I’ve taken a lot of time to writing articles for you in hopes that you will use the information to become a real estate investing guru. Now, it’s time for you to decide how you will proceed with all the information. Instead of giving a pep talk, I want to give you an action plan. Sure, motivation is a big help, but you need to get focused and get busy investing, so here’s a 60-day to do list if you will:

o Take some time and write down 10-20 short-term and long-term goals. Good goals have three key elements. They are a) specific, b) written down, and c) in the present tense. For the last part, think of goals in the context of as if it were happening today. For example, a properly written goal might read ‘It is December 1, 2012. I have 10 cash flowing rental properties in my real estate portfolio.’

o Use your long-term goals to create action lists for each week. For example, if you stated a goal to have 20 deals secured in 5 years, how many clients will you have to contact (and then make offers) to secure those 20? How many clients will you need to speak to on a weekly basis?

o Think carefully about what niche in real estate you would really like to focus on. When you select a niche that is profitable and also enjoyable to you, your passion for the business will grow and it will show to your clients.

o Interview necessary team members that are currently missing from your team. The most important of these, from a business growth standpoint, are a real estate attorney, a CPA, a title company, a mortgage broker, and a real estate agent/broker.

o If you have a team assembled, meet with current team members and discuss what you’re planning to do. The more familiar they are with your business objectives, the better they will be able to serve your needs.

o Create a list of at least 20 people who may be good prospective private lenders. Avoid the thinking that anyone would be a poor choice. You don’t know if you don’t approach them.

o Evaluate your current marketing plan and create or purchase any pieces that are currently missing.

o Use the information provided to start assembling a credibility kit that can be presented to your clients.

o Go back and read my archived articles as needed to refresh yourself on topics of interest.

o Form a corporation or LLC if you haven’t already done so. Check with a real estate attorney about which is best for you in your particular state.

o Begin working on an organized business plan, using the tips and suggestions I have provided.

o Put together some financial projections that can become a part of your business plan.

o Join a real estate investors club if you haven’t already done so. Attend at least one meeting to start networking with other investors. There is potential here for great networking and in filling any holes in your team.

o Work your business. Remember that your credibility is only as useful as the deals you can secure. Expand your marketing, pick a niche in which you want to focus, and make lots of offers. It’s a simple process. Follow your own criteria for evaluating deals. If the numbers don’t work, move on to the next one.

o Learn the paperwork that you will use with all of your clients. While your real estate attorney may prepare some documents, it is also important to be versed on what documents are used, when they should be used, and for what purpose.

Once you have an action plan, and I do highly recommend that you make the effort to create your own for your business as it grows and develops, the all-important next step is to follow it. Action plans may look great sitting next to your desk but remember that your office is not a common place where you will be looking to invite and impress clients, especially if it’s a home office. Your action plan is for you! It should help maintain your focus, motivate you, and remind you of the things that are critical to the success of your business. Now, it’s time to get it done.

Unfortunately, most real estate investors don’t know what to offer on a property or how to properly structure offers with the least amount of risk as possible to them.

There are really two parts to making sure you don’t commit this cardinal error. Part number one is, knowing what to offer. And part number two is structuring your offer.

So, I’m going to tackle part one first. Knowing what to offer really comes down to knowing what your exit strategy is going to be. By that I mean, do you plan on wholesaling this property? Do you plan on retailing this property and rehabbing it? Or do you plan on keeping this property as an investment property and renting it out? All of those things you need to have in your mind so that way you can make your best offer to the seller.

Additionally, the last thing you ever want to do is pay too much for a property, because really you make your money when you buy and you realize your money when you sell. And what you do with that property in between that timeframe is going to depend on the offer that you made and your exit strategy.

Part two of this mistake is, knowing how to properly structure your offers with the least amount of risk as possible. What I mean by this is a lot of times as a real estate investor, you’ll be focusing on buying distressed properties, properties where somebody may be in foreclosure, people are behind in payments. There might be a divorce or job loss. And you want to make sure that the sellers’ problem is not becoming your problem.

