So I am at this elementary school in Detroit in December, dressed up as Santa, having the time of my life and the last class we took the toys in is being taught by this very young gentleman named Mr.Uresti. 

After we had giving the toys out and the wrappers came off and everybody was happy and smiling; all the kids wanted to keep the dolls, dinosaurs and the racing cars out for a while and play which gave Mr.Uresti a pause. 

And the kids were all yelling please, please, please let us play; so he said, if I am going to let you guys play with your toys we have to raise our right hand and repeat after me: I promise not to take anybody's else toy or blame anybody for taking my toy; I will be quite and respectful and play with my toys and have a great time. 

They all very seriously repeated the oath and went back to playing. And I thought what a wonderful idea.... May be I should have a MP3 here somewhere that every new Michigan real estate investor should repeat after me before they start flipping foreclosures in their Michigan cities especially when it comes to these 7 rules:

1. I promise not to give any money to any contractor without a written agreement between them and us. I also promise to check their references and get a W-9 form sign and filed from them before I gave them any money. And I also will not give them the final check without getting an Unconditional Lien Waiver Form signed and filed away.

2. I promise not to enter into any partnership agreement with anybody, no matter how long I have known them, without a contract, prepared by a lawyer.

3. I promise not to put any offers on any REO's without having OPM lined up to buy it once my offer is accepted. That will insure that the REO agents I come across in Michigan will love and respect me for all the days to come.

4. I promise not to buy moldy, fire damaged, foundation destroyed, flooded with water houses in 2011.

5. I promise not to try and fix these flips myself so I can save couple of dollars. I will not be cheap and I will find good help to get these houses done fast so I can flip them.

6. I promise to find a great loan officer who can help me get my buyers approved and my flips moved fast so I can spend time in finding the next deal instead of playing mortgage banker all day long.

7. I promise to spend time networking with other experienced real estate investors in Michigan and go to networking meetings like local REIA's and other entrepreneur groups and ask for help and not try to waste couple of years trying to 'discover' things that already been discovered long time ago.

Karen and Don attended my bootcamp in January. One of the things they said in their testimonial video was that I have already heard couple of hundred times so far already is: "We tried getting into investing in Michigan real estate with a help from a coach / mentor in Florida or California and soon realized that they had no idea about how to make it work in Michigan real estate market."

Look you got to understand something here. I believe there is real value found in reading a book like Cashflow Quadrant or IRA Wealth. There are fundamentals in real estate investing that never change: buy low, sell high, take care of your private investors, manage your contractors with good agreements and open eyes, follow every legal and ethical dot that using OPM requires you to do so. These are the basic building blocks of flipping foreclosures anywhere in United States.

So Yes; If you are starting out in real estate investing even a book written by Al Lowry back in 1969 about investing in real estate without using your own money is suffice to fill your head with great ideas and solid strategies. The basics never change. There is lot of wisdom found in those white hair folks in their sixties. RESPECT that.

But there is another big part of real estate investing that is all about local, local and local since the house you are about to buy and flip does not reside on Amazon.com but in a real zip code in Michigan.

So questions like which city to buy and which to avoid in Michigan; the easy referrals to good people in Michigan that will help you buy good deals (property inspectors / contractors / buy agents) and the ones who will help you flip fast (loan officers); the networking to keep you on track and inspired to do your first, second and third flip; the homeowners in foreclosure who have upside down mortgages and want to sell their homes with a short sale; the sharp REO agent who has built great relationships with Asset Managers and likes to moves lots of houses fast in Michigan; all this is found locally and YES, a local mentor can help you get to these doors fast and without costly detours.

Where do you think you will find somebody to give you all the OPM you ever wanted in Michigan?

If you are an online marketing genius and have some serious money lying around then you can put together a killer website or a slick Facebook Page and run some heavy duty advertising campaigns on Google and Facebook paying couple of bucks for each click and then doing more heavy duty follow-up marketing to the people who might or may not buy your reasons for putting up their funds to buy deals in Michigan real estate with you. They might be interested in doing real estate investing but just not in Michigan.

