The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

First, A thank you to everyone who's checked out the Blog, and emailed or commented to me.
You're interest and support is greatly appreciated.

Onward...

Guys I'm stunned (and in come cases shocked)!

So far I've heard from a variety of folks, some who get "it", some who need a little help, and some who are just getting started. Two (repeat two) people understand the ONE thing their business is about. More on that later, first a quick story of when I first got into real estate investing.

I remember spending a ton of time trying to learn the mechanics of REI... I spent a good year on it in fact. Funny thing is, for all the time I was learning how to structure deals, the ins-and-outs of rehabs, sub-to, L/Os etc...

I didn't get a darn deal done!

After that, I realized I was never going to get anything done if I didn't get somebody who wanted to sell me their house. Sure I tried the MLS, but frankly the banks were thumbing their noses at us. On a whim, I took a case of bandit signs and started tacking them up... they weren't even my signs! My friend Steve, gave me about a case load of his because he'd never got around to using them. Well, at this point I'd love to give you a Cinderalla Story of how fantastic the work... but it didn't happen that way! They did okay - got maybe 10 calls. But this was...

A flash of insight!

The signs got me and my partner some phone calls, I plunked down $250 for another case... still about 10-20 calls... I was hot-to-trot, signs were cheap, calls were coming in. I started to ponder what I might change about the signs, were to put them, what design to use. Three - count 'em - THREE cases later...

I was netting 40 calls!

It became very clear that a flood of calls was a key to me...

Now, I can't cover a whole lesson on Band-it Signing, but that's not the lesson here!

The lesson... Your Business IS Marketing!

That's your business, and a couple of people who replied get that!

If you're getting started, you need to get a ton of leads so you can mess up a bunch of stuff and still come away with a deal... If your already rolling you're reading this because you need/want more deals.

My next posting, I'll start to address the quick and dirty ways to get the ball rolling...

-Ted