Finding a local mentor in Orlando, Fl

[Rowan Woodburn]

Hello Bigger-pockets family

I was reading the book on how to get started in real estate investing and my main focus was finding a mentor that can coach me through this complexed industry and it also said to find a local mentor that's experienced but not so busy that he or she will charge me for their services, all I need to do is build a relationship with them. My concern is if I find a local mentor in my area, will I be competing in the same housing marketing as my mentor?  Will I  be competing against my mentor? Is that a good or bad thing? If not are there any local mentors in the Orlando, Fl  area who are willing to coach and build a trust worthy relationship with a newbie like me? Lol!

[Daniel Ryu]

@Rowan Woodburn

Hi Rowan! Welcome to BP.

I think a good question to ask might be - How could you deliver value to a potential mentor?

As a newbie, you might not know much about investing, but as a carpenter, I'm sure you have a lot of value to offer.

Maybe you could look through the BP members who are in Florida and see what people have been posting and start getting active in the forums and giving insights on issues that you know about. 

As I was looking for 'mentors' as well, I took this approach. Only since I'm living in Korea, I had to find ways I could be of service 'virtually.' I leveraged the skills I had - building business systems, organizing, and strategic planning - and when I met with investors virtually, by skype or at the meetup I helped organized, I would try to find out their pain points. 

With one investor, it had to do with internet marketing. Luckily, I happened to work on a internet marketing project in my spare time, so I used this knowledge to prepare a 2 page report on 'messaging' for his website. This lead to more conversation, and soon we had formed a partnership together.  (Better than mentoring since you get the same access and information, but you also get real life experience ^^).

It took some time, but if you're focused on that question of how to deliver value to others, I think it will make the process of finding a mentor, partner or colleague easier. It puts you in an active position and makes you focus on the value you can bring, instead of the value you hope to get from others. This, at least for me, gives me more confidence to approach others because I'm thinking first and foremost about how I can help them before thinking about what they can do for me.

Anyways, best of luck and feel free to reach out anytime. ^^