Start Today: Crush The 10 Fears Blocking Your Real Estate Dreams

What’s really stopping you from closing your first real estate deal? We pull back the curtain on the ten roadblocks that keep smart people stuck—fear, “no money,” not knowing what to say, paperwork panic, even the surprising fear of success—and we turn each one into a practical next step. From a raw story of getting fired at Denny’s to knocking on foreclosure doors with a baby on the hip, we show how action, not perfection, builds confidence and checks.

We walk you through the easiest on-ramp in the game: wholesaling with a $10 earnest deposit and a clear, ethical seller conversation. You’ll hear the exact script to open doors, how to frame solutions without pressure, and why title companies and mentors can keep your paperwork clean. Then we move from first wins to a real plan: sustain momentum with daily lead habits, grow into rentals and small commercial, and eventually lend your capital to scale without the grind. Throughout, we tackle market anxiety head-on—why adaptable investors profit in boom or bust—and reframe failure as tuition you only pay once if you learn fast.

If you’re ready to stack “gold bricks” in your money, health, relationships, and faith, this conversation gives you the mindset and the method. No license needed. No perfect timing required. Just a simple system, steady courage, and a community that has your back. Start with the $10 move, bank your first assignment fee, and let that proof reshape what you believe is possible. If this fires you up, share it with a friend who needs a push, subscribe for more step-by-step strategy, and leave a quick review to tell us what fear you’re ditching first.

Transcript

Welcome & Gold Bricks Mindset

Dwan Bent-Twyford 1:15

Hey everybody. Welcome to the most Dwanderful real estate podcast ever. I'm your host, Dwan Bent Twyford. I'm America's most sought-after real estate investor. And I took my name Dwan and Wonderful, and I made Dwanderful. So I'm going to encourage you to go over to Dwanderful, D-W-A-N-D-E-R-F-U-L, Dwanderful.com. Take my real estate investing quiz. Takes about five minutes. And at the end of the quiz, you can schedule a strategy session with me personally. And I will talk to you for 45 minutes and we will get a strategy laid out for you and we will get the ball rolling in your direction. Now, my motto in 26 is we're going to stack gold bricks in 26. So everything that we do this year is going to be about stacking gold bricks. Your money, your health, your relationships, your finances, your spiritual world. We're just going to keep stacking these gold bricks and all of 26. And I guarantee you, if you'll follow me and do as I say, I will help you get all the gold bricks that you can stand. Okay, stack gold bricks in 26. Now, today I'm going to have a really good class for you, a good podcast for you. I'm going to talk about the top 10 reasons that are holding you back. So I have been teaching now, I've been investing. So I started off, if you don't know my story, I started off as a broke single mom, fired from Denny's. I was married, had an eight-month-old daughter. My husband took off when my daughter was eight months old. I lost a house in foreclosure. I had my car repossessed. It was a debacle to say the least. It was probably the lowest point in my life at that time. And a brand new baby, and all my dreams of motherhood and Girl Scout mom and cooking mom and field trip mom. All my dreams are shattered. And it was a really a come to Jesus time for me. It's like, well, what am I gonna do? I just literally lost everything. I planned. And that's the thing about planning. There's that thing that I I don't know if it's in the Bible where people say it, they go, We plan, and God laughed. So uh I planned. He may have laughed and said, I got something better for you, girl. It this is not it, and that's how I feel because real estate and bless excuse me, got a little bit of hiccups today. Real estate investing has been the biggest blessing. I mean, besides my daughter, my husband, and my family, real estate and blessing has been uh investing has been a giant blessing for me, and I don't even know. I can't imagine where I'd be right now if I didn't have real estate investing. Like I really have no idea where I would be if I did not have real estate investing. So uh this was the plan. It was laid out, and now I've been teaching for I've been doing it 35 years, teaching for 30, and I am a plethora of information. I can teach you more about investing than you could even possibly imagine that there is to actually know about investing. So I do a lot of live uh two-day workshops all around the country. And the first question I ask everybody, I'm gonna ask you, how many of you make less money than you think you're worth? Raise your hand. How many of you make less money than you think you're worth? And yes, I can see