On the other hand there are already tons of people around you in Michigan who will be easier to find and approach and would require very little reasoning to invest in deals with you because they are here already and they want to do local deal in Michigan.

No matter which way you swing it - real estate investing is local in its heart.

Need I remind you on how badly the love affair with Florida condos and Arizona homes ended for out-of-State investors who 'invested' (gambled might be a better term) in these out-of-State real estate without putting their feet on the ground? Not the first by the way. Florida has a habit of taking suckers money every 2 decades with a consistency that would make Madoff envious yet people line up every time they open the doors to sell swamp land to out of towners.

Flipping foreclosures is a local game and you need local Michigan know-how and knowledge.   A local mentor to help you avoid the costly detours that thousands of real estate investors put themselves through every year for no reason.An easy mistake to fix.

No other way around it. Imprint that lesson in your head. It is one of the most profitable lessons you will ever learned in real estate investing.

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."

So you are at a REIA meet up and you run into Dennis. So you ask, Dennis what you have been up to? And he says, been buying rentals up at Eastpointe. You whip out your notebook and write down: buy rentals in Eastpointe although you cannot remember if Eastpointe is in Wayne County or in Ohio.

10 minutes later you see Allan Boike holding court in a corner talking about this REO he is about to close in Macomb Township and immediately your ears perk up and your notebook opens up again in which you write : buy REO's in Macomb Township although you live a good 45 miles away from Macomb Township in Ypsilanti.

That night later you stumble into Eric Tomei's Facebook Page on which he is talking about the 3 foreclosures he just bought with Scott Baumgart over at Grand Blanc and Holly and Fenton and you make yet another note about buying REO's soon in those three cities.

I love your initiative but you are, in the beginning days of your real estate investing business are asking the wrong question from all these veteran real estate investors: you are asking WHERE they are doing their deals instead of asking WHY they are buying their deals in those cities?

The WHERE in most cases is useless to you. If you live too far or know nothing about these cities where they are doing these deals and if you are just going to copycat what they are doing without knowing what they know; you are most likely end up in wrong deals.

But if you ask Boike on WHY is he buying REO's in Macomb and WHAT made him buy this deal above all or WHY Eric and Scott focus on Holly then their answers will give you a solid template that you can cut and paste in your business and find a Michigan city close to you where you live or work that would let you cross out all the points that they told you about.

Instead of just memorizing city names learn WHY they are doing WHAT they are doing and you are going to walk out of this 10 minute conversation a much smarter real estate investor in Michigan who will pick a great city close to where you live and work and which is familiar to you instead of driving and getting lost in a new city that you heard in a conversation at a real estate networking event.

Long time ago I read that the quality of your life is determined by the questions you ask. Tony says that ask better questions if you want better answers. 

This asking of WHY instead of WHERE is one of those better questions. Ask it often and ask it every time you come across an experienced real estate investor in Michigan everywhere you go for networking and meeting other like minded folks.

Make it a habit from Day 1. It will give you the eyes to start spotting all those gold mine cities that are around you already that you have been ignoring while trying to find greener pastures somewhere far in Michigan which could be right for them but so wrong for you.

These 2 are the most popular business structures that I have seen real estate investor's use over and over again in Michigan. I am not, repeat not, a fan of people putting (rentals or flips) houses in their personal names or writing checks from five different accounts for a rehabbing a flip.

If you are confused about where the line is between your personal and real estate investing business in Michigan....just think what IRS is going to think about your business when they get your tax return next year with six flips spread all over your life?

This is one of those fundamental basic lessons in starting your real estate investing business in Michigan that you might be thinking... come on everybody does that. Well you don't see or hear what I do on a regular basis which is a terrifying number of people owning rental properties in their personal name or many investors thinking that they will 'get around to it' after they have done couple of flips.

Bad idea. Do it right from Day 1 before you start flipping.

2. Open a business checking account:

And write all your rehabbing expense out of it. Get a VISA checking card from your bank preferably with rewards points attached to it. Make a habit to run all your business expenses out of your business account no matter how small they are. It is extremely important to do if you are doing your real estate deals with OPM.

