November 2008 Archives

When you start in real estate investing – what you know matters most. How to find a foreclosure, how to evaluate deals, how to get them fixed, where to go find money, what marketing to do on the Internet to get people come to your open houses – these are some of the tactics that you go out to seminars, buy books, listen to audio programs and actually learn to execute.

When you grow up in your real estate investing – what you learn to stop doing matters most. After doing five deals, you know what kind of house to pass on and which one to jump on right away. You build a team of good contractors so you don’t have to take bids on everything you do in your foreclosure buys. You figure you how much rehab (or none) you want to do on your deals. You develop a liking for doing something more than the other (REO’s or Short Sales; Rentals or flips; single family houses or apartments). You still have the same time in your hands that you had last year but now you are spending the same minutes more wisely, doing things where you know that the return on your money (private, own, lines of credit) and your time (minus job, family, hobbies) is the highest.

When you finally decide to turn this real estate investing hobby into a full time roaring business. The only thing that matters most at that time are the people you have met in your journey and the relationships that you have painstakingly built with them.

Of course the last thing is the hardest and most time consuming but it is also the most rewarding.

Who have you met today? Who do you intend to meet today? Who did you met last week? Who is on your sheet for next week?

This would matter if you ever want to get to Act III of this adventure.

I spend the better half of the morning going over a transcription of an Audio CD that I build for one of my Inner Circle member to flip houses and duplexes to a particular niche.

It was 16 pages. Times New Roman, size 10, single-spaced.

Could anything be more boring than editing a transcription of an audio CD?

There is lots of “fun stuff” we get to do in our industry.

- Get to look at foreclosures.
- Go to lunches with other real estate investors in your Michigan City.
- Run ads in Craig’s List and see the responses pour in.

I like going to seminars and mastermind meetings and hang out with other Michigan real estate entrepreneurs to get new ideas to implement.

Then there is the “plumbing” things that I have to do – where I get to play plumber, on hands and knees, fixing broken pipes, under the sink, which nobody ever gets to see, like building a Private Money PowerPoint or editing a transcription of an audio CD to wholesale houses which explains the program and on what exactly is required of people interested so whey they meet my member – they are already ready to go and do business, hunkering down and writing 7 emails in a follow-up sequence that goes out a list of people who have responded to a Craig’s List ad.

The fun stuff makes the business interesting.

Becoming a good plumber, if you choose to become good at it, can make you rich.