And a lot of that has to do with how you structure your offers and how you make your offers. You always want to keep the risk on them. There is no reason why you should have to bare their risk, bare the risk for their problem.

I’ll give you an example. I bought a property from a seller one time and I bought it with seller financing. There was no mortgage on the property and I asked the seller to finance the property for me. I got great terms on the property and I knew the house needed some repairs.

So, what I did was I asked the seller to give me six months before I made my first payment to them. She agreed. And by asking that and structuring my offer that way, I more or less reversed the risk. So, that way I had time to put some money into the property before having to start making payments on the property. And in return, it did turn out to be a great win/win all around situation with that house. That example is just one of many on how you can structure offers with sellers.

If some of the information that I’ve gone over with you in this step or mistake sounds a little bit confusing to you, then you may want to go back and brush up on some of your acquisition skills. So, that way you can confidently make offers and structure offers. Ultimately, in that respect you can be successful as a real estate investor.

Some real estate investors develop what’s called ‘the professor syndrome.’ They think that because they’ve done a deal or two deals or three deals and made a little bit of money here and there that they don’t need to learn any more. Wrong. You need to constantly be learning new things.

The market changes, real estate changes. You need to adapt to the market conditions. You need to be able to adapt to the economic changes. You need to constantly learn new things.

I strongly believe that the minute you stop learning, is the minute you stop growing and the minute you start dying. You always can learn new things, no matter where you are in your business, no matter how successful you are. You need to constantly make that a part of your life, of learning new things. Just don’t stop learning. Always do the best you can and continue to acquire new information to make yourself better, to make your business better, to minimize your costs and to grow your revenues.

Learning is a lifelong process and a business builder. It’s healthy and it will make you more money in the long run.

Another way to avoid being a victim of the professor syndrome is having a mentor. Sounds kind of plain, doesn’t it? You’d be surprised how much better you can be when you have a mentor, especially in your early days.

In my early days I had a mentor. And I still have a mentor to this day. And it’s been extremely vital to my business that I have somebody that I can go to when I have a question that’s above me, or just a situation that I need to discuss with somebody that can help me see the big picture, that can help me make a decision.

Even if it’s a decision that I already know and believe is right, sometimes it makes you feel good to have some reassurance that your mentor can agree with you. Your mentor will make you accountable. They will push you, they will make you stronger, they will help you see mistakes, they will help you overcome problems, and they will help you make more money in the long run. This mentor should be someone who has had more experience than you, been around the block a few more times and can keep you from thinking that you know it all or are that “professor”.

So, if you don’t have a mentor, find a mentor. And it will, without a doubt, make you a better real estate investor and make you a better person.

For the record, I want you to know that another word for mentor could be coach or consultant, somebody that’s going to help you achieve your goals and help you surpass your goals.

Did you know that Tiger Woods has a coach? Do you know that Michael Jordan had a coach? Do you know that Arnold Palmer had a coach? Some of the biggest and most successful people in the worlds still have coaches and mentors and consultants and people that work with them to help make them better. There is no reason why you shouldn’t have this same mentality.

If you are looking for a coach, do a little research and find one who will make you grow and learn as an investor. You don’t need a buddy, you need a teacher.

Worrying too much about competition for your investing business in your area can really cause you unnecessary troubles. Let me tell you, there are plenty of deals to go around if you’re actively looking for them. And whether you believe me or not, competition is a good thing. It’s healthy and it makes you fight harder. It makes you think more creatively. It makes you want to win. If you are in a race and somebody’s running behind you and they’re trying to beat you, you’re going to do everything you can to run that much faster so that way you win.

The same thing with competition in this business, if you see other people out there advertising that they’re real estate investors get creative and start ramping up your marketing. But don’t let that competition bring you down, because there are plenty of deals to go around.

And the types of deals that you do might be completely different than the types of deals that your competition does. So, there are multiple ways to buy and sell properties. So, don’t ever, ever let competition discourage you from continuing to grow your business.

