Struggling to Get Started » Articles

Recharging the Batteries and Getting the Motivation Back…Check!

Scott Costello — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:23:38 +0000

I’m a big believer in taking some time off to recharge the batteries. I’m not talking 1 day here and there either. If you are anything like me, that really does nothing for me because my mind is still thinking about real estate on that day off. I like to take about 3 weeks off and the perfect time to do that is around the holiday season.

In the past years, I’ve continued to post on my blog during this time but I felt this year I’d take some time off from that as well. So I apologize for the lack of posts lately, but it needed to be done. Even last week I wasn’t really feeling the motivation return so I kept things light.

Taking that time off has really worked and I feel rejuvenated all over again and am ready to take 2012 by storm! It is going to be a tough and my most challenging year to date with my first child coming along at the end of March.

I am not sure what to expect with the new baby. The one thing I’m sure about is my life will change and until I can get into a routine it’s going to be tough to commit time to Investing. It is easy to make excuses and get lazy with my real estate investing business, heck who would blame me right? The opposite is true though, and I am going to come up with a plan of attack this week that will help keep me moving through the challenging time ahead.

For those new fathers (and mothers) out there, what sort of experiences did you have when your baby was first born? Did you completely shut down your investing or did you figure out a way to keep moving forward? I’d love to know

SI Lead Manager – Beta 5 has been released!

Scott Costello — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:23:22 +0000

Have you had a tough time managing your leads using Excel?
Did you find that other lead management software is just too Expensive?
Have you tried SI Lead Manager – Beta 4 and found it too confusing?

If you’ve answered Yes to any of the above questions, then you need to get SI Lead Manager – Beta 5After working hard for over 7 months, SI Lead Manager Beta 5 is finally ready for release. The interface has been completely redesigned in order to make it a more user friendly and intuitive software. I’ve been using ‘beta 5′ for about a month now and it has worked great!

I’ve added a number of new features as well as streamlined some existing ones. Here are some of the major items...

Interface Improvements

3 Pain view allows you to view leads grouped by Lists, Lead types, Currently Marketing to, Closed, Responded, Working, and more….
Mark leads “Top Priority” by placing a star next to them. You can then filter the leads to only view “Top Priority” items
Search all leads directly from the top of the screen by Name, Property Address, Owner Address, and more…
Easily add new Leads, Mailings and Tasks

Improved Lead Organization

In Beta 4 I always had trouble distinguishing the different statuses of leads once the person had contacted me. Beta 5 has a new organization method called BUCKETS. Once a lead responds you can place them in one of 7 buckets (Responded, Closed, Working, On Hold, Returned Mail (for undelivered pieces), Deal, Marketing)

Improved Mailing Campaign Tracking

Once you have scheduled all your campaigns, the Mailings feature will show you (All Mailings, Future Mailings, Mailings that are scheduled to be printed over the next 7 days, Mailings that have been printed and are waiting to be mailed over the next 7 days, Passed, Due Mailings,Recently Mailed)
You will also be able to filter the mailing campaigns by Lead Type or Lists
Click a mailing and you’ll see a detailed breakdown of the list. See who is Scheduled to get mail, which have been printed, which have been mailed and which have responded.
Setup Mailing Patterns so you can quickly reproduce a campaign.

Organize all your Contracts

Organize all your contracts by importing them into the system and giving them a label
Quickly call up a contract and print it when you need it
Use one of 50+ contracts donated by J.P. Moses (of REITips.com)

Google Calendar Integration (must have a google account)

Uploads all Events to your google calendar
Use google calendar to send you email notifications
View your SI Lead Manager calendar on your smart phone

Importing leads

Now you can import your leads directly from Excel 2007-2010 versions (Beta 4 only supporting Excel 2003).
Now only 3 steps compared to 5 in beta 4
Auto matching columns (dependent on excel column headings)
Improved method for manual match of columns
Duplicate Property Address detection on import (will not import)

Database Pointing & Multi-Database Support

You can share one database with multiple users if you are on a network.
Have multiple databases to add another degree of organizations

Tasks Interface

View all your Tasks (formerly ‘To-Do’) items in one location
Mark off and add new items more easily
See all your tasks on your Smart phone with the help of Google Calendar

Tasks on Calendar

In beta 4, only mailings showed up on the calendar. Now you can view all your Tasks as well.
You’ll be able to plan out your week much more easily by just checking out the calendar to see when you have to make those phone calls, comp a property or send out a mailing.

Improved Calendar interface

Each event is marked with a unique icon and a brief description so you don’t have to click through to see what it’s about.
Change scheduled dates for events directly from calendar
Print mailings by ‘right-clicking’ on the event
Expanded 3 month view to allow you to see how busy you are
Daily, 5-day, 7-day and monthly views

Data Transfer

Import all data over from Beta 4

And there is much much more!

