Ever heard of fainting goats?
If you haven’t I highly recommend you search YouTube for ‘fainting goats’ and get ready for some chuckles.
You see, fainting goats are characterized by their tendency to freeze up and fall over at any swing or sudden movement that surprises them. In fact they may even topple over when being handed food too quickly!
So how in the world is that related to Real Estate investing?
While it wont give you a formula for a successful real estate purchase what it can tell you is how to overcome an even bigger challenge in successful investing – human nature.
The same ‘freeze’ response that a goat demonstrates shows up in people all the time…especially new or would be investors.
Our brains are hardwired to seek out certainty and minimize risk and when faced with something daunting like purchasing an investment property, there’s so many unknowns that most of us freeze and do nothing.
And it’s with good reason…with any investment there are inherent risks.
But the tragedy (and missed opportunity) of the freeze response is it blinds you from possibility.
By freezing at everything outside of the norm you’re used to, it’s hard to let new information in and see opportunity.
By freezing and not doing anything you perpetuate the familiar. Everyday whether good or bad continues because it’s familiar and if it’s unfamiliar the instinct is to freeze and do nothing.
And believe me, I get it. I’ve been there.
I was self employed with income that was never steady, unsuccessfully attempting to dig myself out of debt before making my first real estate investment.
Everytime I thought about pulling the trigger on a property I froze because I thought I needed to “get my ducks in a row” before making a purchase.
To take that “risk” meant I was risking getting into a worse situation, making myself even more behind and moving even further away from being financially free.
The reality was I was freezing and letting my brain rationalize why staying the same was safer than exploring moving forward.
And if my attention was on ‘How can I keep myself on familiar ground” vs. “How can I make investing work” then I would always find what I looked for.
So when I finally started asking myself “How can I make this work” vs. “I need X before I can make this work” I started seeing possibilities everywhere!
So if you don’t feel like wasting decades of time freezing like our furry friends from above, let’s have a chat and see where your possibilities are =)