you raising your hand. All of you, all of you. So why? Why, why, why? Why are you working 40, 50, 60 hours a week for somebody else? Why are you not making what you believe yourself to be worth? Like, why? Why do we do that? Why are we doing that? Why do people do that? So the answer is very simple. The number one reason is fear. It's fear. I ask everyone, how much of you, how many of you make less than you think you're worth? They all raise their hands and I go around to 20 or 30 people in the room. I go, why? And they go, fear, I don't know what to say, I don't have enough education, I don't have any money, I don't have any experience. Uh my family is a bunch of naysayers. It's always fear. And fear is honestly, uh I saw, you know, how there's like acronyms for everything. The one I like best about fear is false evidence appearing real. I know there's a bunch, but that's one of the ones I heard a long time ago. And I really like that one. False evidence appearing real. It's fear. So what you see and what you think feels real to you, although it not might not really be real. Does that make sense to everyone? And you know, when I started, I mean, my husband took off, I had a baby, I had no, I mean, I was like destitute. It was very, very dark. And I thought, no, I want to be the Girl Scout mom, I want to be the homeroom mom, I want to have a disco ball, I want to be the fun mom, I want to have a pool, I want to have a boat, I want to have all these fun things. So I just put on my big girl panties and said, All right, Lord, show me what to do. And I got real estate investing. And now my daughter's 37 years old. So worked out good for me. Did I have a lot of fear? You bet. Did I have a lot of family members being naysayers? Oh. You can't even imagine back in the late 80s. And my family's like, you need to get a real job, you need to have benefits, you need in charge, you need this, you need to retire. You're 30 years old, you're getting old, you need to do this and this and this and this. And I had very little support. Well, I hadn't really none, but it sounded fun. I met some people, they did it. I thought, uh, I can do it. I mean, the worst thing that happened is it doesn't work and I can get a job. That was my thing. It's like worst thing that happens, I can get a job, but if I get a job, I'll never do this. So I'm gonna try this. If it doesn't work, I'll get a job, opposed to I'm gonna get a job and do this part-time. So I guess I was lucky in the sense I was literally pushed out of the bird nest and had to, you know, learn to fly on the way down, which luckily I was able to do. That doesn't mean that's for everybody, but it worked out for me. My one thing I can say about my dad, he always used to say, Listen, honey, you're made out of good stuff. You can do anything you want to do. You're made out of good stuff. Anything you set your mind to, you can do it. You can do it. I believe in you, I have faith in you, you're made out of good stuff. So when I first started doing this, my dad, who gave me all those years of good stuff talks, is like, okay, why don't you give it a try? See how it works out. If it doesn't work, you can always move back to Ohio and live in your old bedroom with your baby. But just remember, my house, my rules. So I'm like in my 30s. I'm like, mmm, live back with my dad in Ohio or stay in Florida where I love it. And I even remember thinking, like, gosh, I could just swim out into the ocean and hope a shark eats me, and that would be better than tucking my tail and going back to my old bedroom in Ohio. So I didn't want to do that. So I just said, I'm gonna make it work. Whatever it takes, I'm gonna make it work. If it doesn't work, I'll get a job. So fear is a big thing. Do you think I wasn't scared? The first time I drove up to Palm Beach County and I wrote every single foreclosure down on a piece of paper and I mapped them all out, and I decided to go door knocking with the baby hanging on my hip. You think I wasn't scared? I was terrified. I was nervous, I was sick to my stomach. I thought, oh my God, I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it. But then I'd go, move back to Ohio, move back to Ohio. Yeah, I can do this. I'm definitely gonna make this happen. No freaking way I'm moving back to Ohio. This is gonna work. And nothing against you, Ohioans. I love Ohio. I chose a good place for me to be from. I like living in Florida and Colorado. So I got that. So fear and naysayers. Your family members will say, Well, you can't do that. You don't have any experience, you don't have a real estate license, you don't know what you're doing. You're gonna listen to some girl with pink hair on the internet and tell you how to become an investor. It doesn't work like that. Well, you know what? It does work like that. Work for me, worked for everyone I've ever taught, work for all my family and friends that now, of