By Minh Pham, Author, Mentor, Investor www.GuaranteeProfits.com
You are about to learn about one of the best-kept secrets in creative real estate investing, ‘HOW TO REJECT THE SELLER BEFORE THEY REJECT YOU.’ One of the best ways to get started in real estate investing is to learn how to use the phone to practice your skills by making cold calls. You will increase your skill level so that when the opportunity does come from your marketing, you’ll be prepared to grab that deal rather than stumble and lose it.
Thus, be proactive and PICK UP THE TELEPHONE AND CALL the out-of-state owners directly! Your conversation will go something like this:
“Hi, this is Minh. I’m an investor in Greenbelt, Maryland and I have your number as someone who might be interested in selling or renting a property in the area. I wanted to provide you with a service we provide for landlords where ….WE GUARANTEE YOUR RENT AND WE TAKE CARE OF YOUR PROPERTY. Is this a benefit that can help you with your property at __________________________________?”
The biggest objection you will get on the phone is: “Where did you get my phone number?” Just tell the truth: “I hired a researcher to find me the names and phone numbers of people who owned property here that met my qualifications. They gave me the list and your name and phone number was on it. “Is there a reason for us to spend a couple of minutes talking about me renting/buying your property, or probably not?”
Of course you’ve noticed how we gave the seller an option out as we finished the question. BECUASE 97% OF THE PEOPLE YOU CALL WILL NOT WANT TO SELL OR LISTEN TO YOUR CREATIVE OFFER or SALES PITCH. You have to eliminate them before they can REJECT you. You are giving yourself power by giving them a way out. In essence, YOU ARE REJECTING THE SELLERS RATHER THAN THE OTHER WAY AROUND. The key is speed, which is to go through your list as fast as possible until someone does say, “yes, I would like to hear more about how you can GUARANTEE MY RENT and TAKE CARE OF MY PROPERTY.” So allow the conversation to be very short if they are not interested so that you maximize your time and are only dealing with owners that really do need your services.
Here’s how to tap into a source of great deals with your calls, tired landlords. When property maintenance is lacking, this is often a sign that the property owner is not anywhere nearby, and is perhaps even out of state. This category of property owners is a hidden source of motivated sellers that can be one of your best sources of buying rental property.
Where do you buy these names? One is an information source provider that has put all the county property information onto a huge database that is easy to access. It is also a good idea to invest into the Haines Criss-Cross Directory www.haines.com at about $500 per county (depending on your county and state). You can reach a local representative for more information off of their website.
Another way to find phone numbers to call these out-of-state owners is you just need to find a property in your town where the tax bill is being sent to an address far away thru the public records. This usually means that you’ve found an out-of-town owner. You can do your own research in your local county records (this is good only if you have the time to do this research) or you can buy the names, addresses and phone numbers you want (discussed below). If you are currently working with a realtor, they can also pull information off of the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) of people who are out-of-state owners.
If you don’t want to go to the courthouse for this information, another way to do get a list is to call a list broker. I use Keenote, Inc., and work with them to create a list of out-of-state owners for you that you can buy from. When you get your names you can send out a letter or postcard to entice interested owners to call you. If you choose this route, feed these incoming calls into your Pat Live answering service. For those who do not have this service, I highly recommend it (www.Patlive.com). This screening service asks all the pertinent information we would ask if the owner called us directly. This service saves us time and the information from the motivated seller is sent to us directly via email from the PatLive representative.
People who own property in your hometown, but who live out of the area are great leads for you to talk with for three reasons.
FIRST, they have to deal with the property long distance as a rental or vacant property. This means maintenance and tenant headaches, hassles and bills for them to deal with. Many owners would LOVE to have these headaches taken off their hands.
SECOND, since the owner has not already sold the property, and already has bought or owns a personal residence to live, it’s a good chance that the out-of-state owner does not absolutely have to have all their equity out of the property. The real benefit to you is that the seller can be flexible on the terms of sale. You can structure a long-term lease option, owner carry financing, or a land trust.
THIRD, most times, you’re the ONLY person talking with them about buying their property. And any time you’re the only buyer around (if you can get the right list), the price always drops and the terms always become more flexible. This means that you will be able to structure a win-win moneymaking deal.