In fact, it would probably be a good idea for you to even contact some of your competition and see if you guys can do deals together every now and then. Not in terms of partnering on deals, but perhaps you’ve got a deal that you can’t do at this time because it’s a rehab deal and he just finished a rehab deal so he’s looking for another deal. Or maybe he has a short sale deal and doesn’t know how to do short sales, but you know how to do short sales so you ask him for that deal. And if you are able to make money from the deal that was referred to you, then give them a little something to say thanks.

But don’t worry about competition. Go ahead and make your money the way that you know how to do it.

This leads directly to another huge mistake that most real estate investors make and that is they don’t focus enough on the marketing for their business. There is nothing more important than the marketing that you do to generate your business, period.

If you do not have leads coming in and people calling you with houses for sale or people calling you with houses they want to buy, then you are setting yourself up for failure. In fact, believe it or not, I would rather you spend the time, the money and the energy to learn and get better at marketing for your business, rather than learning how to do your business better.

Because the more leads you have coming in, the more options you have and the more deals you’ll be able to do. Because think about this, you could be the best real estate negotiator on the planet, but if you don’t have lots of deals coming in and the other guy next to you is not a very good negotiator but he has a bunch of deals coming in, I can guarantee you that he’s going to surpass you like that.

So, always focus the majority of your time and energy on the marketing for your business and the rest will fall into place.

You’ve heard about paying yourself first, right? This is typically discussed when people are planning for retirement. I want you to think about it right now as you start and/or continue building your real estate investing business. Think like a true entrepreneur. This is really important. I have said this before and here it is again: Your business exists to support you; you don’t exist to support your business. Your business exists to support you. And if you’re not extracting money from your business, then what are you in business for?

Your business exists to support you, so you need to pay yourself first. Always pay yourself first. This was a hard lesson for me to really comprehend and understand in my early days, but now I understand it. It makes sense, because hopefully you haven’t spent all the money that your business has made and that you have taken out as the owner. And if you have to, you can always loan the money back to your business.

Now one way to start thinking in that direction is to do real estate deals in your self-directed Roth IRA. If you’re not doing deals in your IRA, you’re not really seeing the true power of this business, because you can go from $1,000 or a few hundred dollars in your IRA to $20,000 like that. The majority of real estate investors don’t take advantage of this type of investing.

You just have to know how to do it. If you have not done any deals in your self-directed IRA, then I urge you to explore this and to learn about this. I did one deal in my IRA way back when I first learned about doing Roth IRAs, and it seemed like in the beginning it was the hardest thing in the world to do. There was all the legal paperwork and it went on and on, blah, blah, blah.

Well, first of all, yes, it’s legal. Secondly, I would much rather be in control of my retirement funds than having the stock market be in control of my retirement funds. So, you can option a property, you can do a simple $100 option contract on a property. It can come from your IRA, your IRA can be the buyer, and you can option a property for $90,000.

You could turn around and then you sell that property for $110,000 or whatever it is, and that $20,000 profit will go directly into your self-directed Roth IRA tax-free for life. It’s a phenomenal tool, and if you’re not using it, you are missing out. You’ve got to start getting into this revolution if you will on using self-directed Roth IRAs, because the power is tremendous.

But pay yourself first. It will help you sleep better at night. Let your business have only what it needs to have, and you take the rest. Your business exists to support you, so try to get into the habit of paying yourself first. Learn about IRAs and continue growing not only as an investor, but a wise and successful entrepreneur.

Are you trying to be SUPER INVESTOR? Doing everything yourself in your business is a mistake. In the beginning, this is probably not a bad thing to do, but as you’ve done a few deals or as you start to grow your business and expand your business and systemize your business, you need to start to pick out and do only the things that you need to do. And then find somebody else to do the rest.

Your job, as the business owner, the entrepreneur, is to grow the business, not to do the grunt work.

