Financial Education through Real Estate Investing: 3 Reasons WHY Most People Fail at Leveraging Real Estate to Build Better Financial Results (Part 1/3)

October 18, 2022

This is a question that I get asked a lot during podcast interviews and Q&A at stage events. Plus, some of you have started asking me this very question over the last few months now so I thought it’d be fitting to share, not to mention timely in today’s world.

Before I get going on this, I should clarify that I’m cheesy as hell when it comes to viewing all versions of the word “fail”.

I do not believe in failures.

I believe in growth and learning.

I believe in never giving up. I believe in “fall 7 times, get up 8.”

So, let’s dig in!

Here’s the first and BIGGEST reason that I’ve experienced and witnessed:

. Old & Outdated Money Blueprint

I remember half-way through my Real Estate Investing Bootcamp back in June 2010. Having made the decision to get financially educated, I just needed to pay the tuition now. The only challenge is: I had just lost all my hard earned savings (as shared in previous articles). We had just moved to a brand new city and house 4 months prior and incurred a lot of surprise expenses through bad debt. How are we going to make this happen?

Both of us started calling our family and friends to share this new “business venture” that is real estate investing with them, and how we would treat them as our very first angel investors and pay them back tenfolds when we made it.

A couple of 28 year-olds went nowhere with those conversations.

Side Bar

If you’re reading this and you are a young entrepreneur, I’d love to hear your business ideas if you’re looking for private funding/angel investors. I have a soft spot for you because I was you. Over the years, we have backed and supported various small ventures to get started — some went well, most went bust and it fuels our souls to see how they all grew from the experiences.

 

Asa last resort, I called my parents who have been wanting me to pursue a MBA (Masters of Business Administration). I gave them my best“accomplished 28 year-old, middle-management title, earning-6-figure-income, and managing-50+-people across Canada”pitch at the time. Their response was the most awful and the most awakening.

During the Bootcamp, I had so many ah-ah moments that directly targeted at the heart of all my limiting beliefs when it comes to money. These ah-ha moments ripped many of the limiting beliefs out of my mind and my heart like poisonous weeds preventing a beautiful, fertile garden to blossom.

First thing I do have to say is this:my parents didn’t know what they didn’t know. They were only wanting the best for me. And here I am already thinking:If I want something I’ve never had, I’ve gotta do something I’ve never done.This includes breaking free of so many outdated money blueprint given to me by my parents. They refused to support my journey to be financially educated and yet were willing to remortgage the house to send me to grad school. The two people that rarely agreed on much and THIS they aligned on. This madness had to stop.

I refused their offer to get another degree. The bank of love was no love at all — or so I thought. I was angry — at them and at myself.

For people my generation especially, the last 2–4 generations all were raised in the industrial age where if you work hard, budget excessively and save, life will work out just fine. And it did — for them. I was born in 1982, the year where mortgage interest rates in North America were documented at 18% or higher. THINK about that! As a real estate investor and Mentor today, I teach everyone to conduct extra due diligence when someone’s offering double digits on a private lending deal.

Myconversation with my parents was one that burned me deep. Watching them struggle their whole lives to have a semblance of a comfortable life was the biggest lie they fed me growing up — unintentionally. Fortunately, my fears and self-doubt in the moment also got torched and turned into the fossil fuel I needed that night. The fuel that gave me the courage (or perhaps temporary blindness) to take the leap of faith to bet on myself.

I’m sure there’s more to this list as I’m only sharing some of the points they made that I still remember (honestly, a bit fuzzy now). If you have more to share, please feel free to comment as it may help others relate to this topic better:

• Money is the root of all evil and you don’t need much to live.Misquoted by them and I didn’t want to just live and survive through this lifetime, I wanted to thrive and have options in life — especially after 2 heart attacks at a young age, a heart surgery at 20 and an autoimmune disorder that I have to manage daily.
• You have a good job (good pay, ok benefits, company stock options, pension, extra play money) and just keep climbing the ladder.I just knew I was made for more. If for nothing else, I want to build my own ladder in life, not just for a job or career.
• You need money to make money. You’re just a kid, who’s going to give you the money (after sharing with them the idea of OPM — other people’s money).I was now armed with knowledge — and soon support through mentorship — that would prove anyone at any age can succeed with a strong why and proper guidance.
• It just sounds too good to be true (how to create cashflow and higher returns than savings and stocks was a subject them and I had never heard of).Maybe…and what if it isn’t? Numbers don’t lie. I love the saying (forgot the actual quote): “All you need is one way to make it work.”
• How are you going to find time to learn and do this?I would time block. I would cut out some bad habits (notice not all). I would do whatever it takes.
• The market in Edmonton is bad right now, isn’t it?Financial education through real estate investing goes beyond the city/town we live in. Educated investors are performance based investors. Most people that buy stocks in Tesla, Amazon, Nike, Facebook or Google care if they are going to yield good returns. This is not different.

No offence to my parents. To be completely clear — I love my parents and have a lot of respect for them. They did their best based on what they knew. And I remember this thing my Bootcamp Trainer said: “Often time, the people who love and care about us the most are the ones that stop us from achieving our full potential the most. They also tend to share the same last name.”

I took it all in.

That night, I decided that I needed to break the mold.I needed to break free of my old money blueprint.

The next day, my husband and I invested ~CAD $50,000 in our financial education. 3 credit card transactions and a promissory note on the contract later, we walked away with a used Cashflow Game and a branded padfolio.

Did we just get hyped up?

Could we do this?

Were we just young and naive old hanging fruit for these ‘seminar people’?

The overdosing amount of self-doubt and fear crept in night after night like an excessive daily binge on junk food. In 2010, CAD $50,000 was a nice Mercedes-Benz PAID IN CASH. It was a healthy downpayment for a condo in Metro Vancouver and Downtown Toronto (yup, you heard that right).

Our only antidote at the time was a concoction of believing in ourselves and the new tools that we had gained at the Bootcamp. Interestingly and unsurprisingly, these tools are the same that we still use today when we experience the same two emotions that have destroyed more dreams and aspirations we know: fear and self-doubt.

Today, I know my parents are proud of what I’ve accomplished. For that, I’m grateful. Grateful for their rejection and grateful for their limiting beliefs. From that, I got stronger and better.

All along, I’ve wanted to create something timeless with my writing. This is not about the market conditions, or interest rates or even inflations. Yes, they are important facts to know and they are not the first thing any of us need to know.

Proper financial education allows any of us (yes, you heard that right again — ANY OF US) the ability to expand our means through growing our income streams and wealth in any market conditions. Even the perfect sh*t storm that we are all living through right now.

I hope this is offering some light for you. This ‘reason’ does not need to be as reason as long as you choose different. So that you can become different.

Tomy dedicated readers, I thank you for your support and feedback. If this is the first time you’re reading one of my publications, I hope you’ve enjoyed it and learned a thing or two.

For those of you who are ready and or curious about how to create your personalized financial success plan, you can visit the Bootcamp page or talk to a Strategy Coach from Trust Your Talent Academy to learn more. Take action now if you’re serious about thriving through the tough times and come out better at the end of all of this!