Any advice to a Newbie beginning to get discouraged??

[Tursheca Fowler]

Hello All...
I am a Newbie wholesaler here in the Houston area...and I have yet to wholesale my first property. I have been doing this since Feb 2011 and I am really beginning to become discouraged. I have read book after book....and subscribed to countless "guru" sites....all saying the same thing, "If I can do it, you can do it." I really want to be successful doing this, but it seems that I have hit that stagnant and dreaded learning curve. I need words of wisdom and encouragement from experienced wholesalers and investors who have been in the game for a while. Thanks in advance......

[Bill Gulley]

Originally posted by Tursheca Fowler:

Hello All...
I am a Newbie wholesaler here in the Houston area...and I have yet to wholesale my first property. I have been doing this since Feb 2011 and I am really beginning to become discouraged. I have read book after book....and subscribed to countless "guru" sites....all saying the same thing, "If I can do it, you can do it." I really want to be successful doing this, but it seems that I have hit that stagnant and dreaded learning curve. I need words of wisdom and encouragement from experienced wholesalers and investors who have been in the game for a while. Thanks in advance......

Hi, I'm going to thow out a few pounds of reality here. IMO, it's really too bad that there are people who prey on others as much as many gurus do. Saying "if I can do it, you can do it" is really obsurd, since we are all very different. People do not have the same talents, degrees of intelligence, education, social skills or determination. Buying into that guru promotional stuff is a big mistake.

I can tell someone all day how to do an option on a property, point out all the advantages and pitfalls, that does not mean that person can accomplish what I can.
Let's put me back 30+ years, when I began considering RE seriously. No one starts anything with experience, but some will clearly have advantages over others having equal RE knowledge.

To be in RE, you need to have an extraverted personallity, if you are a wall flower, timid and fear meeting people, RE is not for you! You need to be willing to fail in front of people, face to face.

You need some social skills, know not to spit on the sidewalk so to speak. If someone uses foul language as a course of general conversation, they need to clean up their act. RE is a social activity. Someone who can place themselves in different social settings and be socially acceptable in different settings will do much better than one who can not.

Education is a very important factor, formal and street smarts. Your educational background will make up much of your social skills as well as the ability to grasp abstract ideas, comprehend the purpose of laws and regulations to be applied and construct or devise methods in a logical order to solve problems. Your education, like it or not, will determine who you rub elbows with, as people of similar background and beliefs feel more comfortable being with others similar or like themselves.

Determination is a requirement to succeed at anything.. without it you will fail no matter what you do (failing meaning that you will not excell, but may survive or get by). Endurance, the ability to continue toward your goal even after failure is also required in life and very much in RE.

So, when I strated in RE, I had attained a degree of maturity with a better than average command over these aspects than others attempting to do similar things. I had the confidence to try, determination to make it work and the endurance to carry me past failures, and there were failures! Your future is not pre-determined by anyone other than you. Gotta know your limitations, and then overcome them.

Your future in anything should not be based soley on how much money you can possibly make, the monetary perpensity. This is really the basis used by gurus to motivate the public or their market to buy the scheme. You will be more successful in life if you love what you do. I have made more money than most in real estate and related business activities, but that is not what I see as being the most successful aspect of my life. Making real dreams come true for others is by far the greatest accomplishment in my professional career. And I'm not talking about helping investors or others in the industry so much as helping my clients succeed. I must admit, my first few deals were about making money, but when you see the light and understand the big picture of your efforts, hopefully you will love what you doing for other reasons.

So, Tursheca, are you a special person? Can you meet these requirements to be successful in real estate? Do you have what it takes? Only you can answer such questions. Unlike others, I won't encourage you to implement some guru program or buy another book. I encourage you to take a long hard look at what you want to be and how you will define success. If you are willing to be a real estate professional and learn from the ground up, I'd welcome you to a very rewarding carrer choice!

Good luck to you.