course, are investors, worked for all my kids, work for my husband, work for everybody. Yeah, 500,000 students. Works for everybody. You have to make it work. So we're gonna put fear aside. False evidence appearing real, kicking it to the curb. There's no more fear because you know what? I got you. Like I said, you do that quiz, we have that that talk, and we plan and we strategize, and you get rolling, and I you have me in your back pocket, I'll help you. I'll make sure that you don't fail. Failure is not an option. Okay, not an option. Now, another uh two reason that holds people back is like I don't have any money. How am I gonna start? I have no money. I was living on credit cards. I had to borrow money from my aunt to buy a car that didn't even have a car. And one of the things I did do after I made a few big paychecks is I went and bought myself a convertible. I was like, I'm gonna get a convertible. I want I'm in fluid, I want a nice car. So I did actually do that for myself. So all those things I tell you about planning and budgeting, after I had enough, I went and paid cash for a red convertible because I was like, I need a good car. I can't drive around in this other one. But still, my aunt helped me get a car. I loved her for always, thanked her a million times over. She's 99, she's still kicking it and supporting me. And uh, so I always owe that to her that I was able to borrow some money and get myself a car. Wasn't a great car, but it drove and it got me around and it got me my first few deals that got me a convertible, that got me a house and a boat and rentals and a man and a husband and kids and grandkids and all the things. So don't worry about the money. Okay, wholesaling a house. You only have to put down a $10 deposit. A $10 deposit. You give a $10 deposit, you get that house under contract. I've covered this in so many podcasts, but especially in the last month or so, go back and listen to some of my podcasts in the last 30 days. I've walked you through step by step by step. You give a $10 deposit, you get the homeowner under contract, you sell it to a landlord or a rehabber, and you make a $20,000, $25,000, $30,000 check. So having no money is no excuse. It takes $10 to put down on a contract, and then you wholesale to somebody else and you make the difference. So if you've got $10, got a little bit of gumption and a little bit of encouragement from me, I don't want to hear that you don't have any money. The third thing, so fear, no money, people don't know what to say. Like, oh my gosh, Dwan, if I talk to a homeowner, what would I say? They're gonna ask me questions. I don't know what I'm doing. What am I gonna say? It's gonna be terrible. No, it's not. Here's what it's this simple. Knock on the door, you go, hey, my name is Dwan. I'm a full-time real estate investor. I specialize in helping folks like you solve their problems and wondering what I can do to help you out of your situation. And then they say, I took care of it. I go, Oh my God, you took care of it. That's so great. What'd you do? We're doing a loan modification. A loan modification, good for you. You know, in your case, I've seen lots of people that do loan modifications to success. Let's review some of these options that I have and see what we can do to help you get out of your situation. Like that's how easy it is. My name is Dwan. I'm a full-time real estate investor. I specialize in helping folks like you solve their problems because you're knocking at the door, they're in foreclosure. You've got a clipboard, their name's on the list. I'm wondering what I can do to help you get out of your situation. I specialize in helping folks just like you get out of their situations. Can you say that? You can say that. And the rest, it will just come. Okay? A lot of people are afraid of paperwork. Now, unbeknownst to me, when I did my first couple deals, I did have a sales contract for Florida. And the people said they put uh my friends put it X here, X here, X here, so just have them sign here. So I I had never actually read uh a sales contract. I didn't know what it said. It was on a real estate uh agent. I didn't have a license, I'd never been to school, I didn't know anything about any of that stuff. So I didn't have any fear of the paperwork because I didn't understand it. Now, after I did a couple deals, I was like, wow, there's a lot of paperwork that goes with this real estate investing stuff. I thought I'd better take some time and learn my paperwork. So I already did my first three deals before I ever really took the time to like meet with the people of the title company and understand the sales contract to purchase, the contract to sell it to a rehabber, um, the closing documents, the HUD, the settlements. I didn't understand any of the paperwork. So I honestly I tell people all the time, I said me being so naive was probably my best asset because I was so