Having no plan of action, I unsurprisingly took no steps forward after reading “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. Kiyosaki’s genius recommendation was to buy his Cashflow game as well as his next book, both of which seemed very uninteresting: I do not like being up-sold. So, like most of us who finish a good book, I marveled at what I had learned, replaced it on the shelf and didn’t apply a modicum of what I had learned. Lesson number one for life people, and especially you college kids and/or recent grads out there: Knowledge is not power! The APPLICATION of knowledge is power!
I will preface the following portion of our tale with the following. I had been feeling restless and longing for change, sort of like Bears fans after the deplorable Rex Grossman season. I felt like my opportunity to be whoever I wanted to be and do whatever I wanted with this life was slipping away and, if I didn’t act soon, I would end up a little old lady with four cats, teaching music lessons because she never bothered to choose a different path. I had an idea that real estate investing, not brokering, was the next thing I would do, but didn’t know how or where to begin.
As you will undoubtedly hear me say again, I hold firm to the truth that people are motivated towards pleasure and away from pain. I was still enjoying the newness of being my own boss, was compensated quite well and felt fulfilled by the nature of my work. I was not hurting financially so, other than wanting a little variety, there wasn’t a lot of motivation to move in another direction, particularly one that might involve hard work and/or sacrifice and risk.
Several months passed and winter, having reached its calendar end, lingered into the technical beginning of spring, as winter in Chicago is won’t to do. My condo tends to be a bit breezy, whether the winds are open or not, which makes for a comfortable living space in warm months, but an absolute ice box in winter. The chill factor, however, was an excellent motivator for getting to the gym. Thus one snowy Friday night, while avoiding my co-dependent boyfriend, whom I really needed to dump, I found myself cold and lethargic on a treadmill at X Sport.
I had plugged in my earbuds and was set to change the channel when I heard yahoos yammering about real estate investing. The interviewer, a slick white dude who could have passed for a used car salesman or stock broker, was "interviewing" a clean cut guy, who looked decent now but was probably a complete dork in high school, named Dean Graziosi about his real estate investing book called, “How to be a Real Estate Millionaire”. Their conversation was about the tanking real estate market and the many investing opportunities it afforded. The sales pitch wasa for Dean's book, which showed you how to seize hold of those opportunities.
In the end, the yahoos convinced me. I never made it past the treadmill. I spent the remainder of the workout absorbing every word and left the gym feeling like God had opened a worm hole in the universe and allowed me to peek through for just a moment.
I set out to buy Dean’s book a few days later feeling inexplicably anxious. Here was a book that held the answers for which I had been searching and yet I felt they way I imagine teenage boys must when they buy porn or cigarettes for the first time. Even after purchasing it, that book sat in my trunk for several weeks; I couldn’t bring myself to start it. Perhaps this is what some guys go through when they finally meet their future wife and, while they know she’s “the one”, they can’t bring themselves to even say “hello” and initiate that first conversation. Maybe it’s because those guys, just like me, are staring their future in the eye and sometimes that’s a scary thing to confront….
"Go up to your fears and speak to them, and as ghosts are said to do, they will generally fade away" Anon
To see where the treadmill eventually led visit: www.newrichbdg.com
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