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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 are great friends and I’ve never experienced any money troubles.  Life was good in the Costello house.  I’d even call myself spoiled for the shear fact that I never worked a day in my life up until I was about 20 years old.  I was lacking motivation and thus just fell into the path of go to school, get a job and a steady paycheck.

In the beginning of my working life I really enjoyed being a programmer and creating custom financial and project management software.  It allowed me to be creative and offered immediate gratification every time I would successfully complete a portion of the program.  I loved it and found it rewarding.

Fast forward to the present and the need for new programs have dried up and now all I do is act like a help-desk.  I answer peoples questions, help them understand and use the programs that I have written and fix any problems that may arise.  The only programming left is when I have to add a small feature here or modify the program to accommodate a new government regulation.  Some might wonder why I don’t just go out a look for another programming job where there is a need for a new application.  I loved the programming part of my job in the past right?  Yes I did, but I’m not to sure I do any more…

You see, my life has changed drastically from when I was 25 years old.  I am now married to a wonderful woman, own a condo and a little dog too.  What has also changed is my way of thinking.  I can attribute that to getting older and wiser as well as reading such great books as Rich Dad Poor Dad, The Millionaire Mind and Crush It.

Sometimes you don’t know what you want until life takes you in a direction you don’t want to go.  Some people never figure out exactly what they want, or they do but don’t know how to get it.  I was like that in my twenties and the reason for that, as I know now, is I hadn’t found my motivation yet.   On July 4th, 2004 that motivation entered into my life.  At the time I didn’t now Valarie would be such an influence on my thinking and behavior, but as the years passed and we fell in love, got married and bought our condo a realization hit me.  I wanted to spend as much time with my family as possible.

I started observing how other families around me worked.  What kept them from each other the most?  It was simple to see actually.  It was the 9 to 5 (and many times the 9 to 9)  corporate job that came between families.  My father was very much like this growing up.  As we grew, it seemed, he had to work longer and harder hours with each passing year just to support me and my two brothers.  My dad would routinely come home at 11pm.   He was brought up to work hard, go to college, get a good job and provide for his family.  He is a WONDERFUL father and I wouldn’t trade him for anyone else in the world.  The only problem is that he taught me the same thing he was taught by his father.

My Dad is 68 years old now, and is forced to work in an office that is 1 hour and 45 minutes away from his family.  The drive was killing him, so now he stays in a long term hotel during the week so he can get some sleep.  You can hear the depression in his voice when he has to leave on Sunday evening and when he arrives home on Friday night the smile comes back to his face.   He could retire but a life time of working hard and resigning himself to that life has left him not knowing how else to live.   So he just keeps working hard.

That is my motivation!  I do not want to end up living 5 days a week, almost 2 hours away from my family.   As it is now, I only see my wife on weekends because we work opposite hours and it’s killing me!  This is a dangerous path we are on that is pointing us to the same place my father and mother are in.  I’m not willing to accept that and I will change our future right now!

What is your motivation?  If you have a story that you would like to share please leave a comment. Or if you like send me an email describing your motivation.  It’s inspiring to read them.

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Probate Monday: Passive Income Goals and General Update

Sorry I have been a  MIA this past week, I was in Breckenridge, CO for my best friends bachelor party.   Shockingly my doctor gave me the go ahead to ski if I felt up to it and you better believe if I’m going to be in Colorado in the winter I’m going to be skiing.  This was the first time I’ve been skiing in 10 years and combine that with my total inactivity over the past 7 weeks plus being up 13,000 feet made for some heavy breathing and screaming legs.  Holly Schnikies I’m sore!!!!

In the end I’m no worse for wear and being in such a great part of the country for 4 days only makes me want to work harder to develop passive income streams so I can take more vacations like that but even longer ones.  Probate investing is not what I would call passive income as it’s a lot of work and if I’m not working it I’m not making any money.  On the plan ride back from Colorado, sitting in between two arm rest hogs, I managed to lose myself in T. Harv Ekers  Millionaire Mind seminar audios.  He reminded me that my true goal is creating passive income not creating a job for myself.

