>How did you get into real estate investing? Did you read a book on it? Was it a seminar? A meeting of some sort with speakers selling courses? Did you get really, really jazzed and pumped up by these simple ("not easy") concepts that were delivered to you in parable form from the stage by a charismatic speaker? Did you find yourself levitating to the back of the room, powerless but to slap down your plastic to buy the kits that were being sold there? Like...
"Yes Mr. Ker, we do take traveler's checks. Yes, cash is okay, too. HEY BARNEY, DO YOU HAVE CHANGE FOR A HUNDRED? There's your kit Mr. Ker. Good Luck!"
I have to admit that's where I began. I attended a "conference" and dropped over a grand in two days. What I ended up with was a very funny course about Paper (i.e. discounted mortgages) and a more sober account of making a million five in eighteen months buying and rehabbing multi-units. I listened to tapes for about four days straight, then went out and bought an HP12C financial calculator.
I loved paper (the units can wait a while). I really got my head around it. I loved discounting on the calculator, I loved calculating yields. And the guy on these tapes was so funny! I spent a fun couple of weeks learning the courses and I knew more than most bankers because the guy on the tapes told me so. I wanted to get started and get a note-closing-sweatshop going just like he described. I knew this stuff inside and out. Two deals a week would be OK with me you know, I'm not greedy. Now where was it in the book that it showed how to find the deals. OK...here we go ... Look up names at the courthouse, call Accountants, call Contractors, call Attorneys......hmmm.
To cut a long story short, I looked up five hundred names at the courthouse and sent letters to them, I made about five hundred phone calls to Accountants and Lawyers (setting up my "network"), and finally I found one note holder who was interested in selling. I made an offer, he said "no", and I went home and went to bed for two weeks, too depressed to function. All that work, and this guy just said "no". That was my introduction to the wonderful world of real estate investing. From there, I got into low income apartments and completely flushed myself down the toilet!
Five years later, after buying and giving back about 50 units, nearly penniless, I discovered this thing called creative real estate. Control without ownership, solving people problems, use your brain to buy property - not your cash. I had an acute appreciation for it, given my (expensive, and painful) landlording odyssey, but it seemed even with all this wonderful knowledge, I was still in very much the same position I had been in when I first got started. The same position I stayed in, until I wised up, and the same position most real estate investors struggle with year after year because they don't know any better.
That is: "I know all this stuff inside and out. I know 100 different creative ways to buy a property. But I've got to suffer through things like lackluster advertising results, cold-calling, talking to hundreds of testy uninterested people, and dead ends, before I even get the chance to talk to someone who is half way motivated to sell. This is a crossroads. The proverbial "brick wall" for most of us.
And this brings up an important point. Possibly the most important point to really "get" here. Knowing how to find motivated sellers is far more important than knowing 100 different ways to buy a house. You see, your business (and therefore your life) is going to be frustrating, stressful and unfulfilling unless you find a way to create a non-stop flow of motivated sellers calling you, every day. Now, that's obvious isn't it? Well it can't be that obvious because not many people actually do it. You see, what I'm trying to point out here that there is a mental shift that needs to occur in your mind, a paradigm shift if you will, before you are going to make any serious money as a Real Estate Entrepreneur.
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