naive. I didn't know what I didn't know. So I wasn't afraid of failing, I wasn't afraid of paperwork. It never dawned on me that it wouldn't be successful because you know I made out of good stuff. So I never thought I wouldn't be successful. And I didn't have any idea about paperwork, so I wasn't afraid of it because I didn't understand it. Now, in hindsight, if I was starting off fresh today, I would want to learn the paperwork. I mean, oh man, those assignment of contracts, I used to have to write notes on there so I could make sure everybody signed in the right places. I did not understand my paperwork. But I made it through. The title companies will always make sure your documents are correct for you. So if you don't know your paperwork, they're not gonna let you down. They're always gonna make sure that you've got everything, you know, all the ads and the T's. It's gotta be good because you know you're passing title to a house to another person. So just always remember that the title company will have your back on your paperwork. And if you're working with me, I'll be happy over to review your paperwork and make sure you've got it all right. So you don't need to worry about paperwork anymore. I didn't even worry about it because I didn't know about it. Now that I know about it, I'm like, oh, I should have learned a little bit more. But you know what? God bless me, it worked out, and here I am teaching it to you right now. Okay, so number six, number five. So we've got fear, no money. Or what to say, paperwork. Number five is I think people are really truly afraid to fail. We're just we're just wired not to fail. We're wired that if we fail, we're a failure, we're not good, we're not worthy. But you know why? There's that saying, it's called uh fail forward, I think is what it's called. Like, fail forward is like, listen, if you're here and you fail, you fail forward and fall flat on your butt, you're six feet from where you were. So just keep failing forward. Okay, don't be afraid of failure. I mean, all of us failed. Did anybody get on a bicycle for the first time and just ride it without crashing? Did anybody, I don't know, I rode horses as a kid. Did anybody ride horses and not get bucked off and fail? Did anybody have been married or divorced a couple times and your marriage failed? Anyone lose a job or get fired or something? Are those things failures? I don't think so. I think every failure is a point of learning. So I look at anything I've done wrong, not as a failure, but as an education. So any single thing I've ever done that didn't work out right, I always just go, well, that was a lesson. Now, was it a lesson I needed? Yeah, they're all lessons I need. Every single solitary thing. I obviously failed. I went through a divorce with an eight-month-old man uh baby because I married someone that was, you know, not the best of person. Took my car and all the money. I had 75 bucks in my purse. I kid you not when I tell you these stories. I made a bad choice for a husband, but I made a great choice for my beautiful daughter. So that so ended up being a win-win. And we all fail. We've all been through relationships, we've broken up with people, we've gotten divorced, we've ended friendships with people, we've had car accidents, we've been sick, we've had whatever, we've been fired from jobs. Everybody fails. Failing is just part of life. I don't think you can get from A to Z, like the birth to the death, without failing. So stop being afraid of failure and just take every failure and go, hey, that was a great lesson. What can I learn from this lesson? And honestly, I think that's part of why I've been successful my whole entire life, is I never ever think I'm gonna even start this podcast. I thought I won't fail. I'll learn, I'll take some podcast classes, I'll learn how to do a podcast. It'll be great. I'll teach, I'll give it my whole heart and soul, and it'll be successful. And if it fails, I'll keep doing it until it is successful. Eight years later, we're almost at two million downloads. I'm doing good. But I'd like to have two million downloads in the first year or two, you bet. But did I know what I was doing? No. Did I do it anyway? Yes. I did it anyway. So you can't let failure stop you. I mean, even when you if you went to college, did you have to take classes and tests? Anybody ever fail a test? I failed tests, I got an F. No, I never got an F. I get a D in high school because typing was a class. I get a D in typing, my first D of my entire life. And I sat in the classroom and there was like three guys that sat around me that were all really popular, and they were always flirting and talking with me. So I was always horsing around in class when I had to sit down and do my typing test. I got my first D in my whole life and typing of all things. And yes, for you young whippersnappers, we weren't born with keyboards on our fingers. We