Every quarter I like to review how my blog is doing because I think it is a good idea to share everything I’m doing. Hopefully any success my blog is showing will give some motivation to other people to start up a blog. You’ll be amazed at how many people are interested in what you have to say. If I can build up the following that I have done in a little over a year, anyone can do it. It’s …
Probate Monday: Offer Under Consideration
How was everyone’s weekend? Mine was pretty busy with family stuff but I managed to work in a few REI activities as well. My father had back surgery to fix a herniated disc last week so I got a bit side tracked and did not realize I hadn’t updated my blog the entire week. Hopefully everyone else was too busy getting deals to noticed. Last week I set three goals which are designed to get me closer to my first …
Probate Monday: Persistence
As a software developer for the past 9 years I’ve learned some valuable lessons about myself and what it takes to accomplish what I’ve set out to do. Many times over the years I’ve had to figure out complicated programming tools, languages and specifications in order to achieve the final product. For me a program that I had to struggling to make, curse at because it just wouldn’t work and want to just delete out of pure frustration is the …
How am I doing? 2nd Quarter Progress Report
Every 3 months or so I like to go back and take a look at what I’ve accomplished. It’s a good way to see how I have progressed in my quest at becoming a successful, full time investor. This exercise really helps me figure out if I’ve been spending my time on tasks that will lead to my goal or if I am wasting my time. I’m going to run a two part review, one for my real estate related …
Jon Zorrer’s Short Sales Uncensored (feat. Vena Jones-Cox)
For those that have been reading my blog since about the New Year, you’ve heard me talk about Jon Zorrer and how he has been helping me out and really keeping me on track. Every two weeks I get to sit down with him at our Meetup group and pick his brain about anything and everything. The great part is he expects nothing in return and we have become good friends. If anyone does not know who Jon Zorrer is, …
I Think BiggerPockets Made a Mistake
When I was first getting starting in Real Estate Investing, reading everything I could find on the subject, I would routinely search for blogs that would show me what it was actually like to be an investor. At the time one of the most popular and well regarded blogs of this type was Steph Davis’ flipthiswholesaler.net (flipthiswholesaler.blogspot.com at the time). In my mind there was none better at portraying the daily life of an investor. I wanted to find more …
Probate Monday: Goals and other thoughts
It’s funny how things sneak up on you and you don’t realize it until you take a step back. What I’m talking about is Summer and all the little, non rei related, things that come up and slow down any resemblance of momentum. The sad part is, during this part of the year, my subconscious mind seems to make all the decision of what I should be doing without consulting the rational part. If you’ve read the book Switch by …
Lead Manager: 10 Beta Testers Needed
With a big push last week I was able to get my lead tracker beta finished and the setup package created. I’ve installed it on any computer I could get my hands on and it has worked in every case so now I feel confident enough to ask 10 people to help me out. I’ve changed the name of it from LeadTracker to a more official sounding SI Lead Manager, so I’ll be referring to it as that from here …
Probate Monday (On Wednesday): More Letters Going Out
I pushed probate Monday off this week until Wednesday because I wanted to finish up and post the videos for my Lead Tracking program demonstration. Last week was a pretty busy week, but I don’t really have anything to show for it. Kinda frustrating to have your phone ring and come up with nothing. For those that think I don’t get down or have my doubts about investing in probate properties, I do. It’s only natural to ride the roller …
Lead Tracker Video Demo
I’m very excited to get to this point of development for my lead tracker program. At this stage I could use it and save myself some real time by uploading all my probate lead lists into the database and I’m going to do just that in the coming days. I’ve been able to add every feature I’ve wanted to so far with hardly any compromises at all. Of course there still are some bugs which you’ll see in the video, …
Who’s Commenting? A Thank You
One of the most exciting parts of blogging, for myself at least, is when I get a notification that someone took the time to post a comment to one of my posts. I love getting asked questions as well as getting words of encouragement that help me push myself. What makes a great blog is not only the blogger but the people who come and leave their personality and knowledge behind by posting comments. To me the measuring stick of …
Probate Monday: Decent response rate but frustrated
Last week was a long week and unfortunately I didn’t get much real estate related stuff accomplished. Memorial day weekend ended with my wife getting some severe side pain and going to the emergency room. She could not get into a comfortable position. Luckily they took her in quickly and after trying two separate pain killers, they gave her morphine which finally took the edge off her pain. 2 hours later they found she had kidney stones. Needless to say …
What Does That Word Mean: Testate
For people just getting into probate investing it is easy to get confused by all the legal terms such as probate, decedent, intestate, testate and executor just to name a few. It took me a while to figure these out and when I did, it really helped me understand what I was dealing. This series of posts called “What Does That Word Mean” is designed to explore the terms one at a time and in a way where the average …
Negative Response: “Get a real Job”
Yesterday I got a probate letter mailed back to me with some words of wisdom, written by the recipient, directed towards me. I’ve been lucky so far to not get many upset owners sending me mail as that is just the nature of the business. When mailing out to probates you can really step on a nerve because it may seem a little like ambulance chasing to some. I thought it might be fun to start a new series of …
Must See Posts: Yellow Letters, A Big Check and 3 Words
Here are some of the great posts I’ve read over the past few days from around the blogosphere. I’ve last time I did a post like this it was received very well. One of the funniest posts of all time was Steph Davis’ post about her big fat check. Justin McClelland wrote a post that expands on an article he had written for my blog and it does a great job of explaining Yellow Letter marketing in ever more detail. …