In your evaluation of your calls/presentations remember that you shouldn’t take rejection personally. It’s essential to try to build resilience in confronting rejection. Hearing a “no” answer allows you to move on to get a “yes.” Also, when faced with a “no” answer, consider asking the prospect where you went wrong or what error you have made in the presentation. This takes a lot from people to do because it makes you swallow your pride but it really helps you learn from your mistakes. Last, DO NOT FOCUS ON THE NEGETIVES. If you can approach obstacles from a positive frame of mind and avoid negative habits such as self-defeating mind chatter, you’ll be a winner already. A loser mindset is one of victimization, one that blames everything and everybody. It’s not you that fail, just a transaction or prospect that didn’t see it your way and they chose not to do business with you. That’s it. But if you play that negative though pattern over and over again in your head, you will then start giving that though life and making it a reality. So focus on the good of your calls and remember that they are great for practice and you’ll be so much better just with those thoughts alone.
By Minh Pham, Mentor/Investor/Author, www.GuaranteeProfits.com
Manage Cashflow
Undercapitalization Brings About Ultimate Business Failure:
Inadequate start-up funding leads to many small real estate investing business failures. Having too little money as your real estate investing business struggles to get off the ground can quickly lead to disaster. Many real estate investing business owners overlook the time gap separating the ribbon-cutting ceremony from the first quarterly flow of profits. Having only enough cash on hand for a few months rent and marketing costs will leave you vulnerable to unforeseen difficulties. It would also be a smart move to get investors (friends, family members, and others you might know) who would like to invest in your business for marketing and start up costs. Good friends will certainly invest in you, if you are confident, focused and have a detailed ROI-yield business plan to succeed.
Although, getting into debt is your own choice, I may not recommend this to all real estate investors getting started who lack funds, but pulling money out of your home (i.e., home equity line of credit, if you have any) is another good way to invest into your own business. I have known several investors who have planned properly, using this strategy to ‘tough out’ their early start-up months/year with very nice ROI-yield and profitability.
Last, the “plastic” we all have access to is the most common way a lot of investors do it, but be careful with these bank-credit cards because interest rates on these babies can be fairly high (depending upon your credit status and standing) and some cards don’t have a big enough limit to readily fund your business needs in the first few months to a year.
Operating a real estate investing business would be considerably easier if enthusiasm, hard work and dedication were the sole requirements for success. But the fate of every enterprise ultimately depends on the numbers. An accurate, easily understood and timely accounting system therefore is an absolute must. Otherwise, accurate records will be impossible to keep – one of the worst mistakes a small real estate investing business owner can make.
Managing Your Time
Focus On The Right Priorities. One of the universal challenges for investors is managing the competing demands on your time. One common time trap is focusing on the things you’d like to do and procrastinating about the activities that may be essential to your success but aren’t in your comfort zone.
“Time-Block” Your Way for Enhanced Time Efficiency. One of the easiest and most effective ways of ensuring the proper use of your time is to block out each week’s calendar to concentrate on critical activities.
Start with the list of your essential tasks which you plan each week. Be sure that you schedule the time for all of the vital tasks – those you don’t enjoy as well as those you like doing – before turning to the enjoyable activities.
By blocking out time this way, you can impose that extra bit of discipline needed to increase the likelihood that essential activities take place. For example, you could set aside 10 to 11 a.m. each morning to call clients and 11 to 12 p.m. to contact prospects. Or you could reserve lunch every Friday to meet with a key referral source.
Develop a Proactive & Organized Business Style
Another leading cause of small real estate investing business failure is poor management. The small real estate investing business owner must also be capable of gathering and maintaining an effective team (good Attorneys, CPAs, Mortgage Brokers, Private Lenders, Contractors, Marketing Specialists, Realtors, Home Inspectors, etc).
To help assemble the right people for your team, take the time to completely spell out the talents, skills, abilities, energy-levels and passions:
1. Their experience and education levels;
2. Their roles best played in their respective organizations;
3. Their training, certifications and specialties;
4. How can they help you and vice versa.
Pride Goes Before the Fall:
Most small real estate investing business owners take pride in their independence and problem-handling skills. But even the most skilled entrepreneur may need the assistance of a professional from time to time – often when it can least be afforded. Fortunately, however, professional advice need not be expensive. Real estate investing clubs and trade associations, chambers of commerce and the local library, just to name a few, are all strategic sources of modestly priced – or even free – expertise.
Don’t let a misplaced sense of pride prevent you from discovering the correct solutions to your real estate investing business problems.
Determine how much help you need and try to get it as early as possible.
A mentor is highly recommended since the majority of successful investors take on a mentor early in their real estate career to achieve success sooner and to avoid costly mistakes.
