New BiggerPockets Article: How the Powerful Concept of Authority Bias Plays Into Real Estate Investing

My most recent post on "authority bias" and the natural, human instinct to obey authority even when it's completely irrational is up at BiggerPockets.com. As I note,

"Argument from authority is a well known logical fallacy. The authority could be from experience, reputation, or just simply a title. But just because Socrates or Thomas Jefferson—or even Joshua Dorkin himself—said something, well, that don’t make it true. Unfortunately, our minds naturally think in ways that are packed full of logical fallacies. And one of the most obvious is the power of authority."

I also discuss how this relates to real estate investment,

"That being said, you don’t just want to become an authority on real estate investment through education and experience; you want to display that authority to the world. This can be through simple things such as getting a nice website, owning quality business cards, and dressing well when meeting with lenders and the like. (Although I should note that you don’t want to dress too nicely when meeting with sellers; it can come off salesman-ish. Remember, you want to connect with them on a friendly and relatively casual level.)"