took typing as a class in school, and I failed. But look at me now. I'm just like, I write books all the time. So we can't be afraid to fail. You just honestly have to take failure as a lesson. What can I learn from it? What can I do better next time so that this doesn't happen again? Okay, same thing with that marriage. It didn't work out, but you know what? I married Bill. Uh when Ada was 13, I got married again. We have been married 24 years. So fail on the first one, success on the second one. Didn't make me stop trying. So stop being afraid of failure. We're all gonna fail. Everybody's gonna fail. Learn from it and make it your best lesson and keep rolling. Okay, the next thing that is honestly a real thing is fear of success. Fear of success is higher than fear of failure. Did you know that? People are so afraid, they're like, what if I succeed and become crazy popular and I make a ton of money? What will I do then? Well, they worry about that because you'll find out you'll get new friends, you'll live in a better neighborhood, you'll drive a better car, you'll have money, you'll start doing and traveling in different circles because you'll be with other people that are also being successful and things will change. And fear of success is equally scary as fear of failure. It's like, what if I do do it? Then what's gonna happen? What's gonna change in my life? What's gonna blow up for me? What's gonna happen? Trust me, the fear of success, you'll get over it as soon as you start having all kinds of money pouring in, and all of your debt and things like that are gone. And then you can just focus on your life, your health, your family, your relationship with God. You can just focus on all the important things, and money is over here, it's never gonna be a problem again. So don't be afraid to succeed, okay? Another one, this is another really big fear. I talked because you know, I I specialize in training newer investors because I find that as a new investor, it's hard to know who to trust, who can you turn to, who's really gonna help you, who's not trying to just sell you a bunch of coaching and a bunch of stupid stuff that you don't need, who's really gonna be in your corner, who's really gonna help you, who's really gonna have your back, and that would be me. And then it's how do I sustain it? Okay, I worked with Duan, I've closed five or six deals, I've closed 10 deals, I've closed 15 years. How do I sustain this? Like, how do I keep going? How do I grow? Where's my end point? Where's the end game? So, the way you sustain it is you keep showing up for yourself every single day. Keep showing up for your family every single day. You keep showing up and you keep showing up and you keep sustaining, and as you grow, you'll find that you'll branch out into other things, which I'm gonna cover here in a minute. So don't be worried about how to sustain it. Get your butt started first, and then let's talk about sustaining it in two or three years from now. Okay, don't let the fear of like, what do I do in 10 years? Don't even worry about that. Let's just focus on today, getting you started, getting the fear, jumping in, being successful, getting it all going. And then number eight is how do I grow? Okay, do I want to wholesale to a couple deals? I can't wholesale for the rest of my life because if you wholesale for the rest of your life, you create a job for your And you take six months off, there's no money coming in. So, how do I grow past this initial beginning phase? Well, you're gonna buy rentals, you're gonna buy commercial property, maybe you're gonna become a hard money lender. Half the people I trained are now lending money, they're doing big projects, they're building things, they're building hotels, they're doing bigger things. So there are a thousand directions that you can grow, but you can't grow in any of those directions until you start. I just can never impress upon you how important it is for you to start. You must start. Okay, and then we'll help you grow. And then people say, Well, I don't know, Dwan, you know, the the market might crash. There's a president, there's a war, there's this, there's that, there's everything in the world. What if the market changes and the market crashes and I have all my money invested in real estate and everything falls apart and it tumbles like it did in 2007, 8, 9, and 10. What do I do? What do I do? The market, the market. I'm terrified. Like, listen, don't be like, what was that chicken lottle? The sky is falling. Don't be like that. It doesn't matter if the market changes. I invest in every single solitary market. So if you say, Oh, it's a terrible market, I'm investing. If you say it's a great market, I'm still investing. If the rates are falling like crazy and the world's on fire, I'm still investing. Okay, we made so much money in that last big giant downturn. Some people lost everything, some