3.Make a Facebook business page for your business:

Don't waste time trying to learn how to make a website or use one of the terrible templates that came with your domain name. They give your business a bad name. Instead go where every smart company in the world is right now - on Facebook 'cause that is where 600,000,000 people are almost every day. Read my guide on how to use Facebook Pages for your Michigan real estate investing business here.

4. Get Google Voice:

If your job requires you to 'vanish' into your cubicle for extended hours and there is no way that you can pickup your cellphone; use Google Voice that gives you a local phone number (I am not a fan of 800 toll free numbers) which works like a regular phone number and you can make it ring to your cellphone or any other phone number but you can also use it for only getting voice mails with a twist: when somebody leaves you a text message, Google Voice transcribes it and emails it to you. And yes it is free for all USA calls.

5. Do you need a mailing address? Why?

REO agents (meet them at their office); Mortgage brokers (their office); private investors (Starbucks); families buying your flips (at your loan officer or title company conference room). So don't waste any time in figuring out what address to put on your business card. The new rich in America are the ones who own their time and are not tied to any thing. The office address is necessary if you are planning to hire 40 employees soon. You and me don't need it.

6. Get business cards.

VistaPrint.com or Overnight Prints are great companies who can get your business cards to you for couple of bucks very fast. Once you have them - exchange them. That is what business cards are for. But please don't go to a networking meeting at a REIA or at my events and put a business card at every table. It is so rude and spammy to do so.

The idea is to exchange business cards with people who are interested in talking to you more about some part of your flipping business and not throw it from the second floor balcony of the 12 Oaks Mall. Put your Google Voice and Facebook Page address on your business cards so people know how to reach you back and not just your email address.

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:

1. What do these people do for a living?
   
   
2. 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?
   
   
3. 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.

You probably have some idea on what city you want to buy and flip your first five deals in Michigan. May be it is a city close to where you work or live.

You need to find out what your competition is doing. At my seminar last Saturday, I did a show of hand: raise your hands if you ONLY looked at one house when you were looking to buy a home for yourself. No hand went up. We all have this crazy dream that a home buyer is going to walk into our home and that will the be the first house on her list and she is going to stop right there and buy our house.

Well it happens. Sometime.

But almost all the 99.9995 times the home buyers have a stack of printouts from MLS or Craig's List and they are looking at bunch of houses before they decide which one to buy so whether you like it or not: every house for sale around you is competition for their attention.

So before you put in any offers, before you look at bunch of REO's, go and look at five open houses come Sunday in your target Michigan city to find out what your buyers are going to see when they start driving.

Are the kitchens new? How do the bathrooms look? Are the basements finished? What about garages? Did you see at least one house that literally blew you away or every house sort of an old, beaten down, lived in look?

This little spy-mission of yours will give you the confidence to look at horde of the people in your Open House in the eye and say without a doubt: "Hey you will not find a more beautiful fully remodeled house then mine in Livonia around here." And you mean every word of it.

Second it will also stop you... AND THIS IS THE BIGGIE... to invest your rehab money in stuff you don't need to be spending money on because now you know what your neighborhood looks like. 

Yes, your house is going to look 10 times better once you are done with it but at the same time you will not be making the biggest mistake most new real estate investors in Michigan make all the time - try to turn this flip into the house they would want to live in. 

Putting a $40,000 kitchen in a $100,000 flip just because you like to cook and always wanted a kitchen like this in your own home is a terrible idea and something you should never ever do. Going and visiting 5 Open Houses next Sunday will stop you making these kinds of rookie mistakes.

Finally, always keep a notebook and a pen in your car and when you leave every Open House, quickly jot down what you noticed in the house. Invest in a $40 digital voice recorder if you don't want to write. 

Three hours and 5 Open Houses later come Sunday, you will know exactly what you need to put in your flip that will help you sell your house fast in the Michigan city of your choice.