Get it here: SI Lead Manager – Beta 5 and use beta as the password

-Scott Costello
StrugglingInvestor.com

Email Question: What Do You Think About Mentors?

Scott Costello — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 03:32:41 +0000

I’ve been asked quite a few times what I thought about getting a mentor or finding a coaching program. The main concern for those that are asking is it worth the money to join the flip vips or other coaching programs offered by various people. Most recently one of my blog readers Zac asked me this very question and after I took some time to reply to his email I thought it would be a great idea to post my answer here.

My Answer to the question…What I think about mentors and coaching programs

I definitely recommend finding a mentor, or a group of mentors where you can ask questions and get advice. I’m not big on paying for this however, at least not a lot of money. It’s also a good idea to find a mentor in your area if at all possible because at some point you are going to want them to help you analyze the repair costs of a potential deal by walking through the property with you. That was one of the biggest helps for me hands down.

My mentor actually found me through this blog, saw that I needed help and offered to help. I imagine he took the time and made the effort to contact me because he saw I was serious about making it in the business. I only got asked to the full fledged coaching program after I offered to help him out to develop his real estate webpages. He was greatful enough and when I offered to do it for free he offered to coach me. So I traded my help for his and it cost me nothing. The normal cost of his coaching program is thousands of dollars per year. I’m not saying you have to go out and look to build webpages for local investors in trade for help, but what I’m saying is that you need to prove that you are serious and willing to sacrifice to succeed.

The best way I know how to do this is to start marketing and get sellers calling you. There is no risk at that point, but you will gain experience talking with sellers. What will also happen is that you will be able to ask other experienced investors (that you’ve met at local REI meetings) their advice on dealing with the specific motivated sellers and their situations. You’ll be amazed at how willing people are to help you out if you bring up real life calls. Don’t bombard them with questions though, just ask a few open ended questions and see how much help they are willing to give. If they are the type of person that loves to help, they will give you even more then you expect. They also may say something like “Call me tomorrow and we can talk about it.” if they do, you better call them.

As long as you show up to meetings consistently you will recognize the people who know what they are talking about. These are the people you want to target and become friends with. Once they start recognizing you by name, you are in. Then it’s up to you to continue to work on the relationship by offering to help them out in some way they may need. Remember you have to give to get.

I hope my answer can help anyone with this same question. If you need more clarification or need another question answered about getting started, please feel free to contact me.

Marketing Monday: You Don’t Need A Website

Scott Costello — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:14:46 +0000

This will probably come as a shock to people who have been reading my blog for a while. I’ve written countless articles about creating websites for your real estate investing business saying that you should create a websites, squeeze pages and blogs. I still agree with that but only in the right situations. However, I say if you are trying to break into real estate investing with limited time and money, SKIP THE WEBSITE.

For the vast majority of investors that I’ve talked to, 90% of their leads come from traditional methods like direct mail, bandit signs, referrals and driving for dollars. When asked about their websites they all say it doesn’t pull a lot of leads, but they keep it up for the chance of a deal.

There are two main reasons why I say Skip the Website. You may not agree with me completely and that is okay. I have come to this conclusion after being asked countless questions about website building from new investors. I’m happy to answer the questions, but I’m always asking myself if this is the best focus of energy for these new investors?

If you are stuck trying to make the decision to go with a website, have a read of my opinion and let me know what you think.

Effort Required Here

In my experience putting together the network of websites needed for a real estate investing business takes a lot of effort for someone who understands it like I do. You would quadruple that effort if you are new to website development. Even using templates like wordpress will have a long learning curve for a newbie.

If you are working a full time job, dealing with a family and just starting out in real estate investing it is important to concentrate what little free time you have on activities that will produce the greatest results. Driving for Dollars, direct mail to out-of-state owners and bandit signs produce the most. Building a website is a time suck at this point and the leads it produces don’t pay.

Costly Maybe, But Miss Spent Yes!

People say you can invest in real estate with no money in your pocket. This is true, but it definitely helps if you can throw some money at your marketing. You can get a website built for as little as a few hundred dollars. You get what you pay for though. Anything decent with a good back office setup will cost you a few thousand in setup fees and then a $100+ in monthly hosting fees. That adds up quickly and once committed is hard to cancel for a variety of delusional reasons.

Is that spending my money wisely? I don’t think so. I mean, how much more time and money are you going to have to shell out to market your website so people can find it? Adwords costs money. Playing the Google SEO game is frustrating. Websites are NOT a Set it and Forget it proposition.

