in creating systematic income through a variety of sources.

Here's the rub. I invested in all the guru's real estate programs. They kept telling me to find the deals and the money will come. It didn't. I learned that money chases the jockey, not the horse.

Over the last two decades, we've seen ups and downs, ins and outs while I committed to my wife that I'd find a way to support our family. In the last four and 1/2 years,

I've been able to do what I was unable to do in the previous 13 years before that. We built our net worth into the Six Zeroes range with momentum behind us.

Here's the mistake most people make. The Gurus teach that it only takes one or two easy deals to pay back the investment you made in their training.

Yes, that may be true. The problem is not the initial investment, but its in success rate of those programs.
Many of the gurus have success rates of 2-3% of their students having success.

Why? From my experiences, I learned a lot from investing in those programs.

I didn't find the success I wanted at the time, however, I did gain valuable knowledge that I've been able to piece together within myself to find success in this world of investing.

Most people have unrealistic expectations of their ability to follow through with their programs. See they sabotage themselves based on what they think they can do in a short period of time. They base their expectations on what they see other people doing who have been doing it for years.

One of the first challenges anyone wanting to succeed in creating passive income is to overcome their own limitations.

You can have all the best tools and equipment needed to succeed, and still fail. Sadly, our system is set up to create limiting beliefs within us. Those who are the most successful have learned how to play outside the system.

Until your belief in yourself lines up with the tools you have at your disposal, you will not see the level of success you dream of. You will continue to sabotage your efforts and be the victim of your own thoughts.

See, here's the rub. You didn't plant the thoughts. It's not your fault that you think the way you do. However, if you continue to think the way you do, you won't reach your goals. You get to decide how to move forward with your life.
Success comes down to YOUR inner game more than the externals.

If you set unrealistic expectations, you'll only defeat yourself time and time again. Eventually, you'll wear out and stop. A very small few push through the inner pain to succeed.

That's why we teach what we teach, how we teach it. The tools and methods are easy.

The inner game is the real killer!

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