Last month Pine Financial Group hosted the 2020 Minnesota Real Estate Investor Success Summit, it was an awesome event and we had our best turnout yet with over 215 registrants! I had the opportunity to host the event, which is always fun because deep down I think I’m a comedian. Ask my wife and she’ll tell you there’s nothing a budding comedian loves more than a new audience! I really appreciate the chance to be in front of a crowd and provide the tools to grow their business. At the Success Summit, I felt particularly froggy and offered everyone in attendance the chance to schedule a call with me to help offer advice or feedback on their current strategy or goals. Over 10 years of investing in real estate, I have been fortunate enough to be involved in thousands of transactions as a hard money lender, developer, owner, agent, flipper, etc. I fully acknowledge and respect that I may not have been the most established investor in the room that day, but I was the only one with a mic that offered that capability. This is where the 2% comes in, I’ve only had four people accept the offer from me. This could be evidence of my poor ability to “sell” the service, or I suspect it’s more of an indication of the difference between the 2% and 98% of people who attend investment events real estate.
The guys in the office often give me a hard time getting my “go to” by saying about the events we host, “why are you still here today?” Of course, we laugh a little, but I really mean it, people who identify as investors give up their evenings, weekends, free time and often money to attend classes, seminars and webinars on this elusive topic of real estate investing. For this reason, I ask the question: “Why are you still here today?”
So what does it take to be in the 2% versus the 98%? One of the many things I love about real estate investing is that almost anyone can do it. It depends on your skills and resources, or your ability to leverage the skills and resources of others, but the non-negotiable is desire. This desire is created by an individual’s vision, often referred to as “the big why” and the beauty of it is that it is different for everyone! One person’s goal in attending an event may simply be to buy a house to live in, while others may be on the verge of syndicating $100 million in multi-family investments. Most are looking to supplement or replace their current income by investing. The ability to execute the individual plan comes down to the “why”, people go to the whys are “for my family”, “to quit my job”, “to be rich”. Let’s just dissect the family’s response, because to attend all of these events, the participant has to spend time away from their family. If the goal of investing in real estate is to help your family –
Is it to create extra income to cover an event, like college or a wedding?
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Is it to provide an income that would allow a family to have a nicer house, better schools?
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Is it to supplement income so a spouse can stay home or reduce hours to spend time with family?
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Is it to replace income so that you are more available to be with your family?
Once the real why is established, you reverse engineer what it will take to achieve the goal, how many rollovers, rentals, bulks, etc. It’s a relatively simple process; However, in all my time around real estate investors, I have found that a lack of vision is what leads to aimlessly attending event after event, hoping to achieve the topic that was last presented. until the next shiny object appears.
The four phone calls I had with those who took advantage of it had a common theme, they just needed to hear it from someone else. It’s amazing how an objective opinion from a third party can bring a plan into the future so quickly. Two were trying to figure out how to get into small multi-family properties of 20-50 units, but both had to take very specific (although not obvious) steps to make it a reality. The other two just needed to structure a small rental portfolio in order to have enough monthly cash to be able to retire a little more comfortably.
2020 is well underway, before we spend another evening or weekend away from loved ones or pay to attend a “life-changing” event, I challenge us all to slow down and identify “why we are here today”.