Direct mail on the other hand, taking all the materials in to account, costs roughly 50 cents per piece. Sending out 1000 mailers a month costs $500. Money much better spent in my opinion. You can even scale it up or down depending on your budget for a particular month.

Conclusion

This opinion comes from my current situation of having $400 a month for marketing and only about 10 hours a week to spend on investing. I have to get the most bang for my buck and more importantly get the most bang for my time. Setting up a website sounds easy, but trust me when I say it takes a lot of time, effort and money. There are templates for wordpress and prefab services that make life easier in terms of setting up your website but the problem is, after everything is setup you have to spend more time and money to get people to your website.

It’s the 80/20 principle

Template Site Blog

Tips for 9-to-5ers: Easy Access

Scott Costello — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:10:23 +0000

Having a full time job and trying to start up a real estate investing business is not an easy thing. Lack of time is a huge problem for sure, but with enough dedication and time juggling skills you can make it work. It’s sort of like a jig-saw puzzle that contains multiple pieces that fit into the same spot. If say on Wednesday night you usually go to a real estate meeting and it was cancelled, what do you do? You fill that spot with another puzzle piece that will help your business. You never know when a few hours of time will free up, and you never know where you will be at in that moment. I always have a plan B and C ready to go.

Having what you need, When you need it.

Part of moving onto plan B or C is having the tools and/or information accessible to you when you need it. As recently as one month ago I was carrying around any forms, contracts and even my lead tracking software on a usb flash drive. This was working but I had some concerns…

High risk of losing or damaging the drive
I was responsible for syncing the data with my home/work computers
I needed to remember to bring it with me at all times
Run out of storage space

After the flash drive fell off my keychain a couple times last month I decided to explore a service called dropbox and came away impressed with what it could offer me.

2.25 gigs of space for free (you can pay for more or get more by referring others)
Access the files from any computer or smart phone
Auto Syncing of files to all your devices
Share files with other people

One of the big things for me was the Auto Sync feature. I use it with SI Lead Manager so I always have access to my leads no matter what computer I am on. The way I have it setup I never even have to worry about moving files around, DropBox syncs up everything on every computer. It also stores the files online so you can access them through a web interface (or smart phone app). An added bonus is that if your computer ever blows up, all your files are safe on dropbox. Pretty cool!

This software/service has saved me a lot of time and helped me be more organized. I am going to also explore how it can help my partner and I share our stuff as well.

Drop Box Website

Are there any other services like this that are worth looking at?

Are you a finisher?

Scott Costello — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:54:46 +0000

I am one of those people who gets excited about something new and can’t wait to get started. That excitement can carry me a long way into finishing that project. Over the years though I’ve found that I’m not very good at finishing things. I get about 80% done and my momentum and excitement go way down. This inevitably opens the door for me to get distracted by another project.

As you all could probably tell from my 101 Goals, Wants and desires post, I have no shortage of things I get excited about and want to do. I love that feeling of learning or creating something new that will be useful to me my entire life. From building furniture, developing software to Real Estate Investing there is always something for me to start doing. I’ve just been having trouble finishing things.

Why do am I not finishing what I start?

My feelings is because the excitement has gone away, leaving only hard work. If you have ever read The Dip by Seth Godin, this is what he is talking about. When I hit the dip, I usually start getting anxious to finish up as quickly as possible. This causes me to cut corners and do things half assed. Not to mention, by this time something else has caught my attention that I’m eager to get started on. Bad combination!

Is this New project going to distract me from finishing something I’ve already started?

A divided mind gets me no where fast. The reason is that my mind will keep jumping back and forth between projects, killing my concentration. Combining a divided mind with a short attention span causes me to waste a lot of time during the day.

Side note…It’s kind of funny, I had a few different ideas for this post and I can feel my brain jumping from between the different ideas. I am finding it hard to keep the direction of this post consistent.

One way I try to squash the distractions is to ask myself if it is going to distract me from what I’m currently working on. The answer is almost always yes. What I then do is write down my new idea and then continue on with what I’m doing. This really helps me stay focused and allows me to completely finish before starting my next project.

I know many of you have the same problem as I do. What tricks do you have to keep you on track and finish up something you’ve started?

