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Most real estate investors are open to many different acquisition strategies for finding, negotiating and financing their deals. Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, tend to be more selective, and stick to the acquisition strategies that best fit their talents and gifts. In this episode, Jeff describes why employing different acquisition strategies is like playing completely different sports, and explains how this can hinder an investor’s growth.
Episode Transcript
A lot of real estate investors, dare I say most, think of the game that they’re playing as real estate investing. And then they think of their acquisition strategy as not really mattering as long as they’re able to buy properties. But what if the game that you’re playing is not real estate investing, but the game you’re playing is the acquisition strategy itself, changing our perspective on that really changes our approach to what we do on a practical basis every day to work towards buying properties, and in this episode, I want to talk with you about how different acquisition strategies are like completely different sports. So let’s cue the theme song we’re gonna jump right in.
Welcome to Racking Up Rentals, a show about how regular people, those of us without huge war chest of capital or insider connections, can build lasting wealth acquiring a portfolio of buy and hold real estate. But we don’t just go mainstream looking at what’s on the market and asking banks for loans, nor are we posting We Buy Houses signs are just looking for “motivated sellers” to make lowball offers to. You see, we are people-oriented deal makers, we sit down directly with sellers to work out win-win deals without agents or any other obstacles, and buy properties nobody else even knows are for sale. I’m Jeff from the Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneur. If you’re the kind of real estate investor who wants long term wealth, not get rich quick gimmicks or pictures of yourself holding fat checks on social media, this show is for you. Join me and quietly become the wealthiest person on your block. Now let’s go rack up a rental portfolio.
Thank you very much for joining me for another episode of Racking Up Rentals. Show notes for this episode can be found at www.thoughtfulre.com/e201. Please do us a big favor by hitting that subscribe button in your podcast app, it does make a big difference in helping other fellow thoughtful real estate entrepreneurs who are searching for a community in a message like this to find it. Alright, so onward with today’s episode.
And onward with today’s episode. So every Wednesday in the deals workshop, we have a group call. And people bring questions and situations and stuff. And so about a week ago, somebody brought a question into the group. And she said, You know, I’ve been talking to the seller. And unfortunately, the seller has decided she is going to list the property. And my question is, should I now then, you know, look at it on the market, go through the agent and start trying to talk to the real estate agent. And it seems like a simple question that I’m sure a lot of real estate investors, maybe even most real estate investors would probably just say, Well, yeah, I mean, you liked the property. It’s too bad. You can’t work directly with the seller now but you feel like the property before you know it’s the same same property. But I have a totally different answer to that question. And here’s the conversation that we ended up having.
And I what I said was I explained that when we are working relationally with sellers in off market and negotiations. It’s like playing one very, very specific sport. And once the property goes to a realtor, and now the property is listed might be the same property. But the sport we’re playing is now completely different. I mean, it’s like we were playing basketball. And now the property is listed with a realtor in order to pursue that property. Now it’s like switching to playing football. And these are just completely different sports.
It’s not to say necessarily the basketball is better than football. I mean, I certainly have my own preference as to which sport that I want to play. But the point is that the skills, the talents, the resources, the attributes, the gifts that we have, that would make us good, playing one sport, don’t necessarily translate. And our mind has to shift completely from playing one sport to playing a totally different kind of sport. So while most people would see this as Yeah, but you’re still just trying to buy the same property. The way that we go about it is so different that it doesn’t translate at all.
And so my message to her in that moment was keep to your sport of choice. Keep to your sport of focus, what sport do you want to be playing, that you know fits you your talents, your gifts, all of that as well as possible and stick to playing that sport even if playing that sport means switching them away from this particular property to keep keep talking to sellers about different properties but still playing the same sport. After this call, we always post the recordings in our group. You know when people watch the recordings you could make it they watch them the next day. And we had another person in the group. Comment on the recording Say, you know, this helped illuminate for me why I’ve been having stalled progress is because I realized that I’ve been switching sports all the time, I’m allowing myself to go from playing the game that I’ve kind of tried to play like basketball. And then something comes up. And I’m looking at this listed property, which is playing football. Now I’m looking at this listed, or this wholesale property, which is playing tennis. And the next thing you know, like, all I’m doing is shifting focuses all the time. And it’s really hard to get traction in anything, if we’re just shifting focuses all the time.
