Where Do I Find a ( ) … Insert Coach, Mentor, Guide, Someone to Answer Questions?
This is a question I get several times a year.
Just this weekend:
*”I’m eager to jump in and avoid falling into analysis paralysis, which has been a hurdle for me in the past. My goal is to rehab my first house before summer, but I still feel unsure about where to start. When I look at potential properties, I’m not entirely confident in what I should be assessing or focusing on.
That’s why I believe having a mentor would be incredibly helpful. Shadowing someone with experience and gaining hands-on knowledge would make all the difference. Can you recommend someone within the MAREI network who might be willing to guide me?”*
Do You Need a Mentor or Something Else?
As a new real estate investor, one will generally follow this path:
- Consume a lot of free online information and get super interested in the idea of real estate.
- Find some community where you can start learning about all the ways to invest in real estate (like MAREI).
- Attend a training class on “The One”—the niche that seems to check all your boxes—and take a lot of notes.
- Then go out there and do it … except … how do you do it?
- Then you go to the next training class and it seems to be “The One” and you get really confused.
Now you need someone to help you along the way. Most think, “I need a mentor” or perhaps “I need a coach!”
But do you really?
If you read the article Do You Really Need a Mentor by Vena Jones-Cox (one of my mentors, by the way), you’ll see that mentors are not people who teach you how to do real estate or answer your questions. Rather, they are super experienced in what you want to do, and they help you figure things out on a more big-picture scale. And that can get pricey.
You Might Need a Coach
On the other hand, you might need a coach. If you’re looking for someone to bounce ideas off of, ask questions, run numbers, or do a bit of hand-holding, you might need a coach instead. If the following describes you, then consider MAREI’s Express Success Coaching Program:
- You get the basic idea of what you want to do, but there are gaps in your knowledge.
- You’re pretty sure real estate is your thing and that you’ve found the right niche, but you haven’t done a deal—or haven’t done many.
- You’re just learning and don’t want to sit down and talk about the whole picture of you, just the specific thing you want to learn.
- You don’t have the money … mentoring starts expensive and goes up from there—think four or five zeros.
Do You Need a Training Course Instead?
If we go back to the traditional path and look at the “Attend Training Class” step:
- What did you do at that training class? Take a lot of notes?
- Did you buy the training course?
- Did you open it and work your way through it?
If you didn’t buy the course, I recommend going back to wherever that class was and finding out if there’s a way to purchase it. Often, that awesome package deal you didn’t think you wanted to spend money on ends up being the best investment. A course takes you from A to Z on the steps to get your first investment in that niche done. Would you rather spend $1,000 on a course to find out short sales aren’t for you, or $50,000 on a mentoring program to figure that out?
Case in point: I bought a course on note investing. It was very interesting and came with a 3-day boot camp, which I attended. All in, it cost around $1,000. The trainer offered a mentoring program for $24,000. We bought it and dug in but found that while it was a great way to make money in real estate, what we were doing before was faster and easier.
We did a few note deals and more than paid for that mentoring. We even have several cash-flowing notes in our portfolio. But to say we do notes … we don’t.
Further, if you bought the course, and just went through it but didn’t take action, why not? Go dig it out and start over. Of if you just didn’t like it, was it the niche itself, or perhaps the course, maybe there is a better course option out there.
What You Really Need is a Community
If you’ve been doing this for a while or have clarity about what you want to do and need expensive help doing it, consider a mentor. But if you’re new to real estate, I recommend:
- Join a Community and ask questions from the start.
- Start with training.
- Take action on that training
- Utilize your Community
- Then, perhaps, consider a coach.
A community makes or breaks your real estate investing journey. These are the people out there in the trenches, doing what you do, day in and day out. They won’t teach you A to Z—that’s what training courses are for—but they’ll be there for a little nudge when needed. ASK QUESTIONS!!
As a MAREI member, I’m more than willing to talk to people at meetings or communicate via forums to answer questions like:
- What’s the general ratio lenders are using—70% of ARV, 60%, 80%?
- Where do you go to buy [product/service/tool]?
- Can you go over these numbers with me?
Make the Most of a Community
- Join one where active real estate investors participate.
- Take every training that fits your niche.
- Buy a training course and learn the basics.
- Prepare for in-person meetings with your top questions. Arrive early for networking to seek answers.
- Use the Facebook group (MAREI’s has 15,000 members, including top gurus, coaches, and mentors who answer questions for free—up to a point).
When you go to all those events, look for the circles of people around the room. The people who have the answers are all going to have a circle of people around them. They have the answers. Look to the vendors with tables, they know a lot and they know all the people. Go talk to them. What ever you do, don’t go sit and wait for the meeting to happen. That first hour is your time to get a ton of free knowledge, but you have to go get it.
What Do You Need?
- Knowledge: Consume all the information you can until you figure out your focus. Attend local REIA meetings, workshops, and master classes. Lurk in forums.
- Training: Once you’ve chosen a focus, invest in a training course or two. If you need suggestions, just ask.
- Action: Go out there and do it. You’ll either succeed or learn—but only if you take action.
- Community: Implement your training and ask questions in REIA forums and meetings.
- Coaching: If coaching is what you need, consider MAREI’s Express Success program.
- Mentoring: Once you’ve found your footing, then you might need a mentor.
Article written by MAREI Co-Founder Kim Tucker, who has been leading the community with her husband Don since 2004. One of her mentors is Vena Jones-Cox. Don and Kim buy houses, so if you have one to sell, visit kcmoHomeBuyer.com.
