For people starting out: Good information requires an exchange

[Juan V Lopez]

I've been seeing this question a lot from new investors and wholesalers: "Is someone willing to mentor me?"

As someone who's not far removed from starting (I began in 2017) and beat around the bush for a while before I got serious about RE investing (I do this full-time now), I want to offer some advice:

It's a long shot that you'll get someone to mentor you for free that's actually worth learning from. As a beginner looking for direction, I'd recommend a few options:

1) Pay for a mentorship or training program – a lot of people don't believe in paying for a program, but I do. Exchange your money for their time. The money and time I invested was how I was able to hold myself accountable at the beginning to actually get started.

2) Find someone in your area who is specifically doing what you want to do and offer to help them any way you can (boots on ground, admin work, cold calling, etc.). Exchange your time for their knowledge. This way, you can be around the action and start to pick up the flow of things.

Ultimately, trying to learn from a successful person involves an exchange – in order to benefit from their knowledge, you either have to exchange your money or your time. If you're getting it for free (great for you if they are good and give you attention), but most of the time it's chunks and pieces of what's actually required to succeed.