long story but read and give input!!!
So I came into bigger pockets and was one of the many people who just popped their heads in to say that their new and then completely disappear. Recently i started looking back into the forums and reading here and there and after listening to podcast 127, I was very encouraged to make a post. I'm not sure what to offer on advice so I thought I would just say whats happened since last year.
Okay so rewind to summer of last year. My girlfriend at the time talked about flipping houses during one of our conversations. Forward maybe a week I'm on my way home from work and I hear about an event on the radio "THAN MERRILL WILL BE COMING TO ATLANTA TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT FLIPPING HOUSES!!!!" So I think to myself hey this would be a great gift for my girlfriend since she talked about it the other day. Forward another week. We are in a hotel in Buckhead and get a great seat close to the front. So the presentation is about to start and I decide to write notes on his selling techniques( I was really into human behavior at the time especially after watching Lie To Me). so He's going on and on and I note how he's making the crowd comfortable and making them like him with his sense of humor and such (I later Found it's called "building rapport") and I also notice on how he plays on some of the older's crowds sense of regret of not working harder when they were younger to build a better life. At this point I'm just waiting for him to sell something cause the crowd was nice and buttered up. At the same time He is introducing wholesaling (which I honestly thought omg this look sooooo easy I wanna do this then get rentals!!!)
Then he finally introduced his product and said there were only a few for only 299$ and the crown STAMPEDES to the back of the room to buy it. As for me, I simply got my free tools and left(got a flip calculator, book on negotiations and other things).
Needless to say, I caught the "Real Estate Bug". So I do some researching into Wholesaling cause the plan was to raise money with Wholesaling and use that money for rentals. I then find Bigger Pockets. After listening to some podcast on my commutes to work and home, I finally make a post. Of course I get the awesome welcome wagon. "I ask what should I do?" You Awesome guys say, "Go to a REI Metting!!". So I find one and I go. I meet some amazing people. one of which was a guy who had one of his flips featured on HGTV's House Hunters. He tells me about his career and how he started with a Mentor so I think hmmm I need a mentor. So I looked on craigslists ( big mistake) and meet a guy that was looking for a wholesale partner .He says that he wants someone who is serious and so He sends me links and I look at all of them learning about co-wholesaling. So then he comes to me with a contract. Gut told me not to do it especially since I would be binded into ONLY doing deals with him and no one else. So now I'm out on a mentor. I come back to bigger pockets and ask "hey is there any mentors in the Atlanta area?" BOOM!! I get a PM from someone saying I know a person. So he send me a woman's email and I go to another REI meeting and I BUMPED INTO HER!!(still keep in touch with her today) so I'm having a great time talking to people at the meetings. I tell them I'm low on funds and so they advise I drive for dollars. So I do that. I drive all over the place. Talk to all sorts of people see all kinds of houses and have a notepad full of addresses.I read the Ultimate beginners's Guide. I make business plan then I get out there and try to make things happen. It then became this thing where I would seem to be close to a deal and then some type of disappointment would happen. I would get hung up on when making an offer, people not answering the phones, houses look great to only find out that there was some type of HOA that killed the deal, finding out someone already got to the property before I did etc. And this went all through the summer. So school starts( I go to school for engineering) and so now I have less and less and less and less and less time. Everything pretty much comes to a screeching halt. I would try to look at houses for the person I met at the REI meeting( the one referred to me on bigger pockets) on the weekends but that came to a halt as well since I had to use ALL my time to study and work.
Fast Forward to now and I am now studying back into everything again(bought all the bigger pockets books ) and I decided to go ahead and go after a Real Estate License before school started back up in full swing. I started the pre-licensure course last Week Tuesday and I should be done with the course by this Saturday ( That's my Goal at least) Then I plan to take an extra week to study some more and then take the actual exam to get my license. I'm hoping to find a way at getting into investing while in school because I never got to meet my goal of making a deal by the end of 2014 and I would like to make some deals happen even while I'm in school.
So this is my Career so far. I hope to actually have deals made and be able to give others advice. Hope this was a good read