For me Probate Investing is a means to an end.  I’m using it in order to create extra income so I can invest in income producing assets.  I want my money to work for me.  Some ideas I got from Harv are…

• Parking Lots
• Storage Units
• Lending Money
• Buying 2nd mortgages

Does anyone have other ideas of passive income Strategies?  The concept is easy to understand but I know for me it’s tough to think of true passive income avenue

Probate Update

Like I said last week my postcards went out about 7 days ago and I started getting calls over the weekend while I was away.  One of the gentleman gave me my first “please take me off your list as I’m not interested in selling my house.”   No problem buddy.   There is no doubt I’ll be getting a lot more of these types of calls, but I’m surprised it took me 3 months to get my first one.  I’ve got a few other voice mails that I need to catch up on as I settle back into my weekly routine.   I did manage to receive a call while I was  on top of peak 9 in Breckenridge.  It would have been cool to answer the phone and tell the caller I couldn’t really talk as I was 13,000 feet in the air getting ready to ski down some moguls and avoid hitting the evergreen trees.  Anyway, I’ve got about 3 voice mails I need to check and return phone calls too.

Bruce made a verbal offer to a lead I got two weeks ago and is going to meet the seller at the house later this week.  I’m planning on taking a morning off of work to meet up with Bruce at the home and observe how he handles his business with the sellers.  I also hope to pick up some tips on what to look for in terms of repairs, so it should be well worth taking a half day off from work.

My probate lead list is a little late this month, but It’s the first time this has happened so i just sent my supplier a nice email wondering what was going on.  He has been spot on time the past three months and I’m sure I will be getting the list soon.

That’s about it for this week.  As always, I love reading your comments so If there are any burning questions or advice you would like to give leave them below.

Thanks!

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Probate Monday: What I’m using for my postcards

Sorry for posting Probate Monday on Tuesday but I wanted to add a video how too and then realized I didn’t have my recorder setup after reformatting my hard drive this weekend.   Now onto the content….

I got a little behind with  my February mailings when I was couch ridden and couldn’t get to the post office myself to mail out the probate letters.  This meant the postcards are going out at the end of the month instead of mid-month like I planned on it.  No big deal.  So far my response rate for my postcards has not been as good as my letters but they are still drawing about 5 calls per 80.  Roughly 6.5% response rate.

In this version of Probate Monday, I wanted to share with you the postcard I’m using and some tips about how to easily put them together using Click2Mail.com.

The first point I want to stress to everyone is that you should always be tweaking the look and wording of your postcards.  Well, at least most of the time. If you are getting 100% response rate then you have hit gold and can safely continue with what you are doing.  The maddening part about direct mail though, is that what works now might not work later.

My first 3 postcard mailings included a simple, black font on a white background.   It looked very plain and to be honest I was never fond of how cheap it looked, but it did get calls so that should tell you something.  I was talking to a fellow investor the other day and they said they’ve been having success with a yellow background with black font so I adjusted my mailer and here is what it looks like.

Front….

Back…

To create these Postcards I used the same Probate Lead Excel File that I used for my letters.   That file included all the names and addresses of the executor and is very easy to upload to click2mail.

Here is a quick (slightly blurry and not sure why) video on how I do it…

VistaPrint.com

Another great way to go is to design your postcard yourself and upload it to vistaprint.com.  Once there you’ll be able to, for a very reasonable price, get a bunch of postcards for you to place shipping labels and stamps on yourself.  I believe Jason “Bildgefisherman” gave me this idea and uses it himself.

Once advantage for using postcards over letters is that they are only 28 cents for stamps as apposed to the 48 cents for regular mail.  Another benefit is that if you sign up for VistaPrint’s or Click2Mail’s newsletters they will send you coupon codes that you can use for a discount.

Have a good Probate Monday!

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Creating a Schedule is Not Easy

Over the past two days I’ve been trying to come up with a schedule that is rigid but with a little flexibility thrown in.  Let me tell you, it’s not easy.  I’m taking this very seriously because I want to be as productive as possible.  Some of you may be thinking I’m wasting time thinking about what to do instead of doing.  Even though that is partly true, I work best with a plan.  If I can put in the effort now to come up with my schedule, it’ll make me much more productive in the future because I won’t have to think about what I need to be doing, I’ll just look at my schedule.

