MINDSET
MONEY TALK
The 7 Steps To Financial Freedom
CREATE, PREPARE, AND BEGIN YOUR JOURNEY STEP FIVE
by Gene Powers
P lan your route, gather what you need, and begin. Once you choose your passive income vehicle — the one well-suited to you that will generate passive income for your financial freedom, then make a plan for your journey. You have envisioned and committed to your destination (see Step 2), which is your direction. You have measured the gap — the distance from where you are today to where you will go (see Step 3). And you have chosen the vehicle that will take you there (Step 4). Now you must create a plan and route you will take to begin the journey building your passive income with your cho - sen investment vehicle. You must gain enough expertise and experience to understand how to begin making these investments with acceptable risk. Create your plan for how you will achieve that necessary expertise to work with your investment vehicle. Seek train - ing and/or work with and learn from experts/mentors who have achieved the success you desire and figure out your plan to begin closing the gap towards your destination. While planning is important, MORE important is to BEGIN. Remember, you don’t need to know the entire route or every leg of
your journey to financial freedom. You simply need to begin the first leg and take your next step in the direc - tion toward your destination. As you travel, the next leg will become clear before you finish the first leg. Your first step is to become a com - petent (and eventually expert) driver of your chosen vehicle. Dive in, study and learn everything you can. That is enough to BEGIN investing. Continu - ing to educate yourself and learning how to handle your investment vehi - cle optimally as you gain experience is the best investment you can ever make and will eventually make you an expert. One very important myth about passive income is it is never com - pletely passive. It is HIGHLY lever - aged regarding your time and money. And you can design your passive income to be as close to absolutely passive as possible. Don’t hesitate to employ ser- vices of others to carry out the more mundane aspects of your growing passive income. This allows you to focus on grow - ing your investments AND when you arrive at financial freedom allows you sit back and really ENJOY the income. For example, always use property managers for rental prop-
erty; they handle collections, lease up, tenant complaints, and repairs even in the middle of the night or during your vacation. Similarly, always use licensed servicers for loan investments; they handle col - lections, loan accounting, regulatory requirements, borrower calls, and responses and often also manage foreclosure services. When you work in or start a business that is closely related to your chosen vehicle, you can accel - erate your learning and speed to financial freedom. Because you are working part or full time deriving active income, you are at the same time learning and gaining expertise around the vehicle and will have the opportunity to make these invest - ments. There are certainly ways to become an expert and make invest - ments in a financial freedom vehicle without building your own business. For example, you can work part time and afterhours in your mentor’s business, trading your time for their knowledge. Some mentors will part- ner with you if you find investments that they can make with you. If you have more money and not so much time, you can do hard money lending or buy performing passive income assets like apartment build - ings. Do make sure you learn how
76 | think realty magazine :: december 2020
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