The Real Book of Real Estate

I’ve just purchased and read Robert Kiyosaki’s recent book, The Real Book of Real Estate: Real Experts. Real Stories. Real Life. To say the least, it’s very inspiring and pushes me real hard to change my mindset about real estate investing and see things clearly from a different angle.

The result from reading Robert’s book: I am looking forward to start the real estate investing business… as a real business – hopefully in the first quarter of 2010.

Why Robert Kiyosaki’s The Real Book of Real Estate inspires me

I don’t see myself as the “real” business owner – The thing is, I hate working an 18-hour day on my business, like most entrepreneurs do. Starting a business offering some services or selling some widgets requires my attention a bit too much and it would turn my business as a job, and I don’t like jobs – Business as a job slows me down and kill my creativity. Unfortunately, I often trap myself in such situation.

Due to those, I am highly interested in hands-off business and long(er)-term investing, especially real estate investing (as well as web estate) mainly because I love something that can grow in value and make me money regardless without the need for me to keep my eyes on it 24/7.

Like finding an answer to my prayer, reading the first chapter of the book has already get me going and revved-up to change things and shake things up for the better. How so?

The book is actually containing “chapters” that are written by Robert Kiyosaki’s team of 22 real estate experts, as well as real-life experience from Robert himself, including Donald Trump.

The chapters contain first-person, real-life stories of real estate experts who share their experience in how they start their real estate business and how to do “the real” real estate investing. To my surprise, some shares my frustration, as well as my passion for system-driven business that allows the owner to back off and let his/her business to run by the system (consisting of “chain of command”, procedures, decision making system, etc.) The great thing is, real estate investing falls into such category.

Reading the book, I concluded that all of the stories are evolving around one most important issue: Conquering financial fear and thrive in real estate investing business regardless of the real estate industry downturn through the arrangement of real estate investing as a business.

The biggest lesson well-learned: Treat your real estate investing as a business

Interestingly, of 20-something chapters in the book, the first chapter is actually the one that slap me in the head. Maybe Robert Kiyosaki did that on purpose, so that I can read the rest of the book with open mind and better understanding?

Here’s what inspire me: I am always interested in real estate investing, but the tax issues are terrifying me. Not anymore. In essence, my mistake was treating real estate investing as, well, real estate investing.

What you and I should do is start to learn that real estate investing is indeed a business. Taking care of real estate investing right will get you the well-deserved tax benefits and other benefits that I (and many entrepreneurs and investors) didn’t realise.

I highly recommend you to get a copy of The Real Book of Real Estate and read it thoroughly as it contains invaluable tips and wisdom needed for you to conquer the real estate investing game – whether you are an already-avid real estate investor or a real estate investing noob like me.

Ivan Widjaya
Real estate investing as a business

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