My friend Sharon Vornholt from Louisville Gal’s Real Estate Blog started up a wonderful podcast earlier this year. I really enjoy listening to it on my rides to work in the mornings. Her guests are always hard working investors who are always willing to share what they know. What I love about Sharon’s podcast is that we have similar investing strategies so a lot of her content really resonates with me. So, about a month ago, Sharon asked me to …
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 …
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, …
Real Estate Lead Tracker: Progress Report
I’ve been working hard on the Lead Tracking program over the past two weeks and I am really starting to get excited about it. It took me a while to settle on an interface that would be user friendly and easy to work with as well as expandable to include future modules/functions. I tried 4 or 5 different setups and finally settled on this… It’s a very simple design. All you do is click on a function on the bottom …
Lessons Learned: Bye Bye Broker
Last summer, after being tired of trying to find a Real Estate Agent to work with, I decided to just get my own license. Which I accomplished by September and then signed on with a very small broker. For those not aware, in order to do anything as a RE Agent you have to hang your license with a broker. If you don’t hang your license you can not have any of the benefits of being a Sales Agent like …
What 3 Things Do Most Wealthy People Invest In?
Growing up in a small town in Alberta, Canada I was surrounded by farmers and small business owners. Many people made a modest living, but for a small town there were actually quite a few millionaires. The attire of the towns richest men was usually a pair of ripped Wrangler jeans, worn out cowboy boots and an oil covered John Deere baseball cap. My Dad often told me that these men didn’t look like rich guys but they were worth …
The Power of Helping Others
It is widely believed that if you are giving of yourself, that you shall receive back many times more then you have given. Call it karma, kismet or what have you, I believe this 100%. There is nothing complex about why giving works, it’s as simple as developing relationships and good will amongst your peers. I’m not a religious person at all, the last three times I’ve been to a church were for my wedding, confirmation and CCD graduation. I …
Back from Vacation? How to Handle the Backlog of Work
Did anyone miss me or did anyone really notice I wasn’t around? I actually just got back from a 10 day Mexican Riviera cruise. My wife and I really enjoy cruising and had a wonderful time eating, sleeping in, going to shows and pretty much just doing what ever we wanted. If anyone is interested we went on Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas. I chose not to publicize that I wasn’t going to be home for 12 days because …
How to Pick the Right Real Estate Investor Course
You heard real estate investing is a great way to make money, millions of dollars even. You are tired of working your boring 9 to 5 job, dealing with pompous bosses, and making other people rich. So what are you going to do about to change your life? As luck would have it, you over heard one of your blabbering coworkers, in the cubical next to yours, talking about this real estate investors club meeting he is going to tomorrow …
Probate Monday: How to Handle Missed Calls
It’s very frustrating for me to be at work and get a phone call from my probate marketing. I can hear the money going down the drain. There are a few ways I can counter act this such as getting an answering service from a company like Patlive. This past mailing seemed worse then others with the day time callings. I counted 3 missed calls, although I will say I enjoyed the fact that I missed the angry fella who …
Lessons Learned: Presentation
Over the past several weeks I’ve been attempting to network with Realtors who have short sale listings so an investor I know can make offers on them. I haven’t had any problems finding such Sales Agents, but I have been running into road blocks each and every time. It’s a numbers game right? From talking with other investors, I know this method of finding leads works. What am I doing wrong here? Everyone always says it’s a numbers game, so …
What Motivation is the Key to Success in Real Estate?
A blog post by Nick Johnson a few weeks ago (Nick if you read this could you help me find it?) spurred me into thinking about what is my motivation for wanting to become a real estate investor. Nick talked about his life and the hardships he had gone through which motivated him to make a change. For me, my life has been easy compared to most and I freely admit that. My parents are great, my brothers and I …
Lessons Learned: Get More Out of your Day With Daily Deadlines
After last weeks lesson about doing The Wrong Kind of Busy I started really analyzing how I spend my weekday nights (my real estate investing time). It was a very good exercise to try and identify what are the money making activities and which are not and cross those off my list. Then I thought to myself “Self, how can I be more productive?” To answer this question I have to really think about the situations in my life where …
Lessons Learned: The Wrong Kind of Busy
In last week’s Lessons Learned I talked about how important it is to stop hiding behind technology and actually use the phone to communicate with people. For some using the phone is natural but for others like myself it is going to be a challenge because we have to overcome habit and fear. This past week was a pretty busy week for myself, I rarely watched TV and was contently doing something that was Real Estate Investing related. Let me …
Lessons Learned: What I did Wrong This Week
One of the best ways to improve habits and continuing on a positive path is to look back and analyze your actions. I’m going to start a new post series called Failure Friday Lessons Learned that I will attempt to identify something I did wrong or could have done better over the past week. The infraction may be something big or it may be something tiny, but if not corrected I will be destined to repeat that same mistake over …