They Call Me Mr Agent

101 Wants, Needs and Goals

Scott Costello — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:20:49 +0000

In one of the books I read over my vacation, it was suggested that I take the time to write down the 101 goals, wants and experiences that I’d like to achieve over the rest of my life. There are a lot of things for sure, but I’ve never really put them all down in a list. Below is my attempt at doing this. The items are not in any order of importance, they are just the order that came to mind this Friday morning before Hurricane Irene is coming to unleash hell. So here goes…Buy a House

Learn to cook a mean rack of ribs
Quit my Job
Become a full time Real Estate Investor
Create 100 Income producing affiliate websites
Develop a software product that I can sell
Go to Hawaii
Travel to Ireland
See a Whale in the ocean
Own 2 rental properties free and clear
Play Golf at least once a week (except during the winter)
Become debt free!
Lose the Love handles
Have 1 or 2 children
Buy a Sony Vaio Z laptop
Keep my wife as happy as can be
Donate a $50,000 check to a charity
Have $1,000,000 net worth in the next 10 years
Visit my friend Dave in South Carolina
Get my wife to Visit Colorado to see my Friends Ian and Kerry (asthma and high altitude has her scared)
Have one full day a week to do wood working
Build a House (at least help build one)
See Italy
Take a one month vacation to someplace
Buy a beach house
Have a movie theater in my house
Take a week long golfing vacation with my friends
Go on a Golfing Cruise around Ireland and Scotland
Make my Dad feel like he can retire
Get certified in scuba diving
Be on the first page of Google for the search term “Real Estate Investor”
Develop a smart phone application and sell it on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7 devices
Change 1 person’s life
Run a 5k in less then 24 minutes
Not go bald
Go water skiing
Meet some of the friends I’ve made through my blog
Go to New Zealand
Go to Schlitterbahn Water Park in Texas
Get a pool for my above mentioned house
Build a basketball court
Learn to drive a manual transmission
Be self insured (I hate medical insurance)
Lead a simple life
Get a second hole-in-one in golf (this time with my friends around to see it)
Read 10 books a year
Retire when I’m 45
Be able to take my entire family on a two week vacation to Hawaii
See a tornado – from a distance
Sleep till noon…just because i want too

Holy Crap this list is hard to come up with! It has taken me 1 Hour to think of the first 50

Play golf at Pebble Beach
Go to Yankee Stadium for the world series clinching playoff victory
See the Knicks win and NBA Title
Being my own Boss
Learn to play BlackJack
Create a small (5k) investment account where I can use that money to play around with Stock investments
Be a good father like my dad
Be married to my wife forever
Always be a little kid on Christmas
Write an E-book that sells 5,000 copies
Become an expert on Internet Marketing
Have a mailing list of over 100,000 people who trust me
Get a one time Affiliate commission of $1000
Always treat people the way I want them to treat me
Build a giant tree fort
Get a professional table saw
Have a workshop so I can do my woodworking
Avoid making the same mistake twice
Have someone come up to me and ask…”How did you do it?”…referring to my success
Giving more then I receive
Drive a car that is worth more then $100,000 (not own, just drive it once)
Own my dream home free and clear
Hear someone call me “Dad”
Shoot a round of golf under par
Learn to fly a plane

I am now at 1 hour and 30 minutes for this list and slowing down….

Meet Don Mattingly in person
To see John Pinette, Brian Regan, Jeff Dunham, Bobby Collins and Bob Marley as much as possible
Become a good story teller
Learn how to properly use Photoshop
Buy an macbook pro
Live long enough to experience the time when your cell phone replaces your computer completely
Experience virtual reality
Have gps appear right on your cars windshield to help navigate you
Be in a car when it parallel parks itself (i think that is so cool!)
Like Lobster (it looks so good, but I just don’t like it!!)
Learn to take great photos
Use the pricing gun at Stop and Shop when going to the food store with my wife. She never wants to use it!!
To ride the slingshot ride at the boardwalk
Experience a truly haunted house
See the Shawshank Redemption Jail (Eastern State Penitentiary)

Only 11 More to go and 2 hours in….

Find an alternative for ice cream for an after dinner dessert place. Seriously, where can one go for something else?
Build a home run derby whiffle ball field in my back yard (when I get a house)
Design and build a custom built-in entertainment unit
Own a truck that can transport sheets of plywood
Collect baseball cards again
Win more then $20 on a scratch off lottery ticket
Fire a Missile Launcher
Tell my wife I love here every day
Always be honest
Work hard for what I want

and

Look back on my life and say “I had a good life”

It is now 11:09am and the list that I thought wouldn’t be that hard to put together has taken me roughly 3 hours to finish. I feel it is a great exercise to go through and I plan on printing this list out and hanging it in my office at home. I’d put it up at work, but there are a few things on there that I wouldn’t want my boss to see.

What would be in your top 10 things?

Have you ever thought about your perfect day?

