Hello all, another newbie(long winded story)

[Nicole Mercer]

My name is EJ and I found this site while searching the merits of paying for a mentor. Im a brand spanking new investor still in the learning stage and,after readimg through the thread, I decided to forego that plan and try it on my own.  It wasn't a week ago that I had this brillant idea that I needed a plan to crush my debt, living from paycheck to paycheck, and just being plain poor. I've always had that desire it was just that I qas complacent with my job that I've had for 4 years now. What lit a fire under my butt was the fact that they are going to reduce my scheduled hrs by 50% on the 28, and I didnt know this until just a week ago. Unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to have a backup plan. I went through a bout of panic, followed by some frantic Google searches for income solutions as my family won't be able to help me out as they are struggling as well. 

After searching I knew I wouldn't be able to get a conventional job quickly, so I thought.  Hmmm I can start a very very small business and hope to grow it. So I searched from soap making , to mobile truck retail stores, to photography. (Im an artsy person lol) but there was one snag in all of that. Material cost. How in the world am I going to get the materials for any of those when I habe practically no money, and an assumed credit so bad that the bank would throw me out for such absurdity.  Back at square one I guess. It wasn't untill I was searching though YouTube and drowning my sorrows with a mini Ben and Jerry's cup of vanilla ice cream that I found .... no not Bigger Pockets but a guy Named Shea Woods and his channel called The Shea Show. This guy is a property manager in the wonderful Detroit, (I really mean that from a future investors point pf veiw) this guy was doing it an then some. It got me thinking. "I like walking thought empty houses and imagining the potential it has. I like the idea of fixing up stuff. I've aways liked those house tv show staring with Extreme home make over when I was 12. Why not try that. So doing a littke youtubing and through all the horrible neighbors, tenant thrashing my home, and squatters of America  I found... No not Bigger Pockets but a webinar by Phil Pustejovsky called "How to by real estate with out cash or credit" and instantly though" Hey! I don't have any of those!" 

 Of course I knew there was a  catch tjat there was no way you could just get property with no money but I watched it anyway, and an hr later I was downloading the book. Im 4 chapers in now. Then I noticed he mention a mentor program were he would teach you the ropes and everything would bre great we would be rakeig in the dough. My reasonable mind  had to stop my poor mind in its tracks cause it was ready to sign up no questions asked. So I did some google searching and clicked on a few links b they really didnt have any experiencs with this guy or his mentor program, so more clickong and searching I saw a link that  I just  randomly clicked on that led me to a fourm that someone asked the samething I wanted to know "Is this mentor program worth it. Should I try it out?" And all thses skeptics came out of the wood works along with praisers sayi g pretty much the exact same thing so juat thought it was a dud. But I kept coming accross these two letters BP haha thas funny cause its the same two letters as a role playing site I used In Highshcool. But what is BP though, i knew they couldnt be talking about British Petroleum so I scrolled up and there was my answer Bigger Pockets. After clicking the logo I found that it was a real estate forum. WHAT! They have those. I thought real estate people were  only those people who wear suits and try to sell you the house that your going to say in for the next 80 years. Flabbergasted I read through at lease I thread in each subfourm and signed up beacue well this place looks like it has a plethora of stuff I didn't know. Ive read though success stories to give myself hope that im going in the right direction, and then watched a video."Getting started in Real Estate Investing in Seven Basic Steps" all the while thinking what does this pipsqeek know?! He doesn't look much older than me!"setting aside my Jealosy i watched it again, and liked every bit of it, then I wached "How to Find, Analize and Finance an Incredible Real Estate Deal"  

So after acknowledging that Brandon indeed knows what he's talking about I decided to post this greetings. Ok it can count as a blog like post with so many typos amd grammar errors tha the grammar nazis will be physically looking for me. I already set a goal to get my first property no later than January.  So im going to be all over the place on this thing. Wish me luck guy and I would love to have some inital advise from the folks whos done this, and newer people on how they are fairing so far.

Tl:dr: Through a series of panicked web searching,I found this fourm and is saying hello.