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Updated over 5 years ago,
Should I respond to information requests or just ignore them?
My intention of this post is not to offend. It is simply to learn of what other investors do who get frequent requests for information.
I would say a couple of times a week I get a call or an email from someone on BiggerPockets requesting some type of information. They may say something like, “I liked your podcast and I wanted to ask you...” and then they start talking to me about a deal that they are analyzing or an investment strategy they want to use and they want my input. At first, when I started getting these types of emails or calls, I felt flattered that someone would ask me for real estate advice. So I would share my contacts with them or take the time to help them analyze a deal or even take them to lunch and outline my investment strategies with them.
After doing this for several months, I noticed that I was spending a lot of my limited time sharing information, giving advice, helping people analyze deals, giving the names of my contacts to others, etc. and then the people would just go away after they got what they wanted and I wasn’t getting much out of the exchange. It felt nice to give at first, but after awhile I have started to feel like I am giving a lot of my time (which is very limited for me) to people who might not be mindful that they are asking me to dedicate my time to them for nothing in return. I guess they just think that is something that I should want to do or be willing to do. I want to be help people learn how to invest in real estate which is why I host meetups, however I don’t like to just have people take without giving.
For those who have had this happen, what do you do?