Editor's Note: We highly encourage new investors to soak up as much information as they can from our meet ups, the resources we share and by networking. We do not want to discourage you from learning! Vena brings up a great point in respectfully seeking advice from experienced and active investors. Do you agree? Feel free to comment below.  

Newbies: if you want 'help' (i.e. coaching, training, mentoring, etc.) from the busy, successful investors around you, and you don't want to pay for it, there's something you need to be aware of: there are a lot more people who want that than there is time for the smaller number of active investors to GIVE it. Seriously, if every intermediate/advanced investor did nothing but "have lunch with" and "get his brain picked" by everyone who wanted to do that, they'd (and I say this without exaggeration) not have time to do anything else.
That means that even the experienced investor who has a heart for helping out new investors has to have some means of choosing who to devote time to.

Wanna know how they do it? It's generally some combination of these things:

1. The newbie is investing time in his own education. NO ONE wants to teach you everything you need to know about real estate over the phone or over an endless series of lunches. It's too complex and too much to ask. That's why REIA groups and seminars exist--to get you familiar with the strategies and the language. DON'T ask your 'mentor' to bring you up to speed on everything about how to find, evaluate, negotiate, finance, close, and rehab a house, unless you're paying for that service.

2. The newbie is trying to bring value. The whole basis of the real estate business is an exchange of value: I find a great deal, and you pay me to take it off my hands. I have a nice, clean, working house, and you pay me every month to live in it. Why would you think that LEARNING real estate is any different? I have 25+ year's experience, you either pay me to convey it, or you bring me opportunities(ie deals for me to do, or us to do, or money to buy deals) through which I convey it, or you fix my computer or set up my website better or do SOMETHING that I can't or don't want to or don't have the time to do for myself, and we trade. P.S. No, sorry, a free dinner at Wendy's isn't the kind of value I mean...nor is a free dinner at the best restaurant in town. I can do that for myself. And, surprisingly, offering to come to my office and work for me for free probably isn't attractive to most experienced investors either--I don't need free interns of uncertain duration and skill, I need partners and team members with whom I can have at least a medium term relationship.

3. The newbie is taking action. Somewhere in a thread below, someone jumped all over an experienced investor who said that she didn't try very hard to help newbies for free anymore, because there were so many in whom she'd invested a lot of time who then disappeared without ever having done anything. The frustration of seeing that that a newbie CAN be successful, and spending hours trying to coach them to be successful, then having them neglect to take ANY of your advice or do ANY of the things you suggest, is real. And it's painful. And I'm sorry that a lot of newbies have done this to a lot of experienced investors over the years, to the point where they're actually cynical about it, but that's the way it is. Showing that you not only appreciate BUT ARE PUTTING INTO EFFECT the advice you've asked for is important.

​How can YOU do some self-education, and provide value, and show that you're taking action? Those are the questions you should be asking yourself, if you really want help from experienced investors.

Everyone always ask how I got into Investing in Real Estate and why? 

I am professional BMX rider and I started to become scared of what I will do after my career was over. I was 24 years old and was living my dream, I started to think what can I do to replace this income after bike riding is over for me. My initial plan was to buy as many houses as I could cash. I wanted to bring in enough passive income through the rent money that it did not matter if my sponsors decided to let me go.
 
I had a friend in Michigan buying houses for super cheap. I saved up my cash and pulled the trigger. I bought my first investment property in Michigan for $25,000 in 2008. For me this was a lot of money at the time and felt like somewhat of a risk. I picked the house on the Internet, purchased the home the following week over the phone, and it was a done deal.

I’m here to admit that buying that house completely changed my life. It gave me the courage to step out of my comfort zone and when that first check arrived from the monthly rent it showed me the true power of passive income. Today I like to call this place my favorite rental property. I bought it in a market that I knew not much about, Did it without seeing the house, and as of today I’ve made over $70,000 on it. Thanks to @rentcollector8 for mentoring me a couple years later. He taught me how to maximize my cash, use the banks money to get 100% financing on deals, and more importantly became my partner in crime in not only Investing in Real Estate but in life. 
#partners #michigan #firstinvestment #realestate #passiveincome #saginaw #saginawmichigan #terryadamsbmx

Do you ever step back and think about the one opportunity that seems like the catalyst for everything that makes you happy about your business? For me it was a phone call out of the blue from a competing company asking me to originate that precipitated the leap of faith to go from operations (“back office”) to front end origination. I took a deep breath, squeezed my eyes shut, and plunged feet first into being a loan officer. 

At first, it was me awkwardly pushing myself through a bundle of nerves every day until I found my footing and embraced the power and fulfillment I derive from this career: I get to help make people’s dreams come true! I’m so glad I forced myself to step outside my comfort zone. 

What one opportunity was your biggest catalyst? I’d love to learn more about you. Give me a call at 985-264-7623 and let’s grab a cup of coffee and chat about your real estate business, goals, and talents. 
​

I don't know about you but the days after Christmas can easily become a blur between family events, recouping from said family events (is that just me?) and preparing for another holiday. As we float between these two holidays and prepare for the New Year, are you thinking about your goals for 2019 yet?

Last year I made goals for 2018 and for the first time, I wrote them somewhere where I could see it continually (on my office desk and on my bathroom mirror) to reinforce these goals on a daily basis. I was determined to start making head way in my real estate investing career. Wanna guess what happened? Yeah? No? Okay, just humor me. 

By keeping those goals in the forefront of my mind I believe I was motivated to work more diligently on them. I've always been self-motivated but this was something else. The constant reminder. The daily nudge to be accountable to what I wanted to do. It of course took ACTION to reach those goals. But that one little change of writing out my goals and going over them daily helped me tremendously this year! Have you ever written out your goals? 

As I prep for 2019, I have already written out my goals and placed them in those two places again. I am happy with what I accomplished this year but I'm hungry to do more with the coming 365 days!

For Christmas I asked for a family member to get me the book, The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. You can find a link for it in the suggested books section of our Resources Page. I'm looking forward to tackling this book early on this year. I have heard podcasts by Hal and have colleagues who swear by this book. One of my goals for 2019 is to re-establish a morning routine now that I am self-employed. It was easier when I was an employee with a set 8AM - 5PM schedule for work. Looking forward to winning the morning and leveling up! 

One way I would suggest to maximize all that 2019 has for you is to set actionable goals. What I mean by that is to use VERBS in the words that you use when setting your goals. Every day when I was brushing my teeth or getting settled into my office I was reading over my goals. I was visualizing them and getting fired up to go do the work that was needed to meet these goals. 

Check out the book The Miracle Morning. Join with me in reading it this year if you are looking for a way to become more productive and to reach more of your goals this year. Everyone hoots and hollers about this book and what it has done for them. Looking forward to it adding FUEL to my investing FIRE in 2019!

This year I have set the largest goals I have ever set in my life. SERIOUSLY. If they don't scare you, they might not be big enough. Isn't that what they say to do? One of my goals is to do my first wholetail/pre-hab deal instead of the traditional flips that I've done. This will be new territory for me but I'm ready to jump in head first. One of my other goals is to attend a mastermind and a business conference. Both of those are already booked for January and February. Boom! I'm not playing games this year!  I'm ready to take the MASSIVE IMPERFECT ACTION needed to generate the work that will produce the results that I want. Are you?

What are some of your goals for 2019? Feel free to share below! I would love to hear them.