Now, in your beginning days as a real estate investor, you’re obviously going to do a lot of the grunt work. And that’s okay because it’ll help to make you want to get away from it as quickly as possible.

But whatever you’re doing, try to systemize your business so you can eventually get to the point where you don’t need to be there doing all of the grunt work.

The goal is to hire an assistant to do a lot of the grunt work for you. So, that way you can be constantly focused on growing the business and creating more revenue for the business.

Another big reason for growing your business is to avoid making the mistake of only focusing on one deal at a time. This is a recipe for disaster. What you need to do in your business is you need to have multiple deals going at one time.

If you’re only focusing on one deal and you don’t have other deals at least coming in or being negotiated or whatever, at the same time, if you’re only working on that one deal and that one deal fails, what are you going to do next?

You need to have multiple deals working at the same time. Then you can hedge yourself against the deals that fall through the cracks, because deals will fall through the cracks. And if you’ve been doing this for a little while then you probably already know that.

So, do not focus on one deal only. Get multiple deals going. Get as many deals going as you possibly can. And trust me, you will thank me later.

Because let me tell you a little secret. The difference between wealthy people and non-wealthy people are that wealthy people do things and run their business simultaneously, whereas non-wealthy people do things sequentially.

The sooner that you can break away from the habit of doing one deal at a time or one thing at a time and start making your business and your life a little bit chaotic and doing multiple things at one time and doing multiple deals simultaneously, at that time you will begin to notice a huge change in your business.

So, don’t focus on one deal at a time. Have lots of deals working at once. You’re going to need additional help to accomplish this. In conclusion, systemize your business so you can grow the business and work on multiple deals simultaneously.

Don’t be afraid to take a leap of faith and grow once you have your business organized and have at least the basic systems in place.

Most real estate investors spend the money from the rental property cash flow. Don’t make that mistake. Now, you might be reading this right now and thinking to yourself, “What are you talking about? Are you kidding me? That’s how I pay for my business expenses and keep my business going each month.”

Well, okay, that’s how you do it, but if something detrimental happens with one of your rental properties or if all of a sudden half of your tenants lose their job at the same time, what are you going to do? Are you going to be able to use that money to re-advertise your homes to get new people in them? Are you going to be able to pay for the problems that come up with the properties when they move out? Are you going to be able to put the money back into the properties to get them nice again?

Those are the things that you need to think about. And I would highly advise you that if you do, and hopefully you do, have a surplus with cash flow, passive income coming in from your rental properties, that you save that money for reserves for when you need it for those properties down the road.

Because if you have not needed it or used it yet, I can virtually guarantee that you will need it some time in the future.

Now, let me tell you a little story. We’ve all heard the term before, when it rains it pours, right? Well, it seems to me that I’ve experienced that somewhat recently with quite a few of my rental properties.

About 50%, within a few months, were all vacant. My tenants moved out or I had to evict them because they stopped paying or there was a job loss or whatever happened, it all seemed to happen at one time with my properties.

And to top it all off, one of my rental properties had a mold problem. So, I had to go and spend a small fortune, about $6,000 to get the mold removed from this property, to avoid any problems with the tenant and make sure I was doing my due diligence and civic duty as a good landlord.

So, if I did not have money in reserves with the positive cash flow income from my rental properties, then it would have been a very difficult time for me to have to find a way to keep those payments being made and get that mold taken out of the property and put a little bit of money back into these houses to get them fixed up, painted or whatever and back on the market.

So, if you have not experienced that yet, I hope that you don’t. But it’s very likely that you will, at some point, experience a situation similar to this. So, it’s always best if you do not spend the cash flow from your rental properties. The cash flow in your business should come from other sources. It should come from non-refundable option deposits. It should come from your quick flips, your sale and different things like that.

So, if your business is living on the cash flow from your rental properties, you want to seriously think about different income alternative sources as soon as possible.

The second thing you need to do is take action so you have a reserve for when things do go wrong. You need to have a reserve, because Murphy lives everywhere. And if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. And you need to have the cash reserves in your business to sustain your business when this happens.

