Real Estate Investing Mistake #1: “Focusing on the Next Shiny Object”
There’s so much information everywhere you turn that it’s extraordinarily easy to get distracted. One “guru” is telling you that – hands-down – foreclosures are the most profitable strategy. Then, another “expert” is saying that foreclosures are frustrating, overworked, and unprofitable and claiming that the best way to make money now is investing in “paper”.
So, what’s a new investor supposed to do?
Who’s right and who should you listen to?
The answer may surprise you!
The truth is… just about any market is profitable at any given time. It’s just a matter of finding a system that works and following it…
The problem that investors (and entrepreneurs in general) face is that they get started with one thing and then get distracted by the next big idea. OR… what’s even worse is when they take system A and pull out the pieces they like in system A and try to fit them in the model for system B.
Think about your business like a recipe for baking a cake. You need three things:
- The RIGHT ingredients;
- The RIGHT measurements (for each ingredient); and
- The RIGHT procedure for combining the ingredients, baking the cake, and frosting/decorating the cake.
If any one of these three things is off, then your recipe is a disaster.
The same holds true for real estate investing. Therefore, you’ve got to pick ONE recipe and follow it through.
To make this make sense, let’s look at an example – one of our real estate systems that’s worked seamlessly for YEARS in our business.
Recipe: Absentee Owner Marketing
Ingredients:
- Motivated sellers (non owner occupants)
- Marketing strategy
- Method for screening sellers
- System for evaluating leads/deals
- Contract for purchase and sale
- And so on…
“Measurements”/ How Much?:
- Motivated sellers (10-20 to get a deal)
- Marketing strategy (250-1000 letters mailed/month, networking, online advertising, etc.)
- Method for screening sellers (website, voicemail system, etc.)
- And on and on for each “ingredient”
Recipe/Procedure
- Determine your lead source for absentee owners
- Filter your database for the best prospects (define this criteria beforehand)
- Create your first direct mail letter
- Mail merge your prospect lists with your direct mail letter
- Send your letters
- Provide a voicemail line for prospects to call in order to prescreen sellers (pre-record a message that filters prospects so you can spend your time with the most qualified first)
You can sort of see how the process works here. Now, this is not a comprehensive training on absentee owners or each section would have been far more comprehensive and complete.
By the way, if you ARE interested in this market, check out www.AbsenteeOwnerMarketing.com for the complete course/program.
OK, so back to this recipe and why people go wrong with the shiny object syndrome…
They get started gathering the ingredients. And while they’re getting everything together, they hear about another market, or another strategy or system, and they either completely abandon the recipe or they start to mix and match ingredients or steps in the process. The recipe becomes boring or too complicated and they give up before they see the results!
Perhaps they don’t like a particular ingredient, so they choose to leave it out.
It wouldn’t work in a cake… and it won’t work in real estate.
The other thing to understand is that SOMETIMES you simply have to run through a recipe a couple of times before you get it right. Sometimes there are adjustments that need to be made based on your oven or even your elevation! So, even if you follow the recipe to a T, there’s still a chance that you might need to add a little more of this ingredient or that, cook the cake a little longer or for a little less time, etc.
So, don’t give up before you’ve given it your all and followed the recipe COMPLETELY several times!