Onward & Upward

I realized today that writing in the past tense is a much more difficult thing than I had anticipated. In recognition of this, my posts will focus more on what is currently taking place in our Real Estate Freedom.

Once I have some spare cash lying around maybe I'll hire a writer to compose my biography. Not that my head has swelled like a watermelon and I think I'm New York Times Bestseller material, but I would like to preserve what I have contributed to my family history.

Where am I? About April of 2007, I attended a FlippingHomes.com boot camp. What an experience. I walked in there with my hand firmly gripping my wallet. It wasn't until about day 3 that I had actually allowed myself to relax. I was soaking in so much info I was floored. The teacher, Steve Cook, turned out to be exactly what I hoped for. I had been hooked to his website like a worm on a hook for the previous year.

Now I got to experience 5 straight days with the founder and creator of this amazing site. Honesty, trustworthy, helpful, friendly, reverent....he was a living, breathing Boy Scout. Being an Eagle Scout myself, I was impressed. I had completely lucked out in choosing and deciding upon a great educational beginning for my Real Estate career. I'll go into more of my experience in a future post.

Since my boot camp has been over for over 5 months...What's been accomplished? It was said that Steve's boot camp's have a much higher rate of success than any other camp. I will definitely be adding to that percentage. My attending of the camp was in the middle of my transition to a new position at work. Have I mentioned that I love my job? I know I'm in the minority, but I have a fun and exciting job that doesn't require much from me when I leave and come home. So in dealing with my new position, I made a decision to postpone my real estate journey. I also had a full remodel of my upstairs in progress. New floors, doors, paint, walk in closet, vanity room, and a complete remodel of the bathroom. No small undertaking. What the hell was I thinking? I have a habit of biting off big bites. I once drove myself to the hospital because I had a bolus aka huge chunk of chicken stuck in my throat. I could breathe, but it was stuck like when you have to drink some fluid to push down bread if you eat it too fast. No amount of drinking would dislodge it. What a mess.

So September 2007, I decided it had been postponed long enough. In the meantime, my little brother, Tim had gained an equal interest. I purposely only gave him direction to find his own path, but we both ended up choosing Real Estate. We are equal partners. 50/50. We've been great friends since childhood and I know the strain this could put on our relationship. We've had many chats on our partnership and a future post will talk about our decision to work together.

Starting in Real Estate is a lot like starting a small business. We meet weekly and both have goals that we each set individually and collectively. Today I signed a contract for a UPS mail box service. $128.00 for six months. The advantage is a street address versus a PO BOX from the ol' USPS. We've set up a Gmail account. It gives us both access to contracts, educational material we collect, spreadsheets, emails, goal lists, and much more. It's working great we can both sign on from home or work and it's fun seeing completed goal that we've each done while the other is busy working at their respective 9-5 jobs. We've also chosen a small farm area. In all it should have about 1000-1500 homes. It's a solid 3-5 on Steve's neighborhood scale. Our immediate goal is to utilize the state property database to compile our own direct mail list. We've essentially compiled every property in this zip code. Then 'driving for dollars', we are giving each house a numerical rating 0 is vacant and 10 is a gem. We'll market to the 5's and below. Sending a letter to them once a month for 7 months. This is our first step. Concurrently, we are moving towards MLS offers.

We've ordered business cards and Tim is going to attend our/his first investment club meeting on Oct 20th. My 9-5 requires I work that day. I'll definitely be attending the next one. We're holding off on the LLC formation til our first deal or so. No need to waste time on that now. We've got a business plan in the works, but it's currently on the back burner. We talk almost everyday, but at least every other. We meet once a week. Our NUMBER ONE GOAL is to close a deal by 01-31-2008. 4 months. We've got lots of work to get done.

We will succeed. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. No excuses. We aren't trying, we're doing.