So, make sure that you do have a reserve amount of money that your business can live off of if necessary, especially if detrimental things happen all at once. The difference between making it through difficult times and collapsing under pressure may just be those extra reserve funds you have so smartly saved.

Planning for financially challenging times is not the most pleasant task, but one to do so those times aren’t as stressful. You must continue to learn, plan and take action for all the good, bad and ugly business.

Why do most real estate investors not build their lists? Do you know what I’m referring to? I’m talking about very specific lists that you as an investor need to grow, it’s very important that you build your lists. Your list could be one of many things. You’ve got a list for your wholesale buyers, your investor buyers, etc. These lists can be invaluable when you get a property under contract very low and you want to wholesale that property, you should be able to contact your wholesale buyers list, your investor buyers list whether you send out an email or a fax or make some phone calls. And hopefully you can, with that list, get that property sold very quickly.

You also want to build a list of tenant buyers and retail buyers, people that are looking to buy houses. It’s very often easier to find a house for a buyer than it is to find a buyer for a house. So, if you’ve got a buyer and they’ve got a good down payment and they’ve got a great income and they’re looking for something, they like you and they like your system and you can go out and find them a property, sometimes that’s the easiest way to make that happen.

So, build your lists. If you’re not already keeping track and building your lists, you need to do this. And every time you get a new wholesale or investment property, you should still be advertising to grow your list, as well as marketing to your list.

So, don’t ever get stuck with one list source. You always want to grow your list, because your list is a great asset.

Once you have lists then guess what? You need to use that list, make some phone calls. I’m referring to follow up and organizational skills. A lot of real estate investors, and I’m not sure I understand why, have bad organizational skills and bad follow-up skills. Not following up with people when you say you’re going to follow up with them, or just not following up with people in general is not going to help you grow your business. When you have a great asset such as a list, then please use it. Don’t let it sit there and go stale, keep in touch with those individual buyers and sellers.

Another term for these organizational and follow-up skills could be having just plain good customer service. It’s so hard to find good customer service these days. There are so many things that you do that it’s really unfortunate, because there is nothing that really perturbs me more than picking up the phone and wanting to do business with somebody somewhere, and they say they’re going to call me back or they’ll e-mail me back at a certain time or whatever, and they don’t do it.

If you’re not going to do it, fine, but send me a note saying that, “Hey, I haven’t forgotten about you and I’ll send you the information that you needed here shortly.” Okay? It’s just very bad business, and it’s not good for your credibility if you do not have good follow-up skills.

If you have a problem remembering things, you need to write them down. Consider buying yourself a planner so that way you can keep track of your schedule throughout the day of things that you need to get done, and cross them off as you go. That’s exactly how I do it; I don’t know what I’d do without my planner. So, work on your follow-up skills and do what you say you’re going to do. Grow your lists and use them.

There are plenty of people out there who think they know about real estate investing and yet after you spend some time talking to them, you realize they are blowing lots of smoke. I want to address two major myths about investing:

1. You have to have a large amount of money to start this business.

2. You should seek advice from every Tom, Dick and Harry you know before you begin investing.

A lot of new and veteran real estate investors make the mistake of thinking they need to have money in order to do this business. And that is just false. It’s not true. You do not have to have money to do this business!

If you have money to begin with, sure, it might make you sleep a little bit better at night. But at the same time, think about it a little in reverse: It might make you kind of soft, too. If you’ve got no money to begin with, then you’re no worse off. You’ve got nothing to lose.

That’s how I was when I started; I had nothing. This forced me to think creatively when it came to buying properties and create deals that were a win-win for all parties. And now that I’ve got money, I still approach every single deal that I do as if I have no money, because the last thing that I want to do is get into a habit of thinking that since I’ve got money, I can use my money to buy property.

That is not the way to do it. You do not need money to do this business; you do not need to use your money to buy houses. If anything, we’re talking hundreds to do some marketing, we’re not talking thousands.

