Monetize Everything

[Jason H.]

2014 was my wife an I's first year as real estate investors and we managed to get our first fix and flip under our belt.  Exciting!  

I've learned more this year actually doing then I ever did reading and researching and trying to figure out how to overcome my fears and take the leap (thanks in part to our mentor and a great network of people!).

But what I've realized in reflection is that "rehabbing" is a means to an end, even though I love the entire process.  Although it is a great way to build up some capital and maybe build a rental portfolio and some passive income, it