Continuing Education:

The Yellow Brick That Paves the Entrepreneurial Path

Many times real estate investors think that continuing their education means taking another real estate investment course, attending more events, watching webinars, subscribing to podcasts and listening to audio books about real estate. However, the reality is that running a successful business- any kind of business- goes well beyond attending to or understanding the core activities of your particular industry.

In other words, to effectively run your real estate investing business, and succeed, you should have a well-rounded education that includes not only real estate education, but also a good smattering of the liberal arts.

Liberal Arts comprise of a curriculum aimed at imparting general knowledge and developing general intellectual capacities, in contrast to a professional, vocational, or technical curriculum. In Classical antiquity, the term designated the education proper to a freeman (Latin liber, “free”) as opposed to a slave. In the medieval Western university, the seven liberal arts were grammar, rhetoric, and logic (thetrivium) and geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy (the quadrivium). In modern colleges and universities, the liberal arts include the study of literature, languages, philosophy, history, mathematics, and science. (sourced from Miriam-Webster Concise Encyclopedia)

Regan Ronayne, a consultant with Directions To College says, “Life is liberal arts. [Students] are headed out for life…if they are going to go anywhere with their careers, they will have to have those people skills.”

You didn’t go to college… And?

 Neither did a number of the most successful entrepreneurs and real estate investment business people I know.

You did go… Terrific.

Why would you stop learning now?

The world, like the real estate market, is constantly changing. Continuing your education is the only way to stay ahead of the game, regardless of whether it’s the “game of life” or the game of real-life monopoly: real estate.

Running a successful real estate investment business means you need to know a little bit about a lot of things, even if you source many of your business tasks to freelancers, service providers, vendors or in-house staff.  It also means that you need to be able to effectively communicate and interact with people.

Sourcing education to continue yours is easy and doesn’t have to cost a great deal of time or money. Pick up the newspaper everyday and read. Hit your local library or download e-books from the web. Attend webinars, subscribe to podcasts or log in to great education sources like Coursera.org, where you can choose from any number of classes on a broad spectrum of subjects that are offered, for free, from hundreds of top-notch universities in the United States and around the world.

Real estate investors, business people and entrepreneurs alike are well served by keeping in mind that one’s education is never complete. Study every day, even if it’s the simple act of reading a book or sitting on a park bench and watching people.  Education is all around you, and easily accessible, if you bother to reach for it and, the reality is,  you don’t have to take out a student loan to get it.