So, don’t be blinded by the fact that you think you need money to be in this business, because you don’t. If you have money, I strongly urge you to approach every single deal as if you have no money, because you will be better off in the long run for it, and you will be able to think more creatively and protect your investments that you have made in the process.

Another mistake a lot real estate investors make, in fact, that a lot of people in general make is they take advice from the wrong people. If you want to get rich in real estate, whom are you listening to?

Are you listening to your brother-in-law or your uncle who have only bought the properties that they have lived in, and the only information they know is what they hear on the news and what they’ve read in the newspaper, or are you going to try to learn from and take advice from people that are doing it every single day?

Be very careful on who you take advice from. And for the record, this same thing goes for your financial advice and your legal advice. Okay? There are tons of CPAs and tons of attorneys out there, and each one has certain specifications and each one has certain comfort levels on the way they do business.

And just because an attorney might say, “No, you cannot do this,” it doesn’t mean No, you cannot do this. If people tell you no, find out why. If an attorney tells you, “No, this is illegal,” ask him to show you the code where it says it’s illegal.

You will be surprised, a lot of times attorneys will say something is illegal or they say “No, you can’t do this,” simply because they don’t know how to do it, or they don’t know how to tell you to do it.

So, my two main takeaways from this are first, don’t take no for an answer when you’re working with financial and legal professionals. The second take-away is to only take advice from people who have walked before you. You know, it’s no secret that everybody loves to give advice and to tell you what he or she think, but unfortunately you have to discern the right advice from the wrong advice. So, be careful of those to whom you listen, and challenge the ones that tell you no!

Want to hear how you can be successful with real estate investing? I have been where you are, done just about every deal imaginable and I have plenty of experience to share!

A lot of real estate investors fall in love with the house that they’re working on. This is a huge mistake. You need to fall in love with the numbers, not the house. Let me say that again: Fall in love with the numbers, not the house.

If you’re doing a rehab, though, you need to remember that your whole goal with the rehab is to get it fixed up and looking pretty as soon as possible so that we can find a new buyer, an end-user buyer who is going to buy it and live in it.

You’re not fixing up that property for you and your wife or husband to live in. Again, don’t fall in love with the house; fall in love with the numbers. It’s so easy to get caught up in the project that you forget why you started, so you can do a quick rehab, sell it and make a profit. Make the numbers work so that way you can move on to the next deal.

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of wanting to continually do new upgrades to a property when you’re doing rehab, but really try to separate yourself from that. Just do what needs to be done to make it look nice and then stop putting money into the property.

At some point you’ve got to stop. It’s like an artist: When they’re drawing a picture, they don’t know when to stop. Somebody else looking at the picture could think it’s perfect, but the artist sees a dozen things that he would like to change. It’s never going to be perfect. So, work from the numbers, not from falling in love with the property.

Now let’s look at the opposite side of the spectrum, and I can definitely vouch that I have made this mistake multiple times, which is trying to turn dud properties into deals. And that’s a huge mistake. I’m just as at fault as a lot of other people out there, but eventually you start to learn that you only want to go after the low-hanging fruit.

Think about it: If you’re hungry, and you want to pick an apple and eat it off a tree, you’re going to pick the one that’s the closest to you. You’re not going to climb the tree and pick the one at the very top.

Same thing with real estate deals, same thing when you’re looking to buy houses. You want to go after the properties that are going to be the easiest deals for you to do. Don’t try to turn a dud into a deal. Go after the low-hanging fruit only.

I can understand in the early days you’re so excited and you want to do a deal and you’re going to do everything you can to do a deal, but unfortunately a lot of people go after the wrong deal. And I’m definitely one who’s been at fault with this. And it ends up biting them down the road.

But that’s how you learn; you’re going to learn by making mistakes. So, take my advice and really try to just go after the low-hanging fruit. I don’t really want to say be more picky, but there are tons of deals out there. If you go after the low-hanging fruit, then you’ll be better off in the long run. Okay? To make a long story short, just go after the low-hanging fruit.