1. Most important: How to rehab houses because majority of the deals were available in Detroit, Pontiac, Saginaw and Flint and we are talking hard core junkers. There were no foreclosures in suburb where banks were discounting unless they had major problems. As a new real estate investor who wanted to fix homes; you would have to learn how to handle mold, fire damage, foundation issues, water soaked basements and everything in the middle.

2. How to find foreclosures: Seriously there were not just too many foreclosures in Metro Detroit. And if you were doing foreclosures in Detroit - you had to figure out which areas were homeowners-heavy (West Side, U of D) and which areas were more rent heavy (East Side). The REO broker industry had probably 20% of the players that it has right now.

3. Selling: Conforming, non-conforming, FHA, all kind of portfolio loans, 5% down, no money down - the mortgage industry was throwing programs out everyday at anybody with a pulse who wanted to buy a home.

4. Money: All kind available: hard money, business credit, mortgages and some private money but it was tough back then to get private money because the stock market was booming.You could stumble around and find some money lying around for you to buy flips. Seriously I used to spend may be one hour talking about money when I was teaching a bootcamp instead of almost an entire day that I do now.

Fast forward to 2011 and here is my list of the most important skills you would need to put in your bag to become good at flipping foreclosures in Michigan:

1. Other People's Money

2. Other People's Money

3. Other People's Money: You have to become good at understand how to attract private money toward you in 2011. It is the only game in town as mortgages; business credit and hard money are still hiding and not coming out anytime soon. It is the difference maker right now - whether you will be buying foreclosures or not.

I know a lot of capable investors who got spoiled in the last couple of years on a steady diet of buying flips on hard money and mortgages and refusing to learn how to attract private money to them. They are hurting right now big time as the ones who built up the skills to attract private money are making a killing in this market. I am going to write a whole lot of stuff on private money in February so stick around.

4. How to evaluate great deals from just good deals: There are lots of foreclosures available in every city in Michigan. But you need to know how to sift and sort and go for the best possible deals and not leave them for more experienced investors.

5. Selling: Need an absolutely kick ass FHA loan officer on your team who will go to bat for you everyday and preferably is table funding the deals so they have in-house underwriters that will give you fast response for your flips. I got some good guys. If you need names, email me here. They do loans all over Michigan.

6. Rehabbing: Cleanup, carpet, paint, new kitchen cabinets, reglaze the tub, put new tiles in kitchen and bathrooms... it is not exactly rocket science anymore. Couple of trips to Home Depot and decent contractors can get most jobs done for you now in 2011. If you want learn how to do mold homes or how to fix foundations - learn those skills more for entertainment or curiosity but really hard core rehabbing houses where you are gutting them upside down and fixing them up is a choice you make when you are buying junkers in 2011. Not needed any more.

chase:

1. to pursue in order to seize, overtake

2. to follow or devote one's attention to with the hope of attracting, winning, gaining

"So what are ya chasing today?"

I started saying it some time ago to couple of my entrepreneur friends who all own successful businesses in Metro Detroit and pretty soon they all started saying to each other. It is our way of asking: Are you doing anything worthwhile with your time? In your business and in your life. What are you chasing today? What are you chasing tomorrow?

The line outside my local Weight Watchers branch in the first week of January was outside the door. Today same time but no line. I guess that January 24 is a good day to give up on whatever they were planning to chase back on December 31 for a lot of people; after all that was soooooooooooooo long ago.

To help you get going with your own chasing, here is how I do it:

1. Never ever type up what you want out of your business and life AKA your goals (I hate the word. It is the second most overused word in business. The first being 'relationships'" and the advice about building them.) and SAVE that list in My Documents. That is the folder on your hard drive where your dreams go to die every year.

2. Write what you want to chase on a paper. Write it. There is something emotional and deep that happens in your head when you write it down in your own handwriting on a piece of paper. I don't understand it but trust me on this - it is there and it works. Write not type.

3. Leave that paper somewhere where it stares at you. You cannot chase what you don't see every day. The stuff I want is everywhere around me in my home office. It is taped to the wall. It written on cards. It is on a board. It surrounds me. They are my dreams and if they are not around me all the time then why am I even bothering with them?