You know, I mean, we know this in our in our own work. If there’s, if you’ve got Facebook up over here, and phone notifications here and stuff, it’s really hard to focus and get work done, because your attention is being divided, but also just changing rapidly. And so when we’re trying to play different sports all the time, that just requires so much switching and never allows us to really get that good. I mean, we’re talking about sports. And I do actually think of what we do as sort of like a sport.
But think about great athletes. You know, I think when they’re young, they’re probably exploring different sports, and they’re cross training and things like that. But once they go deep, in one sport, they go deep in that sport, they don’t continue trying to practice all the other sports, they go deep in that one sport, because that’s how they get world class at one particular thing. And I want you to be world class at one particular thing, I hope that that particular thing is the same thing that I want to be world class. And, and that’s probably why you’re listening to this podcast, but whatever it is, I hope that there is something that you can have tremendous focus on, and become world class in, in a Facebook conversation sort of thing.
A couple weeks ago, also, somebody had posted about wholesale deals, and I said, you know, to each his own, but here’s why I don’t pay any attention whatsoever, whatsoever to wholesale leads, I don’t get on any buyers lists. I don’t ever look at any emails that accidentally end up getting, because that’s not what I want to do. And somebody commented and said, Okay, but why would you just completely disregard an entire category of lead source? And my answer was, I don’t need to see all of the leads, I need to see the leads that are right for me. In other words, I need to see the leads that are in the lane of playing the sport that I actually want to, to play.
A key word here is just simply focus. When you feel like you have to chase down every property that comes in every form at format or through every marketing channel. And in any situation, you we can’t be focused, oh my God, all you’ve got is FOMO all the time, because you’re just worried that oh my gosh, if I don’t read these emails quickly, and you know, this wholesaler sent this email to 5000 people on an email list. And so if I don’t read it at all, but especially really quickly, then Gosh, I’m gonna miss out on some opportunity. And I think we have to just get comfortable with the idea that we’re going to miss out on opportunity. And that’s okay, because those opportunities are not a fit for us. I’m okay, realizing I’m gonna miss out on opportunities that come in the form of tennis, because I’m choosing to play basketball, I’m going to miss out on opportunities in the form of football, because I’m choosing to only play basketball. So it’s focus. And it’s specialization.
Like I said before, we can’t become world class at something, if we’re switching our focus all the time. So what I’m hoping that this will do for you is it will encourage you to think not to think not, my goal is to buy properties by any means possible. And instead replace that thought process with a thought process that says, my goal is to play my game that matches my talents and gifts and strengths as well as possible. Knowing that when I do, from that will come the right acquisitions. And I hope that you are able to, or at least willing to consider that perspective shift. And if you choose that that is the right perspective shift for you as it has been for me, I hope that you will choose to adopt that then the goal is not to just buy any property that sort of makes sense by any means we can possibly get our hands on that goal is to play the game that we’re best at playing and know that will that will result in the right acquisitions for us and in the process. You’ll feel a lot less scattered, you’ll feel a lot less fragmented, you’ll feel a lot less FOMO if you just acknowledged the fact that yes, there’s all sorts of deals and leads and all sorts of stuff out there that comes in different packages that I am not interested in pursuing and I’m okay with the idea that I am intentionally foregoing those opportunities because they’re not a fit for me.
That is it for today’s episode of Racking Up Rentals. Again, show notes for today’s episode are at www.thoughtfulre.com/e201. Please do us a big favor by hitting that subscribe button would be so appreciated. And if you would rate and review this show just real quickly, doesn’t have to be long or eloquent. Just a rating there and a couple words would be super, super helpful and very appreciated.
Did you know that we have a Facebook group for Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneurs too? We do and you should be a part of it. It’s called Rental Portfolio Wealth Builders and we would love to have you join us there. Just go to group.thoughtfulre.com and you will be taken right to that page we can hit the Join button. If you liked this episode, please take a screenshot of that and post it to Instagram and tag us; we are @thoughtfulrealestate. I will see you in the next episode. Until then, this is Jeff from the Thoughtful Real Estate Entrepreneur signing off.
Thanks for listening to Racking Up Rentals where we build long term wealth by being win-win dealmakers. Remember: solve the person to unlock the deal and solve the financing to unlock the profits.
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