Friends and family were surprised when they heard that I paid to learn how to invest in property. I’m sure some of them probably sniffed at me (not in my face but politely internally) and thought I must be a victim of one of those property academies scams.
On one hand I somehow expected their reaction, but on the other hand I was wondering about the logical thinking behind it.
We pay for our education at university, sometimes even at a very high price. If you’d want to become a doctor you study medicine; if you’d want to be a lawyer you study law. As simple as that.
Now here comes the dilemma: When you are about to spend a huge amount of money buying your next property, and even with the intention to make money with your property investments, why wouldn’t you want to learn how to minimise the risk and maximise the return before tapping your feet into this risky business?
Here comes the fundamental difference between amateur and professional property investors – how they treat property education (I know I said we’d talk about mindset this week, but I now think education should come first).
Amateurs treasure every bit of money
Nobody wants to lose money. Therefore amateurs would try their very best to avoid any kind of loss. Instead of spending the time and money to learn (too afraid to lose the money they spend on educating themselves), they would pay attention to all the bad news happening in the world and spend most of their time looking for shortcuts, collecting bits and pieces of inconsistent tips from different people and different sources. They are trading their valuable time and attention for these scattered, “free” information. How are you able to filter out unnecessary information and make the right judgement when all you can hold on to are the bad news looping on TV and some other amateurs’ experience?
It is funny if you think of how so many people would pay for their education in schools and universities, just to make sure that they will be able to find a well-paid job. However, when it comes to paying for the education to getting rich, many people would pull their face, roll their eyes, thinking how unnecessary it is to pay any institution to teach them how to buy a house.
Professionals value time and education
Property is an ever-changing game, there’s no end to it and also no simple start. Almost everyone would agree that it’s a learning by doing business but it also means that you need to constantly educate yourself with new knowledge and equip yourself with new skills to keep up with the market. There will always be some super lucky people who accidentally set foot in property, make a fortune and at the same time master the skills in investing. But let’s be honest with ourselves: Do you truly think that you will be the lucky one?
Almost all the fellow investors I met had paid for some kind of property education, from all-round basic training to strategy-focused seminars to private coaching, some even pay high entry fees for high profile property conference. It’s all about education and learning from other people’s experience. Those who are serious in this business know that property is not a get-rich-quick game, it requires persistence, courage and patience, especially when the time is tough. Investors don’t afraid of investing during bad times (actually that’s the best time to invest!) since if you know what you are doing, you can make money not only when the market goes up, but also when the market goes down, or moves sideways.
In the society we only ever learn to pay for things which teach us some skills, so that we would get paid for the hard work and time we trade in for income. Otherwise, we would only pay for consumer’s goods to satisfy our desire. Never were we taught to pay for something that’d teach us instead of working for an ordinary job, you’d only need to work once and then get paid forever. But you need the knowledge to have the work done right. You need to be able to know how to do the due diligence, how to understand a survey, how to verify demand etc. The time you spend on educating yourself in a proper way would save you so much time and money than if you do it base on trial and error. Education is a cheaper way to learn than from serious mistakes, especially when it comes to property.
You’d pay a driving school to learn how to drive, why shouldn’t you pay to learn how to invest? This all comes down to the mindset.