Real Estate Investor or Business Owner? Know The Difference?

[Bill Ham]

Real Estate Investor or Business Owner? Do You Know The Difference?

Most real estate investors don’t realize that they are and should be acting like real entrepreneurs and are not actually real estate investors at all. This is one major mistake that most new investors make and it can definitely lead to early failure in the real estate business.

An investor is someone that is sitting around on a pile of cash and needing to get a return on all the money they have to invest with.

If I didn’t just describe you, then you are not an investor. You are a real estate entrepreneur and there is a BIG difference!

As a real estate entrepreneur or real estate business owner you need to start by treating yourself and thinking like a business and business owner. This means working long hours that don’t necessarily have a paycheck at the end. You need to be creative and innovative in your approach to buying real estate. Here are a few areas to consider.

1.Know who your competition is and what they are doing to get deals.

2.You need to know your exit strategy for the deal before you go into it.

3.Where will you get funding from?

4.Do you need partners to bring experience, credibility, equity?

5.How will you find those partners (investors with all that cash I mentioned)

6.Do you have systems in place for creating deal flow?

7.Do you have systems in place for exiting the deal profitably? (buyers list)

8.Do you have any software systems in place to minimize the work load?

Most importantly…do you have someone in your corner looking over your shoulder and giving you solid advice on a regular basis? No matter how good, big, successful, wealthy you are, you always need good council or coaching. I always have coaches and council in my business model no matter what I am doing or working on. I never believe that I know it all, no matter how big my portfolio is.

When you get started in real estate (or if you already are) you need to act as if you are building a business. The product just happens to be real estate but I would suggest that you actually forget that for now. Act as if your product was a new widget that the world has never seen before. How will you tell the world about yourself and business? How will you market and sell this product? How will you get the funds to run the business? Think like a business owner not an investor.

If you can do this and set up this type of business structure then the product is inconsequential and will take care of itself.