Open For Business

Firstly, Happy New Year! Missed you all for Christmas, so Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I know, it's been a while since I've posted. I wanted my next post to be about my first wholesale deal, but it's taking a bit longer than I thought it would.

Towards the end of December, I was wondering why I haven't gotten a call back on the 5 letters I would mail every week. It dawned on me that I wasn't giving the proper focus to locking down my first deal.  I wasn't set up to create my first deal; let alone receive the benefits from it. Made me think of something Will Smith said in one of his interviews on his success: "If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready." Even if an opportunity had come around, I would have been floundering around trying to take my shot at it. I had contracts and questionnaires in different folders from my mailing lists and industry contacts. I wasn't keeping track of any my expenses or the folks I've mailed letters to. I really should have taken my advice my from last post on  organization. So, I made the conscious decision to treat real estate investing as an actual business instead of a side-hustle.

The first thing I did was design a spreadsheet to track all of my expenses/income. Next, I organized all of my wholesaling documents into one folder and uploaded them to Google Drive so I could gain instant access to them from anywhere. I created a Google Voice number and recorded a professional voicemail greeting just for the folks who wanted to call in and sell their property. My handwritten letters were nice and personal, but they didn't allow for any scalability. It just wasn't feasible to sit down every night for a few hours and hand-write maybe 5 letters. So I went to Vista Print and designed post cards where I'd only have to write the client's address and apply a stamp! This increased my productivity 10 times over the handwritten notes. I also ordered door hangers to stick on the doors of homes I found while out driving around. I even gave my Facebook marketing a reboot. I had no idea that I could schedule posts to be published in the future. Now every Sunday, I set up my posts for the week and keep it moving. Once less thing to worry about. (Marketing is everything. Can't sell a service/product people don't know about) With everything organized efficiently and automated as much as possible as my funds will allow, I'm certain that first deal is right around the corner. 

​If you refer back to The Blueprint, this is the year I pay off my credit card, pay down $3k in principal on my car, complete 3 wholesale deals, add an additional $3k to my emergency savings and secure a yearly salary of at least $65k. But if my organization and marketing efforts really pay off, I hope to do more than 30 deals this year which would allow me to completely payoff my credit card and my car. Wish me luck!
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Pick up a book and put down the remote!