If you could do it all over again how would you do it?

[Ulysses Arreguin]

I am a 17 year old high school student who has a strong devotion to real estate and plan on pursuing it for the rest of my life. I've read the basic books and looked into the basic training but i just wanted to know if anyone here on the Bigger Pockets forum could give me an insight on how i could be a better investor/real estate agent. If you could start all over at my age what are some the things you wish you would have done differently ? What choices do you wish you would have made ? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Travis Hamilton]

@Ulysses Arreguin - take what Ben (or for that matter anybody) says with a grain of salt.  You don't have to be a calculus whiz to understand the fundamentals of real estate investing or identifying a good deal.  Yes, if you'd like to be a CPA then being great with numbers is pretty much a prerequisite.  However, 99.9% of the math you'll need to be able to do with real estate you will have learned by 8th grade.

The real estate agent that just sold our house in NY could barely bang out an email and it would have killed her to have needed to add two 5 digit numbers together.  But she did an amazing job marketing and selling our house.  She was amazing at writing marketing copy, networking and finding the right people to get through our house.  And when it came time to close she knew who and how to get the right people to right places at the right time.

Identify your strengths and capitalize on them.  Know your weaknesses and work hard to improve them.  There are literally 100's of ways you can be involved in and associated with real estate.

All the best!