Standing out in a crowd - no, you can't buy me a cup of coffee

[Ann Bellamy]

A common question I get is "Can I buy you a cup of coffee and pick your brain?"  (Really, you value my time at the price of a cup of coffee?) or "Can I take you to lunch, I'd love to talk to you about blah blah".  (That's on the theory that I have to eat.  Trust me, I could skip a meal or two). 

Now this is going to sound harsh, but no, you can't.  It may be a common recommendation here on BP, but I don't subscribe to it.

• Don't misunderstand me:  I spend copious amounts of time talking to newbies about their deals, answering their questions and giving general recommendations, opinions (for what it's worth) and connections, either on the phone or at/before a local real estate event.
• I run a local real estate group called Black Diamond that does not allow selling speakers nor do we sell anything ourselves.  The foundation of that group started with a conversation I was having one day with @Joshua Dorkin before he became #400 in the Fastest Growing Business category.  (Congrats, Josh, awesome job!)  The purpose of the group is to provide information and networking opportunities.  Attendees have told me they have learned tons and done lots of deals with the connections they make at Black Diamond.  

So back to the coffee:  The way to stand out from the crowd of newbies is to make yourself useful to the person you want information from, not to ask them to stop their day to meet with you.  A couple of cases in point:

• @Jared Smith volunteered to help us at Black Diamond.  He hung out, did whatever we asked, and generally was useful in setup or registration desk tasks.  He made a couple of suggestions that made us sit up and notice, and has come up with some really good ideas and processes.  He's now working with one of my partners in his real estate business.
• @Tyler Libby also volunteered to help at Black Diamond, and was a life saver at our last event on Tuesday, we were short handed and he and his wife Amanda made all the difference.  

The point of this post was to thank Jared and Tyler publicly, since we are very appreciative, but I decided it would make a good post for people starting out.  Feel free to disagree with my position, I know it's not popular.  

[Tyler Libby]

Thank you, @Ann Bellamy ! It was a pleasure to help out.  I think you are offering a great service to the industry and as soon as I went to my first event, I thought "I want to be a part of this any way I can!"

Regarding the rest of your post, I couldn't agree more!  My general life philosophy is "You have to pay in advance." and I don't just mean money here. If you want to get something, you have to put the work in FIRST! And that's with everything!  Does someone want to be an awesome piano player (for a random example)? Most of us will have to practice, a lot, FIRST.  You want to be a real estate investor, you have to learn, make mistakes and put in the time. This idea, and in my opinion a law of the universe, applies to anything and everything someone could possibly want to do. You have to pay in advance (if I could double bold underline that I would).

This brings me to the next part of my philosophy, "help people where ever you can, but don't expect anything in return."  See someone that can use help? HELP THEM! See an organization doing good things and you see a way that you can be of assistance? Ask if you can help! ( to put is simply, make yourself useful to as many people as you can)

Strange things start to happen, at least in my experience, when you proceed this way.  Life, in general, gets better.

So, again, thank you for letting my wife and I help out. We really had a great time!