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Lessons - The Warning Signs That Would Have Saved Me Millions | David Greene - Fmr BiggerPockets Host & Bestselling Author · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, explore the truth behind real estate success,
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  and why shortcuts often lead to costly mistakes.
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  Discover how misleading narratives and core sellers profit from selling outcomes instead of skills.
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  Understand why mastery, discipline, and skill development are essential to building real wealth,
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  and uncover how to identify red flags and make smarter decisions when investing in education.
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  Let's talk about what's sort of petled online in terms of real estate courses.
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  This is probably one of the biggest pain in your asses and you deal with every single day when
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  you speak to people. But when you look at the people, there's a couple different things.
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  You look at people that have figured it out one way, and maybe they've gone through a lot of
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  shit and a lot of failures that they're not speaking about publicly. Maybe they actually
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  haven't even figured it out to the degree that they're alluding to online, and they're making
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  a lot of money selling courses. That's another issue. But the point is you still will not respect
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  the process compared to if you're putting your own money in, which is why I love sort of just the
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  framework that you teach over to people. But what are some of the false stories, false narratives
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  of what real estate success looks like? Well, everybody, my friend Brandon Turner has a really good
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  statement. He says, nobody buys a drill. They nobody wants a drill. They want a hole. You buy
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  the drill to get the hole. Nobody wants to learn how to put the work into investment real estate.
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  They want financial freedom. They want to be rich. They want to not have a job. They want to
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  they're sitting in commute traffic and they're pissed and they hate it and they want a way out of it.
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  Okay, my my experience in life is that the only way you get out of a situation you don't like
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  is that you rise to the top and you earn the right to get in a better one.
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  In everything in life, if your spouse isn't happy with you, you don't have a good relationship.
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  The only way to fix that is to change the things in you that make it hard to be a good partner,
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  bad a thousand, and now your spouse usually starts to feel guilty. I'm not married, but I see
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  this in marriage all the time. Like, man, they're showing up every day and I'm not. It puts pressure
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  on them to do the same thing. If you get into the, I'm going to make threats like, well, all be a
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  better husband when you're a better wife, it never works. It becomes a race to the bottom.
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  Work is like that. You can't, as a basketball player, tell the coach, I'll play harder when
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  you give me more playing time. You have to be showing a lot of effort and practice and improving
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  to earn. That is the order of the world. Okay. Like, it is naturally a meritocracy, even though
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  we live in a society that sort of does a misdirection to try to make you believe that's not the case.
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  It's still a meritocracy. When I decide where I'm going to go for dinner, I don't ask what the
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  most mediocre tacos are. I say, what is the best taco stand in town? And that is how I make
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  my choices. You buy a Rolex because you think it's the best. You buy a Lamborghini because you
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  think it's the best. That's how we all make decisions. And so it's disingenuous to tell people,
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  hey, somewhere, someone out there is going to like your tacos just the way they are. It doesn't
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  matter if they're not the best or they're stale or it takes a long time to make them. You are,
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  they are a unique and special snowflake taco and someone's going to love it. It's ridiculous to
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  think that way. And so getting back to your original question of like, what can you do to,
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  sorry, we'll take this part out. What would remind me what you would ask me? The real estate
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  owner, it was so you went down this really good rabbit hole and there's these things I'll pull out
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  of every single thing you mentioned. And most of it is in the pursuit of excellence. I want to
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  get to that in the pursuit of mastery, but I was saying the false stories around real success.
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  Thank you. What are they? What are they? So what I talk about in my book, there's three pillars.
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  There's chapters on defense, literally the art of tracking your money, budgeting,
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  your money, knowing where it's going, reading a profit and loss statement, having a personal
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  budget and having a plan for every dollar. Then there's a pillar on offense. And this is
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  the skills that you need to develop, the things that people who make money do. It is not,
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  it doesn't just happen. Like people that are really good with with women or women that get a lot
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  of mail attention, it doesn't just happen. There are things they are doing that you could identify
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  and say, this is why they do so well. So there's chapters on extreme ownership and being a leader,
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  taking on responsibility. There's chapters on the process of skill development, the literal process
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  you go through to build skills. I did a TED talk on that topic that if you want to be good at things,
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  here's the path you follow. Like Napoleon Dynamite said, you got to have skills. There's the pursuit
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  of excellence. You have to fall in love with the process of being great because I'm going to go
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  spend my money for the best tacos. I'm looking for the best partner. My friends are going to be the
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  best friends that I think I can get. The pursuit of excellence is how you earn the right to get more
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  money. Now in our space, the real estate investing space, there are a lot of people that are going to
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  sell you on the opposite of that. You don't have to do anything. It should just happen. If you know,
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  it's sort of like a mixed martial artist who trains every day versus a person who says, well,
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  I went to this kung fu place and they taught me the secret ancient art of the five finger death
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  punch. And so I don't have to practice. I know this special technique, right? Well, we know that
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  doesn't exist because there's nobody in the UFC that's doing five finger death punches. That
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  is something that hacks the Jews to get you to sign up for their gym. And they're praying on the
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  fact that there are a lot of people that want the result without having to put in the work.
