7 Mindsets to Help You Grow Your Real Estate Business

It all starts with the right frame of mind.

If you’re wondering how to grow your real estate business, you must learn about some of the most successful strategies for scaling your investment portfolio. Taking the time to educate yourself on the real estate world and what others have done to achieve success is a good first step. But to take your real estate portfolio to the next level, you must implement scalable techniques with proven results.

When you create a well-defined plan and take action, you’ll witness substantial growth and progress in your real estate business. This article will explain key concepts and proven strategies successful business owners use across industries. By implementing these techniques, you can scale up your real estate portfolio and achieve remarkable growth.

Why Grow Your Real Estate Business?

People invest in real estate for various reasons, and why you want to grow your business may differ from why we want to grow ours. However, we believe most investors are looking for growth because they want to:

• Leave a legacy for future generations
• Make real estate investing a career
• Increase revenue so they have more free time
• Overcome the challenges of growing a real estate business
• Help others achieve success in life
• Enjoy creating solutions to problems
• Want the security that owning real estate can provide

Regardless of why you want to grow your real estate business, you need a strategy to make it happen. Knowing why you want to achieve your goals makes the hard work it takes to be successful worthwhile.

7 Strategies and Mindsets To Scale Your Real Estate Portfolio

Unless you have the right strategy and mindset, you’ll struggle to reach your desired financial independence. The effort you put into growing your real estate portfolio will determine your success. Still, you also have to focus on the improvement process if you want to overcome the challenges that will undoubtedly get in your way. It takes a lot of small improvements to scale a company, and you should celebrate the little accomplishments and successes just as much as achieving larger goals.

As you search for ways to grow your real estate company, you might come across various methods and principles developed by successful entrepreneurs who have achieved their dreams. These individuals want to pass what they know on to others. Some of these business leaders have advice that holds in the real estate industry. Learning from another person’s failure can help you save valuable time because you can avoid taking risks that are a waste of time.

To truly scale your real estate portfolio, you need to think big. That’s why we brought these ideas together for you. With these different strategies, you can start to think about scaling your company to incredible heights.

1. The stack method

The stack method is a straightforward strategy in which you aim to increase your unit count by acquiring additional properties within a specific timeframe. The idea is to gradually scale up your real estate portfolio by adding more units over time. Let’s illustrate with an example:

Say you have a single-family rental property, but you want to scale your business so that you own multifamily property. With the stack method, you aim to buy a duplex as your next investment. Once you purchase the duplex, you take time, like a year, to learn how to manage the duplex. Then, next year, you purchase a four-plex. After a year of being a four-plex owner, you can move to an eight-plex.

As you can see, you’re scaling up each year. By learning the ropes of owning multifamily property over time, you ensure you’re prepared for the next step before you take it. You could own several rental properties within five years using the stack method. Before you know it, you’re the proud owner of hundreds of units. You’ve slowly gained the skills to do something you never thought possible.

2. The Growth Mindset

There are two types of mindsets people have:

• Fixed mindset
• Growth mindset

People with a fixed mindset believe they can’t change their talents or ability level. These people think that who they are and what they can do is fixed—it’s unchangeable. Someone with a fixed mindset may only buy one or two rental properties because they believe they can’t do better or that’s all they deserve. They let challenges stand in their way.

On the other hand, someone with a growth mindset understands that learning is continuous and that they can get smarter. These individuals accept failure as part of the learning process. They take life challenges and turn them into successes through persistence and productivity. Through a growth mindset, you don’t limit yourself or what you can do. It’s a thought process of continuous improvement, where you’re always getting better with every success and failure.

A growth mindset includes actively seeking knowledge and acquiring the necessary expertise to invest in real estate that yields high returns on investment. It involves recognizing that with a willingness to learn and seek guidance from experienced individuals, you can achieve your goals and experience growth in your investments.

3. The 10X Rule

The core concept of The 10X Rule is to aim higher than what you initially believe is possible. It encourages setting goals 10 times greater than your initial expectations and pushing yourself beyond your perceived limits. Of course, it also relates that investors should take 10X the action to achieve their goals. When you think on a larger scale, you realize that no matter how difficult the goal is, you can get there when you free yourself from doubt and envision success. If you can manage one rental property, why not take on 10 or 100? Yes, you have to start with one but don’t limit yourself.

Making small improvements in your daily life and setting organizational boundaries can help you focus and develop habits that improve efficiency and productivity. Thinking bigger and setting your goals beyond your expectations can push you to take on challenges that could make a big difference in the size of your portfolio. You have to be willing to put in the hard work. However, using The 10X Rule can lead to massive growth in your business.

A big part of what makes you stand out from the competition is your goals. If you believe you can reach financial independence within the next 15 years, The 10X Rule might encourage you to shorten that time to 10, seven, or even five years. You’ll have to work a lot harder to get there, but once you achieve your goal, you can enjoy the rewards of your success.

4. Think and Grow Rich

“Think and Grow Rich” is a book by Napoleon Hill, but it’s also a philosophy that builds on the growth mindset and continuous improvement principles. He wrote the book in 1937, but much of the innovation and insight from the pages still has value today. The author believes that thinking positively and envisioning success are key components of improvement, but you must also take steps to reach success in your market. You can’t let failures set you back. Instead, you must create solutions and processes to help you overcome setbacks.

Thinking positively and seeing yourself where you want to be can motivate you to continue to take steps to reach your goals. The Think and Grow Rich philosophy encourages taking risks to understand what you can accomplish. You can’t let friends’ negative thoughts and words affect your belief that you can obtain the growth you desire. When you have a growth mindset, you can eliminate waste in your life so that you focus on the future.