people became very wealthy. Even in the Great Depression, millionaires came out of that. So the market is not relevant. What's relevant is you're learning all the different things that there are to do and staying involved in all the different things that there are to do so that you don't become like part of the process if there's some kind of big thing happening. People always have to eat, people always have to have clothes, people always have to have the place to live. So if you can supply people with a place to live, you'll always have a business. We all have to eat, we have to have clothes, and we have to have a house. We don't have to have a car, we don't have to have fancy clothes, we don't have to have a lot of things, but we need a place to sleep, we need something to eat, we need clothing. So you're providing housing, and like I said, you may become a lender down the road, you may buy apartments, you may work for habitat for humanity, you may build things, you may do all kinds of things. The market doesn't matter. I don't care when anyone says the market, the sky's falling. We're still always investing because the market's never bad for real estate investors that know what to do in each market. And you don't have to figure it out. You have people like me and my husband, Bill Twiford, we'll help you figure it out. That's literally what we do is we keep you safe and we keep you rolling and we keep you doing the right things, and we have you adjust for different markets and adjust for different things. So you never have to worry about what's happening out there. You just need to worry about what's happening in here. Okay, so never let anyone talk you out of it's a good or a bad market. Millionaires are made in every single market in the world, globally, all the time, since the beginning of time. Okay, so get rid of that one. And then number 10 is people always afraid, like, what is my end game? Like, really, what is the end game? Am I just gonna buy a bunch of rentals? Am I gonna cash them out someday? Am I gonna invest in the stock market? Am I gonna put money into crypto? Am I gonna have rentals? Am I gonna lend money? Am I gonna start another business? Am I gonna start a charity? Am I gonna start something this money plans to seed for something that you really, really, really want to do? What is the end game? And the end game, it doesn't really matter. You're gonna keep investing, you're gonna keep lending and doing other things if that's something that excites you. You're gonna keep making things happen, you're gonna keep going, and you know what? You'll figure out the end game. I mean, I'm 67. We're still rehabbing those commercial buildings in this uh Clinton, Iowa. We've got 20 commercial buildings. I don't like an exact end game. We're gonna get them all done, we're gonna get them all rented, then we're gonna see what excites us next. So my end game is when they close the door on my coffin. There's no end game until that day comes along. So even at 67, Bill's 67 also. And so I was like thinking when this show comes out, he'll be uh 68. And our end game is we don't have an end game. We're gonna keep working on our buildings, we're gonna keep providing housing and businesses and opportunity for people. We're working a lot more in charity than we have done in the past. And we're just gonna keep on rolling. And when I die, that's my end game. So between now and then, I'm gonna live every life to the fullest, to the best, do the most I can for myself, do the most to help people that are struggling in foreclosure, do the most I can do to help you have financial freedom and success. So I don't want you, I don't want to hear the top 10 reviewed, I don't want to hear about fear, I don't want to hear about no money, don't want to hear about what to say, don't want to hear about paperwork, don't want to hear about failure, don't want to hear about success, don't want to hear about how to sustain it, don't want to hear about how to grow it, don't want to hear about the market, don't want to hear about the end game. You have to start. Once you start, you can worry about the other things. In the meantime, get those things out of your head. They mean nothing to nobody. Nothing should be in your way. If you want to become a real estate investor, start today. Put on your big girl pants, your big boy pants, get the ball rolling. And I promise you, once the ball starts rolling, it'll tumble and it'll be great, and it'll be an exciting journey. And we can talk about the end game at the end. Okay? So I hope you had fun today. This is meant to be motivational. Don't let fear stop you. There's nothing. Just jump in, do stuff with me. Let's get rolling, let's make this world a more exciting place, and let's watch everything change. So we'll be back next week. Same bat times, same bat channel. And remember that the truth is in the red letters. Ciao, baby.