I want you to compare two real estate investors and think about which one you want to be like:
Investor 1, let's call him "Al", wakes up at 7 AM and he drives around looking at some leads on properties he wants to buy. He puts it under contract by 10 AM that looks promising but he needs some investors. He works the phone all morning and finds an investor who is willing to meet to learn more about the deal. He sets up a meeting for the evening and then drives to another property he owns to hang drywall to keep that flip moving forward. He works into the evening – until his meeting with an investor – and then he returns to the flip and works late into the night. The next day, he does it all again.
Investor 2, let's call her "Barb", wakes up at 7 AM and gets her kids ready for school. By 9 she's ready to work and she sits at her desk. Her virtual assistant has been working the previous evening to find a few deals that Barb might be interested in working on. She looks at them, identifies a few for her virtual assistant to investigate further. By 2 PM, Barb contacts a seller and gets a property under contract. At 3 PM, he sends out an email to her list of investor-buyers about another deal she has. Some of her investor-buyers reply by then, Barb is done for the day and she meets her children at the door and takes them to the park to play.
Both investors are "successful" (i.e. they might be popularly defined as "successful based on the amount of money they make).
But the big question is...
Which investor do YOU want to be like?
If you ask me, Barb's methods sound so much better. I'm not just talking about her style of investing (wholesaling, which I really like). Rather, she is modeling a whole new mindset of doing deals. She's using something I call "the 3 T's of real estate investing" to help her succeed.
Here's what my real estate investing business looks like...
Just a couple of months ago, I was enjoying a Stella Artois from the top of the 56th floor of the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore. While I was up there, my real estate business was running automatically… also using the 3 T's of real estate investing.
The DM is investing in real estate while this picture was taken... Thanks to the 3 T's of real estate investing!
The DM and Deena on their tour through Asia
What are the 3 T's? It's simple...
Team, Tools, Technology
A team, as you know, is a group of people who work together to achieve a specific goal. In the case of real estate investing, a team's purpose is to help you do deals. Your team can include any number of people but it can often include virtual assistants, bird dogs, real estate professionals, contractors, a lawyer, and an accountant.
Don't let this list overwhelm you. If you're just starting out, get a virtual assistant to start then slowly build your team after that. But a virtual assistant is a great place to start because they make you more productive. Your team is a combination of experts who can do some things better than you. (By "better" I mean maybe they have expertise that you don't or maybe they have access to information or skills that you don't or maybe they simply do something cheaper than if you spent the time doing it yourself).
Tools can include a variety of resources and skills and functionality that help you invest in real estate without spending all of the time on it yourself, in person. Tools include things like your telephone and fax machine, your ability to manage others, your forms, your website, and other elements that help make your real estate investing business automated.
A close cousin to tools is technology. Technology is the various resources and functionality that we have access to via computers and the web. It could include an autoresponder email software (which I’d NEVER try to do this business without – YOU NEED THIS) (which you use to interact with investor-buyers) and Skype (which you use to interact with your virtual assistant) and other computer-based and web-based applications that help you run your business (maybe project management software or call broadcasting software or blogging software – you name it).
The key to these 3 T's is this: They work for you, leveraging your time to help you do more deals faster, and (more importantly) do deals virtually... wherever and whenever YOU want to do the deals.
No matter what kind of real estate investing you do (whether rehabbing, like Al in our example above; or wholesaling, like Barb in our example above; any of the other kinds of real estate investing), the 3 T's of real estate investing will help you do it better… by becoming virtual.
If you are looking to start and grow your real estate investing business and you're not sure where to start, you should start by putting together your own 3 T's.
Your "3 T's Jedi" friend and mentor,
Mark Evans DM,DN
PS, Want to learn more about how I invest in real estate? Check out my latest book -- Virtual Real Estate Investing Made Easy.
Click here to learn more about Virtual Real Estate Investing Made Easy
PS, If you have an essential team member, tool, or technology that you use to help you be a virtual real estate investor, put it into the comments below.