It takes a burning desire to reach a point where you feel like you’ve made it. You won’t reach your goals without a desire and passion for real estate investing. You have to see where you want your real estate portfolio to be and work tirelessly to get it there. It takes sacrifice to make your dream a reality, but it takes having dreams to develop a Think and Grow Rich mindset.

5. Kaizen

Kaizen comes out of Japan’s competitive success, which means continuous improvement. It’s an improvement plan that involves everyone at a company. Each team member is responsible for finding ways to continually improve processes and eliminate waste. Kaizen operates on five principles that can translate to any organization, including real estate. These five principles are:

• Know your customer: In real estate, your customers are buyers, sellers, and renters. Buying an investment property at the right price, negotiating deals, and working with people are key elements of the real estate business, and understanding your customer base can help you excel at each of these tasks.
• Let it flow: This means that everyone at a company works to eliminate waste. Your team should work to create value in everything it does and consistently make small improvements.
• Go to gemba: Gemba means “the actual place” in Japanese, so go to gemba translates to go to the place where things happen. For real estate investors, this means you need to go where real estate deals happen, whether it’s an open house or a networking opportunity.
• Empower people: It doesn’t matter how good you are at being a real estate investor; the more you empower people to help you get where you want to be, the more success you’ll find coming your way. Giving people the tools they need to accomplish tasks allows them the freedom to get things done their way.
• Be transparent: Be transparent in your deals, whether making sales or buying new investments. Let people know your price, and don’t try to hide information about the property or financials.

You may hear the term “Kaizen events,” a more focused approach to solving a specific business problem. You might also hear “Kaizen blitz” or “Kaizen burst.” These terms just mean you take part in a problem and devise a solution by eliminating waste and implementing continuous improvement.

A landlord could focus on ways to increase rental income. They might need to research to find out about neighborhoods where rents are higher so they can get a sense of the effort it will take to purchase homes there. Using kaizen events, they can then work on continuous improvement to:

• Make connections with people who own property in the area
• Set their goals higher to obtain the level of success they desire
• Go to the neighborhoods where they want to own homes
• Find people who can help them make their goals happen
• Let other investors know exactly what they want to do

A Kaizen blitz could help you focus on a specific problem to create an effective solution.

6. The Law of Attraction

Although not scientifically proven, the Law of Attraction suggests that maintaining a positive mindset and belief in your goals can attract positive outcomes. It emphasizes the importance of a growth mindset and positive thinking, which can play a role in your journey to success. While positive thinking alone isn’t sufficient for success, it can significantly impact your progress and ability to grow your real estate business.

Getting an idea and then setting your focus on the processes you need to turn your idea into the real deal can get you to the point of success. If you keep thinking about going from single-family homes to multifamily properties, but you aren’t willing to go through the process of learning what you need to know by researching and getting advice. You’re unlikely to attract positive results.

If you set your sights high and reach beyond what you think you’re capable of, you’ve adopted the positive attracts positive philosophy. Always keep your goals in focus and maintain a growth mindset. This positive outlook can help you when obstacles get in your way.

This principle of attraction also means that if you have a single rental property, it will be much easier to acquire the next one. And each subsequent property and deal will only attract more deals and more properties.

7. The Deming Cycle

The Deming Cycle, consisting of four steps, is a continuous improvement process applicable to various business models, including real estate investing. It provides a framework for gaining valuable knowledge and enhancing real estate endeavors. The steps in The Deming Cycle are:

• Plan: A real estate investor must have a solid investment plan if they expect to find success. Know the types of properties you want to buy and how you can finance your deals.
• Do: During the Do step, you implement parts of the plan as they come into play. So if part of your plan was to obtain financing, then this is the phase where you work to find a lender.
• Study: The study phase is when you look at what happened during the Do phase and alter your plan accordingly. For example, if your attempt to obtain financing from a hard money lender fails, you may need to research how to change your financial situation.
• Act: This final phase combines everything you’ve learned to act on your goal. You should be ready to move forward and work toward a larger plan.

You can repeat the steps in The Deming Cycle repeatedly to complete a continuous improvement process. Using these steps to scale your real estate portfolio could help boost your productivity to get the desired financial independence.

How To Pick the Best Growth Strategy for Your Real Estate Business

Choosing the best growth strategy for your real estate business likely won’t mean using just one of the above mentioned methods. Instead, you’ll probably find yourself using parts of each strategy to create a growth mindset that works for you. Perhaps empowering people, which is a kaizen concept, is something you need to work on so you incorporate this into your growth process.

In addition, you decide to increase your real estate sales by doing fix and flips, so you implement The Deming Cycle to determine where to purchase these properties for the highest profits. You’re combining multiple growth ideas to fit your unique needs.

When selecting a growth strategy, ask yourself the following questions to help you decide on a direction:

• What are my real estate investing goals?
• What knowledge do I need to help me reach my goals?
• Where can I meet like-minded people who share my passion for real estate?
• Are there marketing channels I should take advantage of?
• Am I setting my goals high enough?
• Do I have the right/best people on my team?
• How can I improve my mindset to stay positive and focused?
• Are there ways I can increase my productivity?

The answers to these questions can help guide you in deciding on the growth strategy that’s best for you. You can also get helpful information from seasoned real estate investors on BiggerPockets forums. Advice from those who have experience with what you’re trying to do can be invaluable. Take what they offer, and the rest is up to you.

Do You Have What It Takes To Scale Your Real Estate Portfolio?

Taking your real estate portfolio from a few properties to large-scale complexes with 100s of units takes more than just knowledge. You need to make it a point to focus on the future and obtaining your investment goals. Using developed strategies, like Kaizen and The 10X Rule, can play a big part in your success.