What does it take to invest well and achieve great wealth? Talent, know-how, resources? Of course. However, my argument is that more critical to investment success is mindset. Mindset governs everything else.
Mindset governs the behaviors that lead to believing bigger, deciding to invest, and maintaining discipline.

Believes Bigger

Any entrepreneur or wealth builder eventually comes to a place of high conviction. They believe there something they should be doing but are not, or there is a pain that they want to finally resolve. It is not a simple frustration, but existential. The broad dissatisfaction is realized from feeling like they are chasing their tails with their personal finances, not utilizing their talents at work or missing out on a bigger purpose or legacy. In fact, if you are reading this, you have felt this way and my belief is that everyone does also.

The issue is that most of us go one path (do nothing, or do something, but not for long) and few choose a different path (engage these thoughts, get educated, and decide to make a change). For fairness, many have chosen the former path because they do not personally know others outside of their own circle who have different experiences, have accomplished great wealth and share a different mindset.

Decides to Invest

Deciding to invest outside of your company matched 401k is a hurdle for many. They have great, high paying jobs, money in savings, 401k, maybe even a great college plan for their children, and so on. Why would they allocate more to investing? In what would they invest?

Having gained the education from various books and podcasts (see the resources page for recommendations), I knew that there was a big opportunity that I had already missed but wanted to waste no more time. I decided to take ownership for my future and invest, and the primary asset class of focus was real estate. I spent and continue to spend time daily learning, listening and sharing ideas that help me and others grow wealth to support retirement, children’s education and family legacy. The prerequisite for action is to decide.

Maintains Great Discipline

More importantly after deciding is having the discipline to learn, grow and stick to your investment focus and criteria.

Learn: education by reading, listening and networking. This takes effort and time, and it will not happen on accident but with intention. To make it easy for you, this blog releases articles weekly. Why don’t you subscribe and get these wealth building nuggets in your email every Monday?

Grow: surrounding yourself in a circle of like-minded thinkers and high achievers. Before I made the shift to real estate investing, I had not investor friends. Before I made the shift from single family homes to apartments, I had no apartment syndicator friends. My main business circle are like minded apartment investors, both active and passive. Guess what’s happening; I am growing! But that takes discipline, which is ingrained in the mindset of great investors.

Focus: it is hard to see true success in anything, especially growing your investments and creating wealth, if you do not have a focus. If you dabble in stocks, dabble in real estate, dabble in foreign exchange trading, will you ever grow? Not sure.

”I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee

For his intense focus and discipline, Bruce Lee was dangerous. As a passive investor, you too can be dangerous, but you must be focused enough to get educated, consistently grow, and stick to the decision to focus on real estate. Otherwise, you’ll just keep buying stocks and mutual funds. I am sure you will do modestly well.

Maintaining your investment criteria is critical. Sticking to the pre-defined criteria for what you will invest in and what you will avoid will prevent headaches and frustration. Great investors know when to say no and move on. The most disciplined investors resist the FOMO (fear of missing out) daily. After having educated and grown, you will be presented with many opportunities; having your criteria tattooed on your arm, one based on your goals, risk aversion and priorities, you will know what fits and what does not. The best investors easily can move forward or pass based on that criteria.

Mindset is Key

Mindset is key for any sort of great success. The greatest believe bigger, make the decision and maintain stubborn discipline. As real estate investors, maintaining focus and close adherence to our predefined criteria is critical for our success. And our grandchildren will thank us.