From Tinder Swindler to Inventing Anna - How do you know you are working with someone genuine? While today, it looks to me very simple to determine who I want to work with in Real Estate, I understand that for new investors and for people far away from the market, it can be hard to discern. So here are my tips from years of experience in investing and in working with many people. It is really simple.

1.Make sure that you work with someone who builds his real estate business from bricks and mortar and not from BS. Social media has given us all incredible power and some use it for good, to deliver valuable content, to share, to right wrongs, to genuinely connect with others and to just plain share their reality. But some clearly and thoroughly abuse the power and use it to manipulate and lie. So look at what content they put out there. Do they deliver actual information that you learn from? Do they share what they are doing day to day and what the results are? Or are they focused on "motivating" you, sharing content that has nothing to do with the actual business but more about curating their image? I see people building businesses around what is clearly an empty shell. You should not care what kind of car she drives, how nice people think he is or how great she is at making you believe you too can achieve financial independence. Those are just magic tricks to divert your attention away from the facts. All you need to care about is if this person can help you to make the solid investment that you hope to make. You are not seeking a life coach or a friend - -you are seeking someone who will help you get your money invested safely. Keep reminding yourself of that.

2.There are some sizable companies with lots of clients that have left their investors with nothing but losses and headaches. There are well-meaning individuals that have led clients into bad deals. There are investors who have taken their hard earned cash and then blindly trusted a stranger only to learn that the promises were meaningless at best and outright lies at worse. Make sure that whomever you are talking to knows his stuff - come prepared with questions that if they can not answer, an alert should go off in your head. If you are giving someone your money to invest for you, they should know a lot more than you do and be able to answer any question you have or have a person on their team that can.

3. References - everyone can get someone to say something nice about them. But if someone has done a deal with a person or company, they should be able to talk in detail about that project. Speak to 2-3 people who can give you details of what they did and how it went. And make sure it is not too recent. Problems often show up months or even years later -- like rehabs that cut corners or paperwork that was falsified or just not handled properly. A common technique is for people operating in the same space to act as references for one another -- it is not always a bad thing. Good people doing good business frequently cooperate and that is great! But there is a bro mentality that often leads to people referring one of their "bro's" just because they know him - not because they know he is good at what he does. So dive beneath the surface before you commit. 4. If they use words like "haters" and "losers" run really fast. These are signs of people who have actually learned techniques to really dissuade you from looking into the details. Seriously, just the use of these words should be enough to walk away. It's a gaslighting technique and you are not a loser or hater by virtue of wanting to know that you are making a good investment! And I promise you that you will never hear those words from a true professional. Quite the opposite.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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