4. Should you tell somebody about them or not? Be careful here. They are fragile when you are starting out with them and some people in your life are harsh toward what you want to chase. Their harsh words will effect you more than what you want to believe. 

I am careful on WHAT I tell to WHOM. I have friends who are entrepreneurs like me, been free for a long time like me and they get it. I can tell them. Inside Ijlal Inner Circle, my mentoring group for Michigan real estate investors...everybody is pretty open and shares everything that they are working on. Encouragement and feedback are like sun and water for your dreams to grow and take a life of their own. 

5. There are days where nothing will happen. Today was such a day for me. I got lots of things done today that needed to be done but none of them was about the chase. So I am a little miserable today as I am writing these lines on 9:54pm but it's O.K. I will get on track tomorrow.

The thing I have in my head is this - make everyday counts or no day counts. Even if I move the needle 1.3 inches everyday toward what I want - that is good day. Anything is better than zero. 

And for you in the end it is more about building a habit of thinking in terms of what you are chasing and not just making money to pay your bills. There is a difference between making a living and living a life of your dreams. They are two separate highways.

6. I use the one month Action Plan found here. I built it so I can focus on two things: learning and people as much as getting whatever needs to be done in my business.

If you want dramatic jumps in your income: Go from making $40,000 per year to $140,000 per year.... that jump will not come unless you add new phone numbers to your cell phone and add new knowledge to your head.

I take new people and new knowledge seriously. Most find 4-5 people that they like to hangout with or read 2 books / goto one seminar and then they stop. This never stops in my life. I learned something new today. And I am about to meet 15 new friends this Saturday. Do you count? I do. On paper. My Action Plan template keeps me on track. Make something like this for yourself or use mine. Counting is good habit. 

7. Also from the lower half of the Action Plan: there is a terrifying thing about crossing out days on the monthly calendar with a big fat black marker. It chills your blood on how fast time moves. From New Year to January 24. It is a wave that moves relentlessly indifferent to what I do or don't do. 

Every night before I cross the day out on the paper that lies on my desk I know that I have to make the next day and the day after count for something. My hands move because of what is in my head. My head moves from what I see. That is why it is important to 'stage' this chase all around you and not just in your head or in our laptop's hard drive.

8. Also a rush to see when things get finished, checks come in and you get to do something interesting with the crumpled pieces of paper with dead presidents: travel, invest, start another business, take time off to make a movie or write a book or read 20 books.

It is THE feeling that only the 20 percent of the population, the ones who made the deal with their dreams to go on a chase only get to experience. So know that if you are chasing your own dreams in real estate investing instead of just going to a job in 2011; it is the best gift you can give to yourself in 2011. You are on a good path. Don't stop.

Your entire goal is to find some people that you will have fun talking to, exchange business cards and do the most important thing that very few will do at the event: Setup a time and date right then and there to have a cup of coffee in the coming week. Don't think too much about it. Don't worry about if you have a deal right now in the pipeline or not.

People got to these events, make good first contact and then completely screw it up by waiting two weeks (I mean come on are you really that busy?) before even emailing the people they met at the seminar.

It is one of the best ways to self sabotage your own efforts. Before you leave that night, setup the next point in turning this handshake into a deal.

As soon as you are done with rehabbing your flip and you have people walking in looking to buy your home - ask them nicely if they are pre-approved yet? If they say no, you need to whip out the business card of the loan officer on your team and tell them that you highly recommend them and they should call them up immediately so they can get their loan going fast and not risk losing this beautiful home to some other buyer.And after that you need to delegate the whole loan thing to your mortgage professional.

It is a complete waste of your time to get involved in the mortgage process and start meeting their home buyer to collect documents or trying to figure out their credit situation especially if they have some blemishes on their credit. Leave all that to your mortgage professional. That is all the they do every day, all day. They are good at it. And they are getting paid for closing your deal. You have better things to do: find another deal to pull the trigger on when this one closes; go to networking meetings to make more contacts, attend seminars to add to your knowledge base and build your bank of private investors....

