Where do most beginners fail?

[Sean Dezoysa]

Sometimes it's good to look at a new venture from the angle of the most common causes of failure.Let's get the non-action/motivation ones out of the way. Most people fail anything due to not starting, not studying  enough to be competent or not having an initial plan. 

For the few remaining who take action, what have you noticed stalls them out? 

I'll post about myself a few years ago when I was underfunded and had to bail to retrain in a new profession.

1. Overestimating response rates and doing insufficient marketing to generate enough leads

2. Buyer's list too small or unreliable, causing my one potential deal to fall through.

[Joe Villeneuve]

1 - Thinking the property is the asset
2 - Focusing on the property instead of the deal
3 - Spending their seed money instead of using it to infinity
4 - Not understanding that market analysis is more important than property analysis 
5 - Not having a REI plan established
6 - Focusing on one strategy only
7 - Focusing on their own market to invest in because "they know it"...even if it's a bad market to invest in
8 - Accepting negative cash flow...for any reason
9 - Not understanding the value of equity in motion
10 - Thinking you are saving money when you pay all cash
11 - Not understanding the impact of the "compounding effect" on REI
12 - Not understanding how important the number sequence "1073741824" is. and why you should apply it to every decision you make
13 - Buying one property at a time, then wondering what to do next
14 - Thinking that "flipping" refers to properties, when in fact it refers to your "cash"
15 - Negotiating against themselves
16 - Not understanding that the "total cost" isn't nearly as important than "how you pay for it"...and "who" is actually paying for it
17 - Not understanding that the "total return" isn't nearly as important as "how you receive" those returns.
18 - Thinking that you can learn enough just by doing...no matter what the cost
19 - Not understanding what makes up the "3 parts" of risk, and then not understanding what risk is to them
20 - Focusing on percentages to judge good deals from bad, instead of dollars
21 - Not understanding why you should live on the left side of the equation, when most REI live on the right
22 - Not understanding the importance of Geometry and Algebra are to REI
23 - Looking for needles in haystacks instead of stacks of needles
24 - ...and more