When doing a first deal as a beginning investor, the key factor is momentum and confidence. If you expect to hit a homerun on the first deal that will make you $100,000 net profit, you may be waiting a long time. Getting through deals that put money in your pocket then evaluating where you want to go from there is more important than getting rich from your first deal. In fact, this could be a pitfall, versus a windfall, if you were to hit a big deal on the get-go. Then you’d expect it to always be like this, and is isn’t, across the board of application and realization in real estate investing and deal transactions.
The key is to get started and “get going”, not to wait forever until that “giant deal of a lifetime” comes your way.
By Minh Pham, Mentor/Investor/Author, www.GuaranteeProfits.com
The one question I come across often from students is: “How do I handle setbacks in my business?” or “How do I get my business going when I’m stuck?”
Well, my answer to that is that there is always more money to be made and more deals to be done. Do not rush life. ‘Enjoy the moment.’
If your ultimate goal from real estate investing is to have the ‘quality of life,’ then why do you compromise that by working too much or by having the mindset that enjoyment is only ‘after’ you accomplish a certain goal.
You say to yourself; “I’ll enjoy life after I have done 25 deals”, “after I am financially independent”, “after I am debt-free”, “after I quit my full-time job”, “after I own 100 commercial units”, “after I have a million dollars in the bank”, “after I do this, after I do that”.
NONSENSE!!! You will only understand how foolish that thinking is, ‘AFTER YOU GET HIT BY AN 18 WHEELER GOING 100 MPH!!!’ That’s right, after you are dead, do you understand that ‘after’ is forever into the future and you wasted your life chasing after something that may never come to you. THE KEY TO LIFE IS TO DIE FIRST AND THEN ONCE YOU REALIZE HOW SHORT LIFE IS ONLY THEN WILL YOU TRULY ENJOY LIFE. So enjoy life now. Enjoy the present moment. And once you realize that ‘success is a state of mind,’ you will realize that you are rich now, and the material success manifest soon after. There can be no other way, because everything material firsts comes with a thought and you must first be successful in the mind before you can become successful in life. Take a look around you. Everything you see was first a thought.
I’ll give you an example of success I had yesterday. Usually, about an hour after lunch, I get tired and sleepy. So my usual routine is to take a nap or mediate for 30-60 minutes. When I'm done, the energy that I have really gears me up to tackle anything. It's like a second day (within a day) for me.
But yesterday, I was very busy and I knew I really couldn't and I thought I shouldn't take that quick nap. I took it anyway because I know the work will always be there. The money will always be there. There will always be sellers and tenant buyers, and more issues to deal with. Generally, there are always things to do.
But, more important, is my state of mind. What did I want? I was tired and wanted to relax and chill...so I did. Best 45 minutes I spent all day.
Also, in your downtime, do not answer the phone, that is what voicemail is for. Do not let little gadgets like cell phones, or pagers, or email or anything control your life. It could be that big $50K deal…but, do not worry, you and I know there are tons of deals coming, if not with this call coming in maybe it will come in later today or sometime next week, but it will come. For example, I see people who are reactive and they are controlled by every phone call that comes in. You see it sometimes when you’re eating lunch with them. They still pick up that phone. Is it worth an interruption of your meal? How can you eat and talk at the same time? So stop the madness and control your life. Do not let others control you.
Most of the time when you are running full speed, burnout is inevitable, but remember you are the key in this and keeping yourself healthy and happy will allow you to enjoy this business and lifestyle for a very long time.
I wish you much rest and success!
Minh Pham, Investor, Mentor, Author – www.GuaranteeProfits.com
Lesson #1: Enjoy Life.
Focus on the present rather than on the future. Be in the Now. Don’t deprive yourself of life’s little pleasures. Meditation helps. When you quiet your mind your soul tells you what is important. Exercise helps as your body needs to stay fit. Vacations help to get away from daily routine activities. And when things get tough, it is especially smart to take a vacation. Even when things are good still take a vacation. The true secret to life is enjoy life at every moment everyday. The fallacy with most people is that they think success is tomorrow or some goal into the future which they may never reach it. You may get hit by a car and die today. So learn to enjoy life today, tomorrow may never come. If you don’t you stand the chance of sitting on your deathbed realizing that you wasted your entire life chasing rather then enjoying.
Lesson #2: Love Yourself.
You deserve the best that life has to offer. From your love of yourself will you allow yourself to ENVISION a fantastic life for yourself. Thus, from great visions, comes great outcomes. Nothing is ever created without first a ‘thought.’ So think yourself a wondrous life filled with joy, wealth, health, and happiness and it will manifest itself.