Scott Costello — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:54:25 +0000

I signed up for the DivaMoneyClub a little over a week ago and I’ve been very impressed with all the information given by Shae and Susan so far. I haven’t listened to Julie or Steph just yet but I’m looking forward to doing so. Anyway, one of the questions posed by Shae in the Mindset modules was….

“…What would your perfect day look like?”

It seems like an easy enough question to answer, but as I started to think about my answer it wasn’t so easy. Just like in real life there weren’t enough hours in the day to fit in everything I thought I would want in my perfect day. There’s golf, learning, basketball, hanging out with friends, watching an Imax movie, having a bbq with my family, having dinner with my wife and on and on and on. I’d need a day that was a week long to fit everything in. I had to go back to the drawing board and honestly pick out the few things that I would wanted most.

I equated this process to cleaning out your closet. I had to apply the year test, if I hadn’t used it in a year then it was out. This then helped narrow things down some leaving me with about 2 days worth of “wants”. The next step was to rank what was left, of which I would take the top half and then I had it!

With out further ado, here is my perfect day…

Morning

Wake up around 8am with my wife and have a nice small breakfast consisting of a bowl of cereal and watching a little television (probably reruns of King of Queens, How I Met Your Mother or some Discovery channel show). I then would head off to the country club where I would play 9 to 18 holes of golf with a couple of my best friends and be back home at Noon.

Afternoon

I’d pick up some rent checks from a few of my fully owned rental Single Family Homes and deposit them in the bank. The rest of the afternoon would be spent either doing some woodworking or spending time with my wife (and kids) at the park or on the beach depending if I woke up at my shore house or at home.

Evening

Site down with my family (and some friends) in my backyard for a BBQ and sit by the pool to watch the fireworks that were going off. If the night got a little chilly, we could light the outdoor fire pit.

Before Bed

I’d jump onto my laptop and spend about 1 to 2 hours going over my internet marketing websites and checking stats and affiliate earnings. I’d also create a list of to-do items for my employees to get done the following day. After which my wife and I would spend 30 minutes to an hour relaxing on the couch watching a movie or some other show that we are currently into.

That’s it, that is what would make me the most happy! How about you? What are some things that you’d want to do in your Perfect Day?

No related posts.

Marketing Monday: Online Presence, Is it Good or Bad?

Scott Costello — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:16:05 +0000

My blog has opened the door for me in a lot of ways when it comes to my real estate investing career. I would have never gotten to this point if some of the great people I have met through my blog hadn’t pushed me and supported me. Having a blog is good in so many ways, but there can be a major draw back depending on how you want to operate your business.

Your Name Can Now Be Found

One of my goals when I started this blog was to help me network with other investors. I wanted investors to find my blog by doing a Google search for “New Jersey Investors”, “Real Estate Investors” and what ever other phrases related to REI. The downside is that anyone can now find out about me simply by searching for my name, even home owners I am marketing to.

The more mailers I send out the more I see my name coming up as a search term in Google Analytics. This is not surprising, as I would do the same thing if I got a random letter in the mail asking if I would sell my unlisted house. Depending on the person, you could lose some deals because of this. I lady recently told my partner that she looked up my name online, found my blog, and said she wouldn’t sell to people like us.

My intent is to always be honest with everyone I’m dealing with, so I have no problem with people finding my blog and deciding I am not the right person for them. To each their own and I applaud them for doing some research.

Solution

If you love having a blog, like I do, and want it to not hinder your marketing efforts there are a few ways to get around the above issue.

Use a fake name on your blog. If you’ve started a blog already this won’t work for you, but is a viable option for investors who are just starting out. Many authors, columnists and alike write under “aliases”
Use your partners name on your mailers. In my case, my partner handles all the calls so it makes sense to do this. I just have to make sure never to mention his full name on my blog. I may go back and remove his name entirely because I know I’ve used his first name before.

A Few Questions to Other Blogger Investor

Has this been an issue with your Investing?
How do you handle this?
Do you care that your leads can look your blog up online by searching for your name?

REIClub Giveaway #2: Probate Interview CD Set

Scott Costello — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:58:17 +0000

As a result of coming in 2nd place at the ReiClub.com investor blog contest I received 5 free products from their store. I chose to get 2 Wholesaling Interview products, 2 Probate Interview products and 1 Private Money Interview product. I thought these interview series best related to what I do here on my blog and best related to people reading my blog.

Today’s Giveaway: 1 Probate Interview CD Set

Three interviews with Probate experts. Guys who stumbled onto this market years ago and have been quietly milking it… through the go-go years and the hard times years, they keep humming along. And they never run out of deals in this market.

None of them are lawyers. Average guys who reveal exactly how they work this market.

Grab these three how-to interviews and work this proven (and growing) market in your own back yard and profit…