If you wanted to become a successful race car driver or attorney or a chef, would reading books or attending a few seminars teach you the necessary skills and give you the necessary experience to become successful? Sure, you could become a street racer, or represent yourself in a small claims court to sue your landlord, or you could learn how to cook really good fried chicken at home! But you are not going to achieve financial freedom in any of those industries, or any industry for that matter without having someone that is already successful to mentor or coach you!
Getting a Mentor Can Accelerate Your Education
Thinking that you can become a successful real estate investor without having someone there day to day that has already achieved success as a real estate investor could almost be equated to a friend needing to have their appendix removed and thinking you could watch some YouTube videos and read some books and perform the procedure yourself. Look at anyone in your life that has learned a profession and excels at it and they will tell you they owe their success to at least one mentor, possibly several.
I am sure that LeBron James, or Michael Jordan, and even Michael Phelps have had someone to coach them to bring their skills to the highest level possible. It is not just athletes that need training, it is most professionals. If I was going to have brain surgery, I would want that surgeon to have the best mentor possible showing them how to do it the right way.
Real Estate investing is no different than any other profession. In fact, those that try to do it on their own and fail have more to lose than they would if they tried many other trades or professions on their own. Ok, well maybe not if they tried to be a brain surgeon on their own! But the point is that just like there are more self-made millionaires in real estate than all other industries combined, if you crash and burn in the real estate market you stand to lose big!
Having a mentor can be the difference between finding success and finding nothing but failure. It is invaluable to have someone with the success you are looking for show you not only what to do, but what mistakes they have made so that you don’t make the same mistakes. There are also advantages to having a mentor like gaining access to their network or “power team”. If someone is successful in real estate, they surround themselves with other successful people.
At the end of the day, how badly do you want to be successful? There is the possibility of you being the first person in the world that was able to become a successful real estate investor ALL ON YOUR OWN!