You must first learn to love yourself before you can love another. Learn to respect others. Learn to communicate with others. Learn to network with others. Learn to care for others. Learn to love others.
Unless you can help (love) others they will not help you. ALL SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE DO NOT DO THINGS ALONE, THEY GET THE HELP OF MANY PEOPLE TO ACHIEVE AN OBJECTIVE. Think of the largest and most successful companies in the United States, who’s on top of those organizations? Did they do it alone or do they have thousands of people working for them and with them to get them where they are now?
So start the love within yourself first and let it spread.
Lesson #3: Be Thankful.
This lesson is an understanding of ‘attitude’. You can be rich or poor with an attitude, but the ride is much more enjoyable with an ‘attitude of appreciation’.
Sometimes investors have a hard time getting their venture going because they haven’t recognized that PROBLEMS are necessary. One thing is certain, you will face adversity while trying to learn to be real estate investor. If anyone tells you they never made mistakes, run from them. They are lying to you.
The odd thing is investors hate problems, but love them. Tell yourself that ‘I LOVE PROBLEMS.’ If you do this and understand that there is a solution to every problem, then you take your thinking to another level.
Because you cannot have one without the other, a solution exists from a problem. Most people love solutions (opportunities abound from it $$$$$$$$$) but they don’t know that it is the problem that caused the solution. Therefore embrace the problem. A solution will be manifested and you will learn and grow from it.
With the right attitude, you can only do what you can do, and then you’ll have to let fate take over. The things you can control include your thought process. Choices in life are made everyday. So even though you can’t control a hurricane you can get shelter. You can’t control negative people but you can get away from them. You can’t control the market, but you can control not investing when conditions are not right. Thus you can control your life and never suffer from a “victim’s” mentality because you are not. We are only victims by our own choosing, but we are stronger if we choose to be.
Thus, be ‘thankful’ for the ‘bad’ situations in life because it leads to opportunities. And be thankful for the ‘good’ situations because they are good also. And if you look at life’s big picture (think back throughout your life), bad situations turn out to be good and good situations are good (we remember the happy moments we cherish), thus, it’s ‘all good’. So be ‘thankful’ for all things and you’ll never be down financially, spiritually, and in all of life.
Lesson #4: Think About What You Are Thinking About.
Take charge of your own thinking. When you are driving somewhere, do you ever end up missing an exit or a turn because you were daydreaming or thinking of something else? That’s because you were not conscious of what you were thinking. You must understand what you are thinking before you do anything, because in that example of driving, you cannot make an exit or make a turn (action) and then think about it after the fact. You have to think about it first. So in your investing life, think about what you want, focus on it, and then the appropriate action will follow. Successful people agree that you must see your success, be able to envision it internally, before you can experience it in our actual outer life.
This thought process can help control your mood. Emotions can be controlled with thoughts just as easy as switching channels when watching television. Just change the channel if you don’t feel like watching something. Your emotions can change in an instant with a new thought. You’re feeling down emotionally, think about how you will be a happy, healthy, wealthy person which then changes your mood.
Watch What You Say.
If you say something, do it. If you say you will be somewhere for an appointment, keep that appointment. It is very easy for me to see who will be successful and who will not when I mentor someone simply by seeing if my students’ words match their actions.
The ones who do as they say will have the world, but the ones that say a lot but don’t follow through will end up working for those people that have the world.
If you can’t do something, don’t say it. And if you say it, do it. Watch what starts to happen in your life when you do what you say. It’s amazing!
Lesson #5: Feed Your Mind
Kill your television! Most news programs are negative. They sell fear and you are subscribing to it. And too much time is wasted watching endless shows and nonsense. You can live the life and be watched, or you can watch other people live out their dreams. Which side of the television do you want to be on?
Make a habit of listening to or reading books on such subjects as: real estate, negotiation, sales, marketing, business growth, motivation, spiritual matters, health, and success. If you fill your mind with only good things then only good things will manifest in your life. I can tell you that if there is anything that has helped me the most it has been constant learning, education and feeding my mind with endless good books, seminars, audio programs which helped me grow in all areas of my life.
Lesson #6: Network with Positive People.
Investing is a constant learning process and it is best and easiest to learn from those who know. Thus, learn to be like them and grow like them by being around them. Associate with positive people, and stop associating with negative people. Nothing is more helpful than a positive support group, like a real estate investment group or ‘The Cashflow Lounge,’ and nothing more damaging than constant negative reinforcement from “friends” and family. So when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and in life, to be ‘successful’ do as ‘successful’ people do.
