Back in days I rented a 2 room office in Southfield around 10 and Southfield Road. It was a small building owned by a real estate millionaire dentist who also ran his practice out of there. It was an eclectic mix with a massage guy, mortgage company, property management company and bunch of other little businesses.
We all got to know each other and talked frequently to each other while crossing the hallway. Everybody liked my business of flipping foreclosures and I was always telling everybody that hey if you know someone who wants to buy a beautiful home in Detroit or wants to partner up with me - let me know.
Do you know what I heard the most in that building: "I wish I could do something with you but I got bad credit and all my clients have bad credit and none of us have any money?"
After couple of months of hearing this over and over again there was a part of me that actually started believing in this. I had been invited in a bubble at this office building and I was almost in.
Luckily for me by that time I had realized I am a boater (new immigrant joke; boater = off the boat... get it?) and I don't know anybody in Michigan so I got to go and put my mug shot in front of new people who might be interested in hearing more about flipping foreclosures in Michigan. I knew nothing about marketing or advertising just a common sense idea that instead of waiting for somebody to discover me in Southfield - why now show up instead of people who want to do something in Metro Detroit foreclosures?
So I ran some ads in Detroit News Real Estate Investing Section and I started getting phone calls. Within 2 weeks I was inside a bigger and much better looking world: people who had money to partner up with me AND had perfect credit. I swear when I asked so how is your credit (jaded person that I had become) I would get incredulous looks back as in: What a dumb question to ask... of course my credit is perfect; what else could it be?
Just because your best friend is going through some rough times in his financial life and your brother is not serious about keeping his credit score high... means absolutely nothing on what is happening in Michigan out there. Are there people with bad credit out there? Sure. Are there people out there who have no interest in investing in real estate and they rather invest in their 401K passively? Sure I have a good four dozen that I know very well.
See you don't get to choose parents, siblings, relatives, co-workers and even sometime friends. But we do have a choice in who we choose to surround ourselves and know well in our flipping business.
Don't lock yourself in one building like I almost did and think that is it. Know in your heart that there are a whole lot of people out there looking for somebody just like you to do business with. All you got to do is show up in front of them. No convincing required.
My third private investor who at that time made a whole lot more money than me was a very senior executive in the auto industry. One day we are hanging out having just come back from a closing from which he had gotten a very very nice check courtesy of yours truly and he looked at me and said, "Do you know how long I have been looking for somebody like you?"
Without missing a beat, I said, "I would guess all your life."
And he laughed and said, "Almost Mark almost."