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  In the real estate investing space, you will frequently see people that are bragging about
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  they quit their job because they made enough money from real estate. And they they have this
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  amazing car because they got it from real estate. But the reality is when I talk to these people,
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  their real estate is not doing much. They're making these money from the courses that they're selling.
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  They're really just really good marketers, which is oftentimes a good synonyms with deceivers.
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  And they're using the money you pay on their courses to fund the lifestyle that they're now
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  selling you. And so the book was written almost as an antidote to that. I don't know any wealthy
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  people who approach things like that. And I do know that it is possible to deceive people and
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  separate them from their money, but not for the long term. Eventually, you get exposed.
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  Eventually, people figure it out. You also have to live with yourself that it kind of makes you
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  my opinion a POS that you're selling a dream to people that's that's not real.
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  Well, you know what you're doing? You're you're selling the dream of what you're that person
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  was experiencing in their commute to work, the not having to work anymore. The I don't want to
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  I don't want to have a W-2 income. I want to have passive income. My most hate word in the world
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  is passive income because it doesn't it doesn't exist like everything. I would have worked really
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  hard to get a great body and then never have to work again in my six pack. Well, it's not how it
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  works. That's just never how it works. And then once people start into real estate listening to
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  people that actually don't know what they're talking about and don't know what the preaching
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  because again, they're making a lot of their money off course sales. Then you have an over reliance
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  on whatever that person is teaching you and you're not looking elsewhere because you're so bought
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  into it and you're now not just financially invested, you're emotionally invested in whatever
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  this person is teaching, which I think is a whole other issue because like religion, like fitness,
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  you you attach yourself to this dogma and you refuse to look at anything else because you're
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  so invested in it. And I think this is a very toxic place to be because now you have spent
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  10, 20, 30, 40, $100,000 on courses. You have to make it work. So now you're not even going to
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  allow yourself to look elsewhere for other opportunities because you feel like you're failing.
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  That's an investment, right? You invested in the wrong thing and now you're low to let it go. It
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  sort of supports that theory we talked about earlier that when you're invested in something
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  you'll hang on to it, but it can work against you when you invest in the wrong thing.
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  I spent $50,000 learning how to do this technique, but there's not opportunities in the space for
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  that technique anymore or I don't have the skills that are needed. Like in our in our world,
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  that's often wholesaling. Hey, you got no money. That's okay. Put $15,000 charge on your credit card.
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  Buy my course. I'll teach you how to make money in real estate without any capital and they teach
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  you wholesaling, which is basically going and finding an incredible deal putting under contract and
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  selling the right to buy that property at an incredible price to someone else and you get like
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  a middleman fee. It's the hardest way that I know of to make money in real estate. You got to
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  relentlessly go out there and look for people that are trying to sell a home. A lot of the time,
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  not every time, but a lot of the time you're buying from grandma who doesn't know what her house is
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  worth and still thinks $100,000 is a lot of money or you're finding a person in serious financial
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  jeopardy that you're you're taking advantage of in a sense, but you got to have a great mouthpiece.
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  You got to be really good salesperson. You got to talk people into something. You got to make them
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  think they're winning even if they're not. There is a lot of skills at a wholesale or needs much more
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  than a average Joe that just does a good job being a plumber and slowly puts their money into real
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  estate and lets it grow over 30 years. That's a you don't need very many skills to make that work
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  at all, but you got to have some money. So all of these courses that will teach you how to do real
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  estate without money, they end up needing you to have the highest talent level that most people
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  won't have. So then they'll fail at it. But like you said, they'll think, well, I have to keep going
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  because I've already spent the money. And then they get what I call course shame. They sign up for
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  a course. They signed up for a group. It didn't work out. And they internalize it. And there's
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  something wrong with me. I'm the problem. I suck it life. Their confidence takes a hit. They're less
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  likely to go work hard at what they're doing. Meanwhile, the person who left them feeling that way
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  is driving around in the Ferrari that they got from the money that that person spent on their course.
