Sunday, January 16, 2011

"Why Sub2 Investors Give Up..."

The real estate business is always making room for those who are not afraid to work. The fact is the harder one "works" in real estate, the more one learns, the more distinctions one makes, and eventually ...the more money one makes. It's just the law.

Of course, we see the pros make this business look like a walk in the park. And all the gurus tell us that if we just follow their prescription that we'll be just like the big boys in no time. Well, that's true that gurus do offer meaningful short cuts and systems that help us get traction very fast. However, just because somebody has the gold mine, doesn't mean they're committed to mining it.

I've witnessed students buy my Sub2 course, which is specifically geared to bypass as much wheel-spinning and frustration as possible, and then do practically nothing with it. Here they've got a tool that could help them buy their own dream house, or dream car, and instead they put the tool on the shelf "until they can get around to using it." How long do they want to wait to live prosperously, I ask myself.

Other students, have turned terrible situations around for themselves. They didn't wait around for the stars to line up, to get cracking.

Last month a student contacted me about his investing objectives. He wanted some help getting organized and putting a system together to buy some income property. When I found out what his deadline was, I was practically gulping air, it was so ambitious.

I'm not sure whether it was out of desperation, vision, or what, but his goal was short-fused. It's inspiring an fun to help someone reach an important, if not difficult goal. So, what was the deadline? March 1. So we got cracking! He took the steps necessary to familiarize himself with data sheets, and started making calls on properties. Now he's advertising for sellers and I am excited about helping him reach this goal...

At the same time, this was happening, I had just about had it listening to other newbies complain, "there's no deals," "I can't find anything to buy," "agents are jerks," "sellers want too much," and blahdy blah, and "I want to give up", because they can't find low hanging fruit like the gurus all promised will happen if they fork over $5,000.00 for their boot camp. Of course I don't promise "low hanging fruit," but I do promise the ability to recognize it! There's a difference.

Well, "Reality Knocking! Hello!" It's takes effort to do real estate profitably. That's what my new student is learning, too. I told him that he needed to complete 50 analysis sheets on 50 different properties so that he could learn to instantly recognize a deal. Slowly and painstaking we plowed through a couple income property data sheets so he could get acquainted with the process (and I relearned some important assumptions at the same time). Did you know that sellers will lie about their numbers to gather interest? Anywhoo...

Well, to really drive this point home about the work involved in finding deals, I received a call from a car salesman who wanted to lease purchase a house for himself. I told him that I had nothing in his area, but I would help him find something that he could negotiate on his own (after all he's a professional negotiator). I told him that he would have to put in some hours on the phone, and pointed him to the most likely prospects.

The next day he called me to let me know he found four potential deals ....after about 8 hours of cold calling. After he told me the terms he was throwing out, I could only sit in awe at what the sellers said they were interested in doing with this guy. Of course the next thing out of his mouth was that he wanted to bird dog for me. Of course I said, "nah, I work my own deals, thanks, but no thanks." NOT! Of course, I took him up on his offer as soon as I could get the word "Fantastic!" out of my mouth.

Well, I've got a student digging for income property gems and learning to recognize deals on the spot, and a used car salesman looking in just the right places for deals for himself (and me) and neither of them are complaining about the hard work involved so far.

So, forget about finding the low hanging fruit, and start digging for buried treasure in your own gold mine, and dig out the juicy deals that nobody else knows exists, like my students and bird dogs are willing to do. Then in no time, you'll reach your goals and somebody will assume it's just as easy as the gurus say it is!




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