Sit down somewhere quite in your home. Open up your laptop; log into Facebook; open up your email service or software (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook Express etc); take a look, one by one at all of your Facebook Friends and every name in your email contact list and ask yourself these three questions:
- What do these people do for a living?
- Will any of these people might be interested in partnering up with me to do flips where they play bank and put up the money to buy and fix up the foreclosure whereas I will do all the work?
- Who do these people might know that they have told me in passing?
Most new real estate investors in Michigan only think of 2 names when they start thinking about OPM: Mom and dad. And that is it. So if mom and dad have no interest in partnering up with you and mostly likely they don't. They still remember finding you in the backyard, covered in your vomit with an empty bottle of Jack Daniel when you were 19. Those memories never fade away and no matter how mature you are act up right now, they are still stuck up with that picture. So forget mom and dad. Don't even bother talking to them about investing in Michigan foreclosures because believe it or not we have a whole lot of people already in our lives that might be interested in playing the flipping game with us.
Best part about it all: you only need one.
Think about this for a second; your only target right now is to go and do one flip; get one check with your LLC's name on it. That is it. You are not worried about building an empire or getting an army of private investors who are completely in love with you. Right now, on our list is only one thing: get one person to partner up with us so we don't have to use any of our own money to do our first deal. That is it. No need to stress or bang your head against your keyboard.
Know that all of us like to play this game of 'woe is me because look everybody..... how helpless and without any resources I am.' when it comes to OPM. It is your brain who does not want to change anything in your lives. It is THE RESISTANCE (read the terrific The War of Art by Steven Pressfield if you want to understand this better) that speaks to you in your head to keep you firmly grounded on where you are already stuck: in a dead end boring job that pays enough to pay the bills but never enough money to do the things you have always wanted to do in your life.
So as soon as you utter the words in your head, 'I need OPM to buy foreclosures in Royal Oak" it immediately tells you that you don't know anybody.
That is not true.
In your Facebook Friends list and in your email list, there are at least a dozen great people who will be very interested in talking to you and partnering up with you for OPM. There might be a professional in a private practice there or a Michigan small business owner who adjusted her business when recession started and now she is doing even better than ever or somebody who took a buyout from the Big 3 and is looking to put part of their portfolio in real estate to get good returns aside from whatever they are doing in the stock market.
There is ONE PERSON in your life already who has been thinking about doing real estate investing in Michigan for a while now and just don't know where to start. They don't have the knowledge or the time to put that wish into action. You do.
One of the ways new real estate investors in Michigan self sabotage their own path of OPM is they talk about it to people who are not 'right or ready' for that talk.
I have two good friends who have no money to put in real estate. I still cherish their friendship and every time we go out, we have a great time. Their lack of money is a personal choice. I am not bothered by it. We all live our lives by the choices we make or don't make. But I would never set myself up for disappointment and talk to them about OPM. It does not matter what my track record is or how money a potential deal can make both of us: their answer is simply NO because they don't have it and will never have the resources to do it. I also know couple of people who are extremely negative about anything to do besides putting their money in stocks in their 401K. Once again I like them personally but I would never bring up OPM with them. No point in talking and then hearing NO. Why create frustration? Instead I know who in my email list and in my cellphone contact list are the ones who I should be talking OPM to.
You should too.
Make this list before you even look at any foreclosures in your target city. This is the first step toward putting an OPM machine up and running in your new real estate investing business in Michigan that will attract great OPM partners toward your business.