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  It's a vicious cycle. Okay. So what what is I'm curious if there's any other thing because you
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  live in this world. Are there any other major red flags that if somebody is looking to get started
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  into real estate and they're going to go to Google or they're going to go to YouTube and they're
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  going to find all the people that I'm sure you you absolutely ate. So what what are the things
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  without naming names or whatever you do whatever you want to do. But what are the things people should
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  look out for us that they should be wary of that they shouldn't pay for. I mean, we're talking
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  about courses, but there's some education that's useful. That's a good that's a really good
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  question. I don't know that I've ever been asked that. I like that. So a couple of things I would
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  think about is the person selling you on because I don't think there's anything wrong with selling
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  education. It's selling shit education. That's the problem. Okay. Are they telling you I will teach
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  you and a list of what they're going to teach you or are they selling you a result. If you take my
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  course, you will make this much money. If you do this thing, you will get this lifestyle. They
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  cannot guarantee that you can own a gym. You can't tell everyone that comes to sign up for the gym.
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  This is the body you're going to have because that's up to them. You can show them the machines.
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  You can show them the personal fitness instructors. You can show them the protein supplements.
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  You can show the tools that you will offer. You cannot guarantee a result. So if you're being
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  sold on a result first off, that is impossible. That's a big red flag. Another one. And I just thought
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  of this is have you ever noticed Scott that like a very high proportion of influencers and people
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  that sell education or products happen to also be really good looking? You're not wrong. There's
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  not a lot of ugly fat people, right? So my theory would be is we all like looking at good looking
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  people. Part of their success is because of their looks, not what they're teaching you. We just
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  rather hear information from a hot girl or a really confident but I think that's a proven psychological
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  phenomenon. Like I think that it's easier to connect with people when you're you know you're in good
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  shape. You present well. You just you just increase the trust factor almost when you engage.
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  Yes. That is aptitude. So if there you that might be a contributing factor to why they have a great
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  reputation, right? It's odd, but they're really like old ugly fat dude that's teaching you how
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  you're going to make money in real estate. I would probably trust them first. I would that
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  person before like the 25 year old smoke show who's telling you how she's traveling to the
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  Maldives every weekend because of the money that comes from. It's a sniff test. You just look
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  at the Instagram. You look at the Instagram. And again, to your point, they're selling if they're
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  selling the lifestyle. Yeah. Then there's always a I don't know. Just like it's not it's not a 100%
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  hard and fast rule. But if it is like every single post on Instagram has like a hundred thousand
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  likes and tons of comments and they're a million followers and all they're doing is taking pictures
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  in front of different infinity pools around the world. And it's like you start to be like listen.
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  The more that you see their toes or their legs or the pictures of that. Yeah. That's really a
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  little bit of a red flag. No, that's a little bit of a red flag. The real estate space specifically is
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  you'll take a really smart guy that they could teach you how to analyze an apartment complex at a
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  high level. And there's really good information. Okay. Side note, if you're not good with numbers
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  and spreadsheets and analysis, it does not matter how much house mark that guy is you're not going
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  to be good at that job. If you have a huge physique, you're not ever going to be a really good
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  log distance runner. It's just there's a skill set that every human has that they need to find
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  the right match. But you'll find that person who he wears new balance tennis shoes and he tucks in
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  his shirt way too high. And they're not comfortable on camera, but they're really the brains behind
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  the operation. And then they get a very attractive younger influencer to talk about real estate all
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  the time and say, here's my life. Look what I did. Look at my cool car. Look at my cool clothes.
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  Look at my bag. Here's me at the infinity pool. And then everyone wants that person's life.
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  So they go follow them. They sign up for a webinar. That person explains at a very high level,
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  not very nuanced at all, how this works. You give them your money. They give it to the guy in
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  the new balance tennis shoes and he goes and invest it. Okay. They sell you. We will teach you how
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  to do the thing as a way to get a foot in the door to get you to give them your money. And then
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  they're not even the ones investing it. They're giving it to somebody else. This is a like repeatable
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  common pattern that you will see. And it's not just in real estate. You see the Kardashians doing
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  this like, I don't know which one of them has the makeup brand. She's not designing the makeup.
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  She's not in the lab as a chemist, figuring out how to put this together. They go to an
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  established makeup company. They put Kylie Kendall Kim, whatever on the brand and they put some
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  form of like lips or sensual looking thing. And then everyone goes, Oh, I trust her. I want to
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  look like her all by that makeup, but they're not the ones doing it. So just anytime you're paying
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  for education, that's another thing to vet. Am I learning from someone who does it? Or am I
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  learning from a person whose lifestyle I want? Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable,
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode.
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  See you in the next one.