Ask Questions… Just Ask the RIGHT Questions

[Alex Ficco]

“Ask Questions… Just Ask the RIGHT Questions”

I get it. Doing something new is exciting and scary. Especially when we’re talking about something like getting into real estate with no background in the industry.

Through my local Facebook Group with about 1400 people in it and the monthly Real Estate Investor Meetup I run here in Reno, NV, I get to talk to a ton of new people interested in pursuing all sorts of strategies.

I was the new guy in 2017. I was scared shitless to go to my first meetup. I had no idea what it was going to be like. And just like the new guys now, I had a ton of questions. But most of them were the wrong ones to be asking.

A ton of new people start with wholesaling, so the rest of this post will be geared towards those types of questions. We’ll keep it to that because OBVIOUSLY if you’re flipping your first house, you should probably know a thing or two about financing the deal and rehabs before taking title to the property. Same with buying a rental, etc.

Depending on your current availability of time and capital (lots of time and no money), I think wholesaling is a good way to start out. You’ll learn how to find deals, talk to sellers, the language of the industry, the process of purchasing a deal, underwriting deals, more about the asset class itself etc., all while not being exposed to the risk you take on when taking title. All skills I use today to buy flips, rentals, etc.

When I started, I had no background in real estate or the trades, no connections, no money, had never bought a house, but was willing to dedicate the time and effort to see it through.

With that type of background, or lack thereof, I had ALL the questions. What I didn’t realize back then was that every question I had could be answered in about 45 seconds from someone that’s currently doing it.

So I understand why people keep asking the same questions over and over in the group and at the meetup. They just don’t realize that the questions are pretty unimportant to where they are right now. Some of these are very important LATER, but not now.

If this is you, right now, all you need to do is find ONE person that can answer things for you, and find more LEADS.

Leads are everything at the beginning. If you talk to enough Sellers, take enough appointments, and make enough offers, you WILL get a contract. People highly underestimate the volume in this step and focus on getting ALL of their questions answered instead of picking up the phone. And all of the questions are about what comes AFTER the contract.

"Which title company do I use? Do I need an LLC? What about taxes? How do I find a Buyer? What if I can't find a Buyer? How does earnest money work?"

This is NOT a post to say just do whatever the **** you want and jump in to anything before learning a single thing. But it IS a post to say I’ve seen literally hundreds of people at this point get stuck on all of those questions listed above and NEVER contract a deal.

They spend 6 months or a year taking minimal action, getting their answers on these, getting things all set up and ready to go… and then they quit because it doesn't work.

From the actions they actually DID take, it would be unreasonable to think a deal was ever possible. They didn’t talk to enough people to ever GET a deal OR develop any of the skill sets to have a better conversion on their leads.

If they found just ONE legitimate investor that’s willing to answer questions (probably in exchange for them bringing him a deal when they get it 🤯) all of that time would’ve been saved and could've been spent asking more important questions as they come up… the ones that you need answered from the experience of doing deals.

Hopefully that helps anyone that feels like they can't quite get the flywheel turning. Don’t get stuck needing all the answers to everything.