In a prior post (Lessons Learned: Get More Out of Your Day with Daily Deadlines) I described the slotting system I am going to use each day.  I’m still going to use it, but I need to spread it out over a week because there just isn’t enough time in the day.  One problem was that I wasn’t taking into account eating and exercising once I get home from work.  Below is what I’ve come up with so far.

Eating: This will obviously be eating dinner.  On most nights my wife is at work so I eat by myself and doing so in 30 minutes is not much of a problem.

Open: I wanted to build in open time after eating and before the gym in case I had to run some errands or do some other things that either need to get done or that I want to do.  It may be real estate related items or it may just be anything else I’ve been wanting to do.

Gym: It is very important for me to be able to exercise.  I plan on going to the gym 3 days a week.  I also go either on Saturday or Sunday so that should be enough.  I may adjust this later to 5 days a week.

Probate: This is where I will be doing any and all probate investing tasks (letters, postcards, returning phone calls (although I’m afraid that will be to late at night), doing property research and networking.

Short Sales: This is where I will be doing any and all short sale investing tasks (MLS research, sending out initial responses to realtors, writing up offers and what ever else that needs to be done.)

Blog: This is my time to work on this blog and any other blogs/websites I’m running

Reading a book: I want to take a least 30 minutes each weekday for reading.  It’s becoming apparent to me that it’s very important to read and I setting aside time each day to read will pay dividends down the road.

Set Goals for Tomorrow: Every night before I head off to bed I will be reviewing my day and setting up my task list for the next day.  This is perhaps the most important part of the day and something I must start doing regularly.

One big problem I’m noticing is that I don’t have much time for making phone calls or meeting with people which is a key to real estate investing.  The ideal time would be 9 to 5, but I work and can’t be doing business on my JOB’s time.  So what to do?  I can make phone calls during lunch and meet people for dinner to network but that won’t always work out.  For me the cutoff time for making phone calls is 8pm, I then feel like I’m intruding.

So that is how I’m going to be working my weekdays for the foreseeable future.  As with life though, there will be some tweaking here and there but the main thing is to keep at it.  It takes 4 weeks to form a habit and I want the above to be my habit.

Have a good weekend!

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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 I have been most successful at completing what I had to get done.  I thought back to all the projects I’ve had at work and in my school days.  I remember back in my freshman year of high school we were assigned this year long paper, open topic, that would be due the following May.  As most teenagers would do, I put it off until mid April.  Of course I got it done, but it was only because of the threat of failure if May came and I had no paper.

Similar cycles have occurred over and over again in my life.  My most productive times have been when I had a time limit set for a job. So I thought, why can’t I set up my weekday evenings with time limits for each of my Money Making tasks?  And that is what I’m going to be doing from now on.

Why This Should Work

Of course this will add a little pressure to my day, but for me pressure helps me make choices.  Why?  because if I only have an hour to accomplish a task, I don’t have time to ponder my options.  I just have to pick one and live with the results.  If I had all night, I would most likely waste a few hours researching and trying to make the “wise” decision.  The key to a successful life is action now and adjusting later.

My Daily Schedule

I’m going to be breaking up my evenings into 1 hour chunks and then assign each of those chunks a category (real estate, blog, other, etc.).  Once I’ve got that setup, I will slot each of my daily tasks into those hour.  Bingo, I have my schedule!  Here is an example of what I’m talking about.

7:00pm to 7:59pm (Category: Real Estate Phone Calls)

8:00pm to 8:59pm (Category: General Real Estate Investing)

9:00pm to 9:59pm (Category: Blog)

10:00pm to 10:59pm (Category: reading, other)

With this schedule, it will keep me from spending to much time on things like blogging.  I will say though, I bet I get more accomplish with regards to my blog in that one single hour then I normally do on most nights because I will be fully concentrating for that hour.  I won’t be checking email or fantasy sports because I know I have only one hour to finish what I want to finish or it won’t get done.

So what does everyone think about this idea?

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