Finding A Real Estate Mentor

(Reading Time: 2 Minutes. Topic: Finding A Real Estate Mentor)

Finding a mentor is one of the hardest relationships to build in any field. It takes considerable time and effort. But before we talk about landing a mentor, lets dive into the word "mentorship."

First of all, what is mentorship? A mentorship is a commitment of time, a finite resource which is 1000X more valuable than any other virtually infinite resource on earth. RE pros (which I definitely am not and I'm a RE hobbyist) are so busy running their businesses, prioritizing their families, and trying to find some time for their rest and relaxation they don't have time for another commitment.

Before they commit to answering any of your requests, they think "Is this request worth taking away from my family time or other activities to help this random person?" OR "Is this worth committing too knowing that I will have to spend less time with people I love and respect?"

So how does one go about landing a mentorship?

If you are seeking a mentor you will commit yourself to reading enough basic information about a topic (Buy & Hold, Flipping, and etc),  so you can ask pointed questions to real estate professionals. 

Lets look at some examples:

Bad Request:

Hi REpro,

I've seen you post on BP for a while and I really like what you're doing. You don't know me, but I would like to speak to you for an undefined amount of time about me not really knowing anything about what I want, what I want to do, and how I'm going to get there. To be honest, I'm just lazy.

I hope to talk to you soon.

Sincerely,

Your time is worth nothing.

Good Request:

Hi REpro,

I've seen you posted on BP. I have a question. What was one book that helped you get started in RE?

Thanks,

Your time is worth everything

Now folks, please let me know, which post will get the first response?

Now lets say I'm trying to contact an elite REpro. They probably receive 100s of these requests a month. Now if the REpro has precious time to devote to random questions, who do you think she will reply to first or if she could reply to one, which one would she commit to? The unspecific time hog? Or the in and out specific question?

Bingo the latter.

Now of course, nothing is fool-proof in life, but I promise you will be much more successful in your requests of people's time if you are SPECIFIC in what you're looking for. 

If the person answers your question, try to apply their advice to your RE endeavors. Once you have done that for a while, come back with another pointed question to show that you actually listened to the person, applied their advice, and here are your results, adding some resources that maybe of value to this person(Articles, Market Info, etc) with a follow up pointed question. That's how you build a relationship, and maybe, if you add value to this relationship, you might be able to turn this into a true mentorship.

As always,

Happy Hunting