What Running Teaches Us About Being Successful Investors

What does running teach us about being a successful real estate or note investor?

I like running in the morning. Every morning I can, I get up and run to the gym before hitting the office. It has a lot of mental, in addition to physical and health benefits. It’s also taught me a lot about investing in real estate and mortgage notes.

You don’t have to run yourself to take advantage of these important takeaways, but you should know them.

Investing is a Habit

Investing is a good habit. One that it’s good to practice consistently. If you’ve ever tried running in the morning, or even walking or going to the gym, you know it can be a really hard habit to start. It’s a mental thing. Once you actually commit to doing what’s good for you and take those first steps it isn’t nearly as hard as you thought. Once you’ve been running for a few days it becomes natural. You love it, and won’t want to stop. If you do make excuses and take time off, it’s a lot harder to get going again.

Little Efforts Make the Big Differences

Some people get discouraged after their first five days of running. They look in the mirror, they haven’t lost 25lbs yet, and get frustrated about all the effort they’ve made. Many quit. It takes a couple of weeks to really start seeing the results of diet and exercise changes. Then all of a sudden it’s like “wow! This is working, I’m never going to stop.” The opposite is also true. Once you start slacking because you might not feel or see the immediate difference, it’s all downhill. And then you wake up one morning a few weeks later and wonder why you don’t fit into any of your clothes any more. You don’t have to run a marathon everyday or quit your day job to become a full time Instagram fitness model. Just 20 to 45 minutes a day of cardio can make all the difference.

By the same token, your first investment may not make you rich overnight. Maybe your first rental property or mortgage note investments just add $500 a month to your passive income. Not a mindblowing game changer, but a good start. Now you can get frustrated and cash out. Or you can keep building on that. Maybe in a year you can get up to $5,000 in passive income every month. Then double that, replace your current earned income, and then start hitting your real financial goals. You’ll only get there if you keep making the consistent efforts though.

We Mostly Fear the Unknown

What holds most people back isn’t a tangible fear of anything they know is going to happen, but a fear of what they don’t know. They don’t know if they are going to succeed or fail. They usually get what they think about most.

Yet, if you educate yourself, train and condition yourself, you’ll probably be okay. If you’ve picked up my book ‘The Tire Kicker,’ you’ll have read the story of my encounter with a dog in the dark when running one morning.

Up here in New Jersey, where I spend most of my time it’s often dark when I go running in the morning. If I only ran when the weather looked perfect or I could see all the way to the finish line I’d never ever run. The cool thing is that providing I can just see the next few steps in the right direction in front of me, I can make it. I do it almost every day. You’ve just got to get started and not let anything become an excuse that holds you back. That’s the difference between those that get the results they want and everyone else.

Investment Opportunities

Find out more about investing in secured debt and real estate, go to NNG Capital Fund

Image by skeeze from Pixabay