Podcasting Your Way to Success in Real Estate

Article by Kim Tucker

It’s a brand-new year and a time when we are all excited about change. For those of us in real estate it’s all about Finding our Why, our reason for investing in real estate. Setting Goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. Then working those goals backwards to set up an Action Plan so you can get in there and Grind them out.

All great key words that all the selfhelp gurus out there will explain and outline. But let’s take a step back and ask . . . if Real Estate Investing is going to be your Vehicle to reach your goals in 2019 and beyond do you know (1) what is the best way to invest to reach your goals and (2) where to get the education you need and (3) what are the action steps you need to take or outsource to get where you need to go.

Let’s tackle these three questions individually.

What is the Best Way to Invest to Reach Your Goals?

When you sit down and examine your “Why” you want to invest, this why will probably connect in some way to money. You want to pay off debt. You want to save up money for the kid’s college or for retirement or heck to pay off your own college. You want an alternative income stream to replace your job. Am I even close here?

Then it comes down to two basic ways of investing that either focus on building up chunks of cash or building up residual income.

If you want to go the chunks of cash route, you will probably want to look at wholesaling or rehabbing to resell as flipping generates big chunks of cash. Some methods of wholesaling don’t even require you to buy anything or have any cash to invest if you assign the contract. And for our team, in 20 years in this business flipping houses wholesale AND renovating them to resell, 90% of the time we use NONE of our own funds.

If you want to go the residual income route, you are probably looking at buying rental property or investing in notes, both of which can also be done with little to no money. Take a look at what Chris McClatchey is teaching at MAREI in January, he buys small multi units with none of his own cash in the deal and no bank loans.

If you want to go the hands-off route for chunks of cash or return on investment and have access to cash, but not a lot of time to invest, you might want to learn some basics and then lend your funds for a return on your money. This is where my IRA and 401k are at, they don’t have a lot of time to do anything, but they can lend to a very experienced investor and earn a 10% plus return.

I would suggest a new investor spend some time with free or very cheap resources researching the basics of the different ways to invest. You can hit up the internet for videos and podcasts where this investor or that investor explains what it is they do and basically how it works. You can also attend MAREI meetings to see the guest speakers do in their own investing business.

Where to Get the Education, You Need:

Here you have a ton of resources. Some are FREE. Some are CHEAP. Some are REASONABLE. And Some are OUTRAGEOUS.

FREE Resources: They can be great to learn little tidbits here and there. These include things like blog posts, podcasts, videos, webinars and the like. When you are in the learning stages and want to get a good feel for how something works, these are all great. Here at MAREI we have quite a few linked from our website at www.MAREI.org/Podcast/

OUTRAGEOUS Resources: These are the ones that you should research greatly before spending the money. They come in two forms, the guys that come to town all on their own with their free seminar and the guys and gals that sometimes speak at the REIA group, like MAREI.

These folks have training to sell you that may or may not be great. They generally want a pretty penny for this training and they get you all excited. So how do you know what’s good and what’s not.

First, take a look at the trainers coming through the REIA group. These are folks that have trained at other REIA groups, have had people buy their courses at other groups and have had their customer service tested through other groups. You can be fairly certain that their materials will teach you what you want to know and that they have good customer service and stand behind their product. And if they don’t, well you have the REIA group behind you to go to bat for you.

These trainers usually will have some free material on the internet for you to find and will come in with an introductory presentation at the monthly meeting. This presentation is not to teach you step by step how it all works, but to give you a good broad overview of the trainer’s model of investing, so you can make a decision, is this type of investing for me and do I want to learn more. They then teach a one or two-day workshop to allow you to get to know more about them and to focus on the top key aspects of their type of investing and teach you one or

two bullet points of 4 or 5 key aspects. You can then take a few of these bullet points and key aspects home and plug them in.

For example, last January when Robyn Thompson taught her two day seminar she had a few list resources for marketing that I have never used, a company that would handwrite my letter that I now use and some negotiation strategies that we added to way of doing things. Then from this workshop you can go home an implement, or you can spend a Reasonable Amount of money on a home study training course with step by step instructions and/or bootcamp that will give you hands on training that you can’t really get from a book or audio file. What’s Reasonable – usually under $2500.

Some of these trainers at MAREI then offer Mentoring, that some may want or need and others may not. Most of the trainers that come to MAREI do have some sort of Mentoring Package, but it is not a buy right now or else type of pitch. They give you time to go through the home study, do your research and homework and then sign up for different scales of mentoring if you choose. Personally, I have signed up for a couple of mentoring packages with trainers that were investing the way I wanted to invest. Others have looked great, but were not my focus so I passed on them.

Then we have the guys and gals that come to town all by themselves outside of the REIA group. They telemarket to you, send you private invitations (your name is on a list you know – people of a certain age that own their own homes, that have signed up for this or that online, the list gets sold to these people) or they find you with a radio or Facebook ad.

