Any advice to a Newbie beginning to get discouraged??
Real Estate Investor · Houston, TX · Member since 2011 · 9 posts · 0 votes
Hello All...
I am a Newbie wholesaler here in the Houston area...and I have yet to wholesale my first property. I have been doing this since Feb 2011 and I am really beginning to become discouraged. I have read book after book....and subscribed to countless "guru" sites....all saying the same thing, "If I can do it, you can do it." I really want to be successful doing this, but it seems that I have hit that stagnant and dreaded learning curve. I need words of wisdom and encouragement from experienced wholesalers and investors who have been in the game for a while. Thanks in advance......
Hi, I'm going to thow out a few pounds of reality here. IMO, it's really too bad that there are people who prey on others as much as many gurus do. Saying "if I can do it, you can do it" is really obsurd, since we are all very different. People do not have the same talents, degrees of intelligence, education, social skills or determination. Buying into that guru promotional stuff is a big mistake.
I can tell someone all day how to do an option on a property, point out all the advantages and pitfalls, that does not mean that person can accomplish what I can.
Let's put me back 30+ years, when I began considering RE seriously. No one starts anything with experience, but some will clearly have advantages over others having equal RE knowledge.
To be in RE, you need to have an extraverted personallity, if you are a wall flower, timid and fear meeting people, RE is not for you! You need to be willing to fail in front of people, face to face.
You need some social skills, know not to spit on the sidewalk so to speak. If someone uses foul language as a course of general conversation, they need to clean up their act. RE is a social activity. Someone who can place themselves in different social settings and be socially acceptable in different settings will do much better than one who can not.
Education is a very important factor, formal and street smarts. Your educational background will make up much of your social skills as well as the ability to grasp abstract ideas, comprehend the purpose of laws and regulations to be applied and construct or devise methods in a logical order to solve problems. Your education, like it or not, will determine who you rub elbows with, as people of similar background and beliefs feel more comfortable being with others similar or like themselves.
Determination is a requirement to succeed at anything.. without it you will fail no matter what you do (failing meaning that you will not excell, but may survive or get by). Endurance, the ability to continue toward your goal even after failure is also required in life and very much in RE.
So, when I strated in RE, I had attained a degree of maturity with a better than average command over these aspects than others attempting to do similar things. I had the confidence to try, determination to make it work and the endurance to carry me past failures, and there were failures! Your future is not pre-determined by anyone other than you. Gotta know your limitations, and then overcome them.
Your future in anything should not be based soley on how much money you can possibly make, the monetary perpensity. This is really the basis used by gurus to motivate the public or their market to buy the scheme. You will be more successful in life if you love what you do. I have made more money than most in real estate and related business activities, but that is not what I see as being the most successful aspect of my life. Making real dreams come true for others is by far the greatest accomplishment in my professional career. And I'm not talking about helping investors or others in the industry so much as helping my clients succeed. I must admit, my first few deals were about making money, but when you see the light and understand the big picture of your efforts, hopefully you will love what you doing for other reasons.
So, Tursheca, are you a special person? Can you meet these requirements to be successful in real estate? Do you have what it takes? Only you can answer such questions. Unlike others, I won't encourage you to implement some guru program or buy another book. I encourage you to take a long hard look at what you want to be and how you will define success. If you are willing to be a real estate professional and learn from the ground up, I'd welcome you to a very rewarding carrer choice!
Good luck to you.
Create a Buyers list and then ask if you can partner with other wholesalers to remarket their deals to your Buyers.... good way to learn and start.
i'm only doing real estate 2 years but i can tell you the best advise is what's already been said...to succeed in ANY business you must know all that is possible to know about the business. At this point you are in the learning stage, so keep on truckin', and learning.it will happen.
There is a lot of helpful advice in this thread. I wonder if maybe you are looking for more directed advice... For me personally part of staying motivated is first and foremost the knowledge that if I can stick with it I can reach my long term goals, but what really helps with the day to day is to sit down and break that longer term goal into many short term goals.
Make a list of what you KNOW you still don't know or need to do to move a step closer to your goals. For each of those items, make another list of what steps you need to take to learn/accomplish the item. Everyday make sure that you at least work towards one of those items. For instance, your goal today to be to make your lists. Knowing that you accomplished something to move you closer no matter how small that something is will help to keep you on track.
If you dwell on the longer term goal (your first deal) instead of noticing the little progress you make everyday towards that goal it is much easier to become discouraged.
If you want to be successful, do the job right and that job requires you to build your own buyers list and find your own deals.
WOW...thank you all for the responses. There is so much valuable info here. You guys have really given me the encouragement that I needed.
Sometimes I get so determined to succeed that I forget that it takes time, dedication and finesse (as my best friend says..lol) to see REAL success. But during the past couple of weeks I have picked up a GREAT Mentor, and I really think that was the missing link. Everything is much clearer and easier to understand now. I know now that my first deal closer than ever. That would be my advice to any newbies out there reading this post....u MUST find a MENTOR! One who is not all about money...but actually wants to see you succeed. The difference in your business will be like night and day...trust me! Again thanks for all of the info everyone.
Any business takes time. Like PK Patel said, college takes 4 years before you practice in the field.
3 months?! You barely tapped the tip of the iceberg.
Just keep moving and know you will get there.
tursheca, hey there...another fairly new newbie here. like a couple others have suggested, i too suggest hooking up with your local real estate investment association in order to network and learn from others. you can learn and get great education from teachers and gurus, but at some point you have to step out into the world and start going through the motions. i started my action by simply calling ads, and training myself to talk the real estate language: asking questions, listening to the seller on the other end of the phone, practice gaining rapport, etc. then i started to set appointments and go meet with people in person. you are still under no obligation, and its great hands on experience. also, i might add that to me these days you may consider broadening your scope of interest. perhaps instead of focusing solely on wholesale deals, you may choose to look at possible deals and begin to analyze their best and highest use. as in: is this deal best to consider for a wholesale deal, or a buy and hold situation, or assigning the contract and selling to another buyer, etc.
wish you the best,
sage
laurel fork, va.
This is a tough business. Being in the restaurant business I can tell you both businesses are tough, but this one is probably tougher, but has more upside (at least in my case). Start with sending out absentee owners with equity postcards, then once you do a deal or two, do bandit signs, then mls etc etc. Then maybe someday you can do a rehab or two then rentals etc. This is not a get rich quick business. Its been almost two and a half years and I'm finally getting the business going. If you really have a passion for this business, don't give up because everything you suffer through now will only make you stronger later on. Good luck.
I must admit, I am also getting pretty frustrated. I have sent out hundreds of letters and put out 50 bandit signs twice(100 total). I've only gotten two calls where they were even remotely motivated out of approx 900 letters. I only got 9 calls total among absentee owners, probate, and long time owners. Heck, I got zero calls from my 100 bandit signs. That really disappointed me since everyone talks about how great they are. So far, the cost and hassle to put them out was not worth it.
Tursheca,
My only advice to you (the 1 thing that kept me going) is to keep going and never stop. The only way that you can fail at this is to stop and quit. It sounds a little cliché but think about it.
Everyone that has succeeded in this business (or any business) kept going until they succeeded. Everyone that has failed in this business, failed the instant that they quit.
Keep yourself motivated any way that you can until you succeed. And then..keep going some more.