What Would You Do Differently If You Could Start All Over Again?

A common question I am asked by investors is "What would you do differently if you were to start all over again to enable you to fast track your property investment business?"

In hindsight what I would have done differently is educate myself so I would have not made all the mistakes I made in ...A common question I am asked by investors is "What would you do differently if you were to start all over again to enable you to fast track your property investment business?"

In hindsight what I would have done differently is educate myself so I would have not made all the mistakes I made in the first ten to fifteen years of my property investing. Sure I have a very substantial property portfolio now, but considering I have been investing for over 37 years, it would have been much, much bigger if I knew then what I know now.

At present I hear a lot of investors say things like "I know the property cycle is moving on and I have $100,000 or even several hundreds of thousands of dollars – where do I start?"

And I usually tell them the place I would start is by educating myself - read books, listen to DC's watch DVD's and attend seminars.

Sure I'm biased….I conduct seminars and write books and produce CD's and DVD'sand I make money out of those.

But the first step along the investment path really is educating yourself, and it's what I still do today so that I keep growing and it's what all successful property investors do.

If I had one million dollars to invest and I was just starting out, I'd spend even more on my investment education – maybe $30,000 to $50,000. I'd take some courses and I would pay some experts to teach me one on one. I'd want to develop financial fluency and I would recognise that this would probably take me some time – maybe months.

I know years ago when I was trying to become a successful property investor, in my effort to achieve more and more success, I discovered that my own learning and experience weren't enough. So I started to look elsewhere and turned to books, teachers, mentors and even consultants for advice.
And they all seemed to point in one direction – you can learn from history. Books recounted stories, teachers explained research, mentors taught from experience and consultants cite best practices.

What this meant was that I didn't have to start from the beginning and learn from my own mistakes. I could start where someone else had left off, I could give up my need to "do" in order to learn. In fact I could learn faster.
You see… when I first started investing I wanted to do it all myself.

I guess there were two reasons behind this. Firstly I thought it was the best way to learn. And to be honest the second reason was that I was "cheap". I thought it would save me money doing it all myself – but in fact it cost me lots. Experience is an expensive teacher.

When I eventually recognised I didn't have to do it myself or learn from my own mistakes – it was one of my biggest "ahas". In fact I sometimes joking that say some of my best thinking was done by other people.

I remember reading a great book by Tony Robbins many years ago – Unlimited Power - and he put a name to what I was looking for - modelling. And in his book he explained the process for finding these proven models. He explained that you should look at the very best people in a field and study what they do and how hey behave and how they think and then you do the same. Because when you do, you can often repeat their success.

Now this doesn't just have to do with investing. It relates to everything in life. If you want to lose weight, he suggests the best way to do that is to model someone who has lost the weight you want to lose. So you eat what they eat, exercise like they exercise and think like they think. If you do that, you will get the results that they get.You will lose weight.

They key is to learn how they achieved their goals and then understand why they did it that way. When you grasp these two things, you can start off where they left off.

When I realised this years ago I started to become an avid reader of success stories looking for models to base my growth on – I looked for people who had already achieved what I wanted to achieve and the I studied how that person did it and what they achieved.

We all have personal ceilings of achievement that are based on our current thoughts and habits. We are restricted by what I call our Financial Blueprint.

While for many beginners it’s about the money – for most of us it's not just about attaining the wealth, once you have it you need to maintain it. And to in order to maintain wealth most Australians are going to have to upgrade their Wealthy Operating System – their internal financial blueprint.

I'm sure you've heard or seen examples of people who have obtained wealth, happiness or success and then they sabotage their personal life, their family lives or their business and lost it all. It is the same with people who win a lottery and have more wealth than they know how to handle and then they lose it.

An analogy a lot of people use is to think of your self as a cup. If your cup is small but your amount of money is big then it will spill over and you will lose it. You simply cannot have more money than the size of your cup. You must grow yourself into a bigger cup so you can not only obtain more wealth but attract more wealth.(You do this by upgrading the way you think and react about money.)

As you know, the universe hates a vacuum, which means if you have a large money container wealth will rush in to fill in the space. So upgrade your way of thinking, becoming a bigger person and you will attract more wealth.

Most Australian's want to grow, want to improve and want to lift these personal ceilings of achievement and they think they can do this through trial and error – they are prepared to learn form their mistakes. And they can learn and improve this way – but only so far and so fast. Learning from your mistakes is a slow and demoralising way of growing yourself.

In contrast seeking out mentors, and learning from mentors who have achieved what you want to achieve can help raise your level of achievement dramatically and in a relatively short periods of time.

It's a huge leap of faith to assume that starting at the bottom of the investment ladder, with only their knowledge and experience, an investor could ever reach the place where a proven model begins.

We all need to learn from mistakes –this helps you get it right and move forward.

The only question is whose mistakes? Yours or those of the successful investors who have already achieved what you want to achieve.

Of course they are no guarantee of success, but a proven model built on the practices of people who have already achieved what you want to achieve will maximise your chances of success.
Models aren't really new – they are everywhere.

You follow them I follow them. Everyone follows them – most people just aren't aware of these repeatable processes they have developed – ways to tie your shoe laces or brush your teeth.