wholesaling Archives – Real Estate Disruptors

Make Networking Easy

January 12, 2021 By Steve Leave a Comment

Networking — that elusive, difficult, tedious, formal process of discussing what you do with other professionals and asking for referrals. Yuck, right?

Then you may be doing it wrong.

People commonly associate networking with going to organized events: Chamber of Commerce, Real Estate Investor Associations (REIA), Business Networking International (BNI), etc. While all are good places to network, they are only a few drops in the bucket of opportunities available.

But Steve, networking is hard!

I don’t want to feel like I’m begging for business.

I hate those big meetings.

Hold on tight, I’m about to change your mindset…

What is Networking?

Networking is the lifeblood of every business. No matter what you do, you need to interact with other people, whether that is for finding customers, vendors, properties, resources, employees, anything.

The ultimate goal of networking is to have people know you and bring ready, willing and able customers to your business. It’s not a one-time action; it’s continuous and really should be considered a form of marketing or advertising (I can hear the groans already!).

Most people have this idea that networking is convincing others to do your marketing for you. While that would be great, it’s really not how networking works. What you want is people who know you telling other people about how great you are; that they should contact you because you can help them.

At its essence, networking is communicating what you do to other people. In other words, having a conversation. Talking to people who don’t know you very well and educating them, however briefly, about what you do.

Mindset Shift

What if you changed your definition of networking?

What if “networking” was simply talking to people?

What if “networking” became “chatting” or “small talk”?

Hmmm. That’s not so scary. Now networking is nothing more than being friendly.

Saying “Hello” to someone in line at the grocery store and asking how they like that item they just put in their cart.

Asking someone at the coffee shop if they like the caramel macchiato. Little ice breakers.

If you strike up a brief conversation with someone, as they’re ready to leave, you could ask them if they know of any properties for sale. Tell them you buy houses, and if they know of any for sale or that look run down, please let you know so you can help the seller. Maybe offer a referral bonus, or send gift cards, or whatever works for you.

Does This Really Work?

The best networkers I know simply talk to people. That’s it. Eventually they say what they do, or the person asks them what they do. Isn’t that brilliant? Get strangers to ask you what you do for a living, when you’re waiting to tell them exactly that.

People like to talk about themselves, even with a stranger. This won’t work every time. You occasionally may get a grumpy person who doesn’t want to engage. That’s OK, apologize for bothering them and let them go. Hey, everyone can have a bad day, right?

Most people will respond out of politeness. And the reality is a smile and friendly attitude brightens anyone’s day, so most people will talk to you. The important thing is to be interested in them. You have to develop some affinity with the person before you tell them what you do. Don’t come on like a bull in a china shop by explaining details of your business right away. Or at all. Less is more.

Just talk to them out of a genuine interest in them, or the weather, or a question about a grocery item they’re buying, or the shoes they’re wearing. Something about them. Then as you’re parting, it’s a quick ask and hand them a business card.

Check out my Real Estate Developers podcast with Mike Fitzgerald. His superpower is networking, and he tells you exactly how easy it can be: Find it on YouTube, and watch my podcast on Facebook LIVE every Wednesday at 2 pm Arizona time at RealEstateDisruptors.net

You Did It!

You just networked with someone you didn’t know five minutes ago. No high-pressure meeting, no having to drive across town for a lunch event, and no time commitment. And if you picked a person who doesn’t want to talk to you or fall flat on your face? So what, it’s over in a matter of minutes. No harm, no foul, move on.

Think about how many people you cross paths with every day in your daily routine: Pumping gas into your car — There’s someone at the pump next to you, how do they like their truck? Grabbing lunch out — The person behind you, what do they recommend?

Networking isn’t being all professional, sitting at nice restaurants and listening to speakers (there are those opportunities, and take them, too). Networking is talking to people out of interest in them. Eventually you get to what you do and ask them to help you if they can.

Just talk to people. Be curious about them and their things. Be observant so you can find a subject to discuss. (“Hey, how about this weather?” gets old pretty fast.) Be interested in them, and you will enjoy it too. The first few times may be tough to make yourself start a conversation, but soon you will find it second nature. Be genuinely curious about other people, and before you know it, you will be a master networker.

All without “networking.”