Real estate investing is a team sport. You as the investor occupy the position of the team captain but a good captain is not supposed to play at all positions but rather play at the position that he is great at and delegate the rest to its other team members.

Winning championships in our business AKA going to a closing and collecting a check with your LLC name on it cannot be done by yourself. Not only you need good teammates but you as the top guy needs to let them do their job. You will score more often.

I went to a 'business lunch' on Friday to meet a new private investor who has been hounding me (it is always better when they are chasing you instead of the other way around) to do some business with me.

This by the way is how all of my business meetings about private money / private investors are setup. Food plus table. No other way.

It helps that I am incapable of  eating alone. I can actually tell you all the times I ate by myself last year: ONCE. That is how unusual for me is to eat by myself that I actually remember it when I do. Part of it comes from my mother who would not allow us to eat wherever we wanted. Nobody could open up the fridge and eat. There was a time for lunch and dinner and if you had class / late work then she actually sat with me and talked to me when I finally made my way to the dinner table no matter how late it was.

Anyhoo, so I went to the meeting and had some incredibly good food with him. We spent around 90 minute together without any interruptions. We talked about the food, my obsession in 2011 at discovering new dive restaurants in Metro Detroit and staying away from chain restaurants as much as I could, Rich Rodriguez, Kwame's ongoing troubles, NBA and why the 'old guys' at Spurs have a good chance of winning it all come June, iPad 2 and the iPhone coming to Verizon and about our kids.

Hold on, you might be thinking... did I forget to talk about real estate and private money - the reason I went to the meeting?

No I did not forget but to me it is always: 'get to know people first; let them know me second; good business happens on autopilot.' Unlike most people who go on business meeting determined to start and end the meeting solely talking about 'what they want?" - I am more interested in getting a new friend in my life then just a one selfish deal.

Finally we finished eating. The conversation was great filled with lot of laughter and good vibes. He asked me about the business at hand and how can he partner up with me. I told him exactly my terms. He said, consider it done. We shook hands and I left. 

The business part took around 10 minutes from start to finish in a 90 minute meeting plus when I left not only I had gotten everything I had came for but I also walked out with a new friend, somebody who is going to do a lot of deals for years to come.

Here is the BIG, BIG, BIG LESSON for new real estate investors in Michigan who get a little nervous when talking to people they have just met or people they already know about private money, self directed IRA's or deal partnerships:

Do you know what is the real collateral in all private money deals in Michigan? If you said the house that has the lien on it with the investor's name on it then you are 50% right.

The real collateral in all private money deals is always YOU.

This is the secret that the most successful real estate investors understand and the ones who wonder why private money continues to elude them in Michigan don't. 

So when you and I are meeting to arrange OPM for your deals, don't rely on an email, go to lunch with me or have a drink with me, tell me about yourself and talk to me like a human being. 

Don't think about how much money I have or whether you are going to say something wrong. Be yourself. I want do business with you otherwise why would I bother meeting with you? 

What I want to know more than the details about the property is whether I can trust you or not? You are my real collateral. So give me a chance, leave your nervousness at home and instead come and talk to me as you would to a good friend and let's have a good time. 

You will attract an enormous amount of OPM easily toward you if you understand this serest about private money.

Reminder: I am teaching a 2 day bootcamp on December 29 / 30 in Southfield. Only 3 seats left. 

Not only I am going to turn you into a razor sharp private money magnet in our 2 days together BUT I also got some extremely cool private investors coming to hang out with you on Sunday. These guys buy and sell Michigan foreclosures all the time but not as an investor only but more as private investors / financiers / deal partners. You will hear how they think, what they like and dislike from new real estate investors in Michigan. That alone is worth the price of admission as it will stop you from making costly mistakes in getting OPM on great terms in Michigan for all of your deals.

Got questions? Call Nora ASAP at 248-561-3535. I am only allowing 15 students and we only have 3 seats left so don't wait. Details & enrollment links are here.