Rule #7: Kill Fear by taking Action.
Identify the negative influence that has caused your resolve to falter. Lack of confidence is the greatest enemy and it is caused by fear. Self-confidence increases when you continue to act with no regard for your insecurities. Focus on love, the opposite of fear. Love will kill fear, and you can only love with action. Love is remembering and understanding ‘why’ you are doing this business, the love of yourself and your families.
If you do a task enough times, the fear is lessened to the point that there is no fear left and the thing that you feared becomes second nature. Think of anything you are able to do now such as making a presentation, making offers, making a call to a seller/buyer, closing a deal, or anything in your professional life that you are an expert at now but did not have a clue about it when you began.
Was there fear there at first? Absolutely.
Is there fear now? No.
Thus, the love (of yourself for a better life) through action slowly killed the fear and now there is no fear. No doubts, just confidence shining through as you get better and better through action.
Lesson #8: Invest.
Invest your time and invest your money. You can spend it or you can invest it. One wastes and the other creates. So besides “treating” yourself once in a while, you cannot grow unless you invest your two most valuable assets, time and money. And do this consistently you can’t help but become super successful. If you invest in yourself through constant learning and growing personally, you will naturally learn things that will help you in life and in business.
Assets create other assets and with an accumulated amount of assets, money starts to work for you. You cannot be rich by working a JOB, the only way you will be rich is to let your money multiply and work for you.
So if you have a million dollars, what would 10% return on that money give you each year? $100,000.00
LET MONEY WORK FOR YOU THRU YOUR ASSETS.
So invest your time and money for wealth and financial independence!
If you constantly apply these lessons to your life, you will be guaranteed to be ultra successful. You don’t have to believe me, try it yourself.
By Minh Pham, Investor/ Mentor/Author www.GuaranteeProfits.com
I would like to share some personal insights with you that I believe will really help you to move forward in your real estate investing business goals. I studied many successful and wealthy real estate investors and besides all of the strategies and techniques these people reveal as part of the “success formula,” there are actually three common traits shared by all of these successful entrepreneurs. These traits have allowed them to grow their businesses to generate such extraordinary incomes.
Most of the investors I talked to had little or no prior knowledge of real estate when they first got started investing. Typically, this was their first real estate business. Some just owned only their own homes! And that is the first point I want you to know. It doesn’t matter what your knowledge level is when you start. The important point is you need to begin.
You don’t have to do everything well. In fact, you don’t have to do anything well when you start! But you have to start. Take the first steps, no matter how small, to move your investing business dream into reality. These successful entrepreneurs did not wait until their knowledge was complete or until they knew everything there was to know about making money in real estate investing before they got started. They’re living proof that you don’t need to be a real estate guru to start making serious money in this business. I am sure you, too, have a great desire to create wealth for yourself and your family percolating in your brain. You just need to start.
That leads us to the third common thread I want to share with you which is that all of these people have committed to educating themselves in the most profitable strategies. These are techniques that fit their goals and visions. They learned the strategies that fit their styles rather than just going after the money. These successful real estate investors confess to having made mistakes, costly, frustrating, and time-wasting mistakes that could have saved them lots of time and money. This is the hard way to learn and they did these things too. They all said that they earned a much bigger income much faster because they modeled the success of others. It is much easier to learn from other people’s mistakes. After all, you don’t have to be the one who makes the mistake to learn from it.
By following successful investors, you don’t need to personally conduct your own trial and error experiments to discover what the best methodologies to use are, or the best resources are the most helpful, or which overall marketing campaigns produce the best results. You get success that ‘ALREADY WORKS’ so you increase and often times guarantee your results because it already worked before. Others have already cut a path through the Real Estate jungle for you. Just get on the right trail and apply the strategies and techniques as you learn from them. Great ideas are transferable. What works for others can be adapted to work for you too.
Building a successful real estate investing business is more of a journey than a destination. The learning process never stops. The fact that the real estate continuously changes is the number one advantage you have over your competition if you stay ahead of the learning curve and they don’t. Make a commitment to continuous learning. Make it a habit to continually learn from successful businesses as well as successful real estate investors.
Many successful entrepreneurs are regular people who did not start out with multi-million dollar advertising budgets, huge staffs, or advanced technical knowledge. In fact, most of them started out with almost no budget, by themselves, and with little prior knowledge of real estate at all. Your business does not have to be perfect to make money, but you can’t make money until you start!
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