What book has influenced you the most?

[Account Closed]

What book influenced your knowledge, viewpoints, and overall life the most? Additional question- What is your book suggestion for someone just entering real estate?

[Jim K.]

@Account Closed

There have been a few. The biggest influence, far and away, is the Bible, but of course you don't want to hear that, no one does. But it would be hard to find an author that has influenced me more in recent years than Thomas Stanley, who wrote The Millionaire Next Door. For someone just entering real estate, what you would want would be a bird's eye picture of all the different ways people make money in real estate. It's hard to beat much of the free material on this website and the books published by Bigger Pockets for that introductory glimpse. One of those book was written for men and women just starting out in life. It's called Set for Life, written by Scott Trench, and it lays out a high-probability path to basic financial success at a young age. I desperately wish someone had pushed that book in my hands at, say 19, 20, 21. Maybe I would have had the wit to do what it said, maybe I wouldn't, but at least I would have had a shot.

I would say the very largest challenge for someone starting out is fully understanding that the first 13 years of school, K-12, are essentially glorified babysitting in an enforced propaganda daycamp. The psychologists call it "becoming socialized," but for the bulk of us in America, it means you spend years in front of risk-averse, unionized government employees for the best hours of the day. While you are taught certain useful concepts in those years, you also absorb an awful lot of institutional mentality.

Then you go to college to "follow your dreams," as your guidance counselor told you, and study something you think will "position you well in the job market," not realizing that's yet another trap, because no one knows what the job market is really going to look like in 10, 20 years. Looking back now, there was a truly incredible emphasis on "not screwing up your future," an immense fear of risk that carries over from high-school mind control, pushed into your brain by the people who work there, all of whom spent years getting along to worm their way into a unionized low-to-middle-income teaching job, in large part, by jumping through hoops and never doing anything that might lead to their getting fired out of a government union job, or, to put it as teachers do, "jeopardize their position."

And then you get into a job and suddenly, you realize that the world is very different from what you were brought up to believe (if you're very, very lucky). For THE VAST MAJORITY, unfortunately, the brainwashing is too powerful and they remain successfully "socialized" for the rest of their lives. Even those who struggle, sooner or later, seem to succumb and get trapped at a very high rate.

I have three acquaintances at about the same age (mid-40s) who I always considered bright when I was younger. Today they all work like animals, live in upper middle-class homes, and drive expensive, newer cars. They are all really broke as hell and are deeper in debt that any fifteen homeless people together. They are living in an illusion of material success fueled by a mountain of debt. Their plans for the future involve working and paying off their immense tax burdens until they die. They have fully succumbed to middle-class lifestyle creep and have a lot of toys they practically never enjoy. If by some miracle, they do manage to enjoy one of them one fine weekend, if it ain't on their Facebook or their kid's Instagram, it didn't happen.

They invariably all have JUST ONE REAL ESTATE IDEA. It goes like this: "Let me pay off some more of my house, and then I'll buy a bigger, better, newer house and move into it and rent out my old house, and use the rent from my old house pay the rest of its barely-reasonable mortgage and to help with my new house's utterly insane mortgage payments." Their goal in life is apparently to be choking in personal debt until they die, locked in jobs they not-so-secretly despise, praying life doesn't throw a curve ball at them that they can't handle.

So ultimately, Chris, if you just resolve not to be like my acquaintances, not to allow yourself to even think about going near that version of the future of yourself, you've got a better shot than most people.