They work this way: (1) come to our free seminar (like we have a meeting at MAREI so ok so far), (2) sign up for our Saturday Workshop for just $500 (MAREI’s is usually under $100),(3) They teach you how to raise limits on your credit card (which is just plain criminal really), and (4) then buy our one size fits all, learn everything you ever needed to now about real estate investing and several things you will never use all for the low, low price of $40,000.

The speakers that come to MAREI have several pricing packages, but I have never seen $40,000 and they are all focused on one aspect of investing.

After 20 years in this business, and hearing complaints from the many people who come to MAREI after spending $40k: You don’t need a one size fits all. What you need is the training on the one thing you want to do right now. Add the other stuff, if you ever need it, the buy I later when you have more time and money. And if you are unhappy after agreeing to $1000 being charged to your credit card for the next 40 years, you have no REIA group behind you to go to bat for you with these traveling circuses. You are just you, all on your own, with out the power of 50 other group leaders that could all ban then from the stage if they treat our people badly.

Yes the REIA group makes a bit of money on the sale of the materials sold at their events, and some people seem to have a problem with that. But do keep in mind that meeting rooms are not free, that websites are not free, that newsletters cost money to make and print, and there is a lot of time spent putting these events together. Not to mention all the advocacy the local group puts in on your behalf, whether you know about it or not..

Let’s talk CHEAP and REASONA- BLE:

Here at MAREI we like to think that our Saturday workshops offer very valuable information and training for a very CHEAP price. Plus, you get fed and you have an entire day to network with people in the room, all who are in similar situations as you.

I have attended every single meeting and workshop presented at MAREI, Ok, I have missed one or two. I have traveled to other REIA groups across the country to see other speakers, and I can tell you that this is going to be some of the best cheap education you will ever receive. Especially if you are just deciding if whatever the speaker is teaching is the right way to invest for you. Would you rather spend $100 and spend 8 hours to learn that there is no way you would want to rehab and sell houses with Robyn Thompson or $40,000 with Than Merrill at Fortune Builder’s (who was trained by Robyn Thompson by the way).

Reasonable. I saw a post on Facebook the other day that according to Google, one would pay over $10,000 in tuition and fees for public in state colleges in one year. And we send our kids there for 4 to 5 years, plus help them pay room and board and for what, to hope they get a great job when they're done. I think our cost for one child was over $60,000 for 4 years at KU and what did he do when he graduated with no jobs available at the time, he became a real estate investor. And you know what. He has a lot of friends envious of his ability to work when he wants to, take off for trips when he wants to. Suddenly a CHEAP, a REASONABLE and even OUTRAGEOUS training is looking pretty good.

So back to our title – Podcasting Your Way to Success.

Let me share my story.

I got started back when there were not many Podcast, but we still had free online training. My plan was to figure it out from the FREE and Cheap. Go to meetings, read forum posts, read online articles watch the few videos out there. I could, over time, figure it out. And we did to a point, we just jumped in and started investing and figured it out as we went along.

Then in 2003 I went to a big real estate investor convention that was fairly Cheap and saw a bunch of speakers on all the topics you could think of. We saw one on Wholesaling from a guy who no longer teaches. I bough his course for $700. I brought it home and stuck it on the shelf and got nothing out of it for about 3 months, I had no time to dig in as I was busy listening to the equivalent of free podcasts.

Then one day I got it out and read it again and started at step one and did exactly what it said step by step and you know what. In about 30 days I had a killer deal on the hook. You see at the time we were buying bank owned properties that I had access to as an agent in the office that listed bank owned properties. We rehabbed them, and we sold them and on average, made about $18,000 to $20,000 a house with about 3 to 4 months of time invested in each deal. With this course and doing exactly what it said, using the

marketing resources provided, we bought a house for $12,000 cash, and then we sold it in a week for $23,000. With about 4 hour’ worth of work, we made about $10k after all expenses on something we owned for less than 2 weeks.

Could I have figured out wholesaling on my own, probably. Could I have done it in a weekend and 4 hour’s worth of effort, probably not. That one training course has netted me $100,000s in profits since 2003, EVERY YEAR. Fairly well worth the $700 bucks and the travel to Florida.

And our rehabbing? Well I wish I would have met Robyn Thompson much sooner. I am fairly certain her bootcamp would have improved our profits greatly in those early years..

So, for me, when I want to add a new way of investing to my tool box, I go buy a training course in the Reasonable category and from time to time, with a lot of research, I might buy a Mentoring program on a very key and targeted way of investing.

I just don’t think I can quite get that from a podcast or a cup of coffee with a local investor. I do like coffee with the local investor for connecting more on a personal level and getting to know the people I work with in the industry.