Michael Fitzgerald Shares How He Went From Bandit Signs to 100s of Doors and Running a Fund

January 7, 2021 By Steve Leave a Comment

Michael Fitzgerald talks about how he went from calling ads in his one bedroom apartment, to going to REIAs, to bandit signs and direct mail. He bought a farm for a million dollars with nothing down. Lost a lot during the recession. Paid off all his investors, and now owns hundreds of doors while running the Dream Fund.

Video Replay of Interview with Michael Fitzgerald

Want to close more deals without spending any more money? Go to https://www.disruptors.com

Follow me on IG: https://www.instagram.com/steve.trang

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SHOW NOTES

Michael Fitzgerald Shares How He Went From Bandit Signs to 100s of Doors and Running a Fund

With Michael Fitzgerald, Gideon Properties

January 6, 2021

About Michael Fitzgerald

Michael Fitzgerald planned on importing products from China and selling them in the United States. After his first deal, and a chance meeting, he switched to real estate and has since built a multi-faceted empire.

Michael had no money to invest in real estate, so he had to be creative. His first several deals were all different types: Subject To, wholesale, even developing farmland with $0 down. Along the way, he has become friends with people all around the world. Currently Michael is involved in city-state partnerships where he actually gets the government to help finance his projects!

Michael’s story is as unique as it is inspirational. He proves that you don’t need money to build a real estate business. You just need to get going. Connect with Michael on Instagram or Facebook.

Show Notes

Steve asks Michael how he got started in real estate, and they explore many concepts for how people can start. One of Michael’s emphasis is that you don’t need to know how to do everything, or have any money. Just start and learn along the way.

Top 5 Takeaways from Michael:

5. Review every potential deal. You don’t need to know how to do a deal to get started. Figure it out, learn what you need to learn, and keep moving forward.

4. Take care of the people you work with. Honesty and commitment, along with fulfilling your obligations even if you could get out of them, will benefit you in the long run.

3. Never stop marketing. Too many people market, get some business, then stop marketing while they work on those deals. Once those deals are done, they have nothing in the pipeline because they stopped marketing.

2. If something bad happens, don’t let that stop you from doing more deals. New deals can pay for unexpected losses from a bad deal. If you stop, you have no way to cover the losses. So accept the problem, and do more deals to make up for it.

1. Networking makes life easier and more enjoyable. Networking shouldn’t be forcing yourself on others — just start up conversations with people everywhere you go.

Bonus Takeaway: Just start. You don’t need money, you don’t need to know everything, you just need to start and keep going until you get some deals. If you take consistent action, you will succeed even if you fall down a few times along the way. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward.

About Steve Trang

Steve Trang is the founder of the Real Estate Disruptors movement and host of the Real Estate Disruptors Podcast. He started his podcast in the middle of 2018 to inspire wholesalers and real estate agents to double their incomes by adding a second leg to their business. The podcast has now grown to ten thousand followers with new members of the community sharing their success story every week.

Steve’s goal is to create 100 Millionaires. One of his favorite quotes is from the great Zig Ziglar: “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” He heard this quote when he first got into real estate, and it has stuck with him throughout his entire career. In fact, it’s essentially one of the core values Steve lives by.

Connect with Steve at linkedin.com/in/stevetrang, facebook.com/stevetrang, instagram.com/steve.trang, stevetrang.com, or realestatedisruptors.com.

TRANSCRIPT:

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Do with a Purpose

December 16, 2020 By Steve Leave a Comment

So you want to be in real estate? Wouldn’t it be nice to have those big profits off each house like they get on HGTV every time?

Here’s the thing: those profits do exist, and you can get them for yourself.

It’s just not quite as easy as that hour long HGTV episodes make it seem. Yes, even the ones where they had all the unforeseen problems.

Real estate is hard work. It is not something you dip your toe into and suddenly the Money Truck backs up to your door.

Purpose

Being a real estate investor requires having a definite purpose. You have to want it. You have to work at it. The rewards are many, and are definitely obtainable. But they don’t fall into your lap.

In fact, almost everyone fails when they start out — deals fall apart, fix and flips lose money (yes, it happens), sellers ghost you. Many of us call that The Learning Process. Well, that’s the rated-G term. Think of it as the weeding out process, because those who lack true purpose will quit when they discover just how unforgiving real estate can be.

Keep in mind, needing a big purpose in order to succeed isn’t exclusive to real estate. If you want to be highly successful in any field, you need a big purpose driving your actions. Otherwise, you squirrel, get distracted by shiny objects, and ultimately quit or limp along being just OK at what you do.

Please don’t confuse purpose with a big bank account. While you can build a big account balance doing what you love with purpose, if you think your purpose IS a big bank account, you’ll never get there in real estate. Or at least if you do, you will be run ragged and hate every minute of what you do. Go be a banker; at least you will be able to see big bank accounts.

Why?

Don’t people get into real estate to have that big bank account?

For some people, sure. But that’s really an end result or side benefit. You could be just as successful doing all kinds of other work if you tackled it with purpose, poured your efforts into it, learned the industry, and loved working in it.

This doesn’t mean you have to like all aspects of wholesaling, fix and flip, or any niche. Maybe you love sitting in someone’s living room showing them how you can help solve their problems by buying their house for cash, but you hate cold calling. And that’s fine. You can focus your time in sales and hire people to do your cold calling.

But you have to build to that point.

It’s All You

When starting out, you need to do it all. Because you’re the business, but also you will need to know how to train people as you grow and bring them on. This also lets you discover what you really love about the process, what you don’t like to do, and where you can focus your passion and purpose.

Once you have your purpose identified, you need to put all your energies into only activities which further that purpose. This may mean you need to hire people to do those things which are not directly related to your purpose, but that’s a good thing. You can hire people who love doing paperwork, for example, when that is not part of your purpose. Hire Virtual Assistants (VAs) or acquisition agents to do your cold calling.

You may have to do these things until you can grow enough to bring on good people, and that’s part of building a business, moving from solopreneur to entrepreneur. Then you can train them on how to do it the right way.

Purpose is the Reason

Real estate is a fantastic business to own, but in the end it is just a vehicle for your purpose. The fire within you to run a business, the vision of where you want to be, the thing you love to do, THAT is your purpose. Sometimes finding your purpose is difficult. You might need a mentor to help you sift through everything in your life that distracts you so you can see your purpose.

Trying to build a business without knowing your purpose is like trying to navigate to Triumphville without knowing where it is. You can drive all over the place and never come close to finding it, wasting time and missing opportunities along the way.

If you don’t know your purpose, it’s time to find it. Get a map and plan a route. Discovering your purpose is critical to building your business. It may be easy; it may take some looking. You may have to dig deep to pull it out.

Find your purpose and focus everything in your business to further that purpose. Then you will truly start on your path to success, wherever that path may lead.

So You Want to Own Many Businesses….

December 10, 2020 By Steve Leave a Comment

Sounds like a great idea — start a bunch of businesses, hire people to do the work, and rake in the money. I might have to do that.

Only there’s a catch (of course there is): you still have to run them, put out all the fires across multiple organizations, hire the right people, and not go insane in the process.

That’s actually a whole bunch of catches. You threw your net kinda wide and caught the motherload.

It Looks Simple, but…

That view from 30,000 feet looks pretty simple and serene. Running multiple businesses can exponentially increase the demands on your time. Not to mention the plethora of headaches when a problem in one business actually causes problems in the other ones. Nothing like one problem becoming five, right?

Obviously running multiple businesses can be done. After all, we have all seen people who manage it and make it look easy (at least in public): Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Warren Buffett, just to name a few.

So how do they do it?

Organization

They have learned to organize their businesses. They have developed systems which they can plug into any business and get it running smoothly. They have systems and standards for evaluating talent and hiring people.

But first they learned how to organize. Delegate. Develop a method so they can offload the work that they don’t like or aren’t good at, specifically so they can spend time doing their genius work.

Organize. Some of us don’t like that word, or the structure it carries. Yet this is the key to growth; the key to expansion. It is the only way to remain sane when you start adding companies like pairs of shoes or cats. If you leave the shoes lying around everywhere, you’re going to trip all over them and ruin them. Same thing with cats.

How to Start

As the business owner, you have a vital purpose — that thing which you are really good at and which is most valuable to your company. Now in the beginning, you may have to do everything. That’s not a bad thing, because you need to know HOW to do everything. That’s necessary, because initially you will be the person who trains new hires.

As you grow (and growth can occur fast), you must hire the right people who can do the job and who like doing the job. This is where systems come into play. Don’t just hire willy-nilly. Get a hiring procedure which does a proper evaluation of your applicants so you can weed out those who don’t fit your culture or have the work ethic/qualifications/abilities you want. You will save time in the hiring process, and you will have far fewer mis-hires that you have to fire later on.

Put other systems in place to handle other areas: customer acquisition, marketing, HR, etc. And the more you can both automate and delegate these systems to other people, the more you can shed those work items that aren’t your vital purpose.

Use Tried and True Systems

Don’t start from scratch trying to design your own system. You don’t have time for trial and error management. Find proven systems and install them. They may cost you some money up front, but they will save you many multiples of that amount down the road. Wasting time and hiring the wrong people are the most expensive mistakes you can make.

As you add businesses, you implement the same systems in each company. This way everything operates the same in each organization, and you don’t have to worry about it. Spend your time doing top-level activities and hire employees to run the other parts of your companies.

New business? Rinse, repeat. You may need some tweaks to the system depending on the specific requirements of that business (such as licensing, permitting, etc.), but the main form of the system should be the same.

This is where scalability comes in. Implementing repeatable systems creates time. You can’t scale up without time to do the work.

As your businesses grow, delegate more to other people. Then your time is spent on high value activities. And the more you can do that, the more you can grow.

So get organized NOW. Implement proven systems to your company, and you will be amazed at the time you save.

Need help? We have many programs to help you get organized, including exact systems to run your business. Check it out here.

Dan Brault Shares How He Went From Giving Up With 350,000+ in Personal Debt to Paying All His Debt Off in 12 Months

October 30, 2020 By Steve Leave a Comment

Dan Brault talks about what got him into real estate, how excessive optimism led him into catastrophes with massive debt, and how he ended up paying back all of his personal debt in just one year.

Buy our Perfect Seller Appointment Checklist. https://www.disruptors.com/checklist

Want to close more deals without spending any more money? Go to https://www.disruptors.com

Follow me on IG: https://www.instagram.com/steve.trang

Video Replay of Interview with Dan Brault

Start Your Real Estate Disruptors Journey by visiting http://www.realestatedisruptors.com

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SHOW NOTES

How Dan Brault Went From 350,000+ in Debt in 2019 To Paying Off All Debts In Less Than a Year

With Dan Brault, House Buyers Club

Oct. 28, 2020

About Dan Brault

Dan Brault is the owner of House Buyers Club in Rochester, New York. He was a successful medical device salesman who gave up a six figure job to become wildly successful at real estate. Now, in addition to owning an expanding real estate wholesaling business, he is a member of the Front Row Dads group, which helps business owners balance their family-work balance.

Connect with or find more information about Dan at instagram.com/ActionDanBro, facebook.com/housebuyersclubllc , or instagram.com/HouseBuyersClub

Show Notes

Steve and Dan discuss how Dan took his business from being $350,000 in personal debt to paying his parents back, quitting his six figure job, and booming his real estate business. Dan is brutally honest about his struggles and what he did to fix the problems he was experiencing.

Top 5 Takeaways from Dan Brault:

5. You are going to fail in this business. Expect it and don’t let it knock you out.

4. You can start your real estate business while you work another job. It can help you have money saved up or produced for the times when you aren’t making money (or you’re losing money) in your real estate business.

3. Find out what you do well and what you like to do. Then hire people who can do the things you aren’t good at or don’t like to do. Get trained in and use predictive indexing — it is worth the investment and will save you many times the cost by helping you to avoid hiring the wrong people.

2. Systems, systems, systems. You won’t make it without putting in place good systems. You don’t have to develop them yourself; there are many ready to use systems available.

1. You can make the big money and create the lifestyle you want in real estate, or in any other business. To do so, you have to work at it constantly by self-improvement, by trying to get better every day, and by taking action. All the education in the world is useless if you don’t, at some point, put the knowledge into action.

Bonus Takeaway: Steve’s training transformed my business. Now about 95% of what I do was learned directly from Steve’s program, and it has made my business boom and also enjoyable. I would never have had this level of success without taking Steve’s program. Get trained so you can be successful.

About Steve Trang

Connect with Steve at linkedin.com/in/stevetrang, facebook.com/stevetrang, instagram.com/steve.trang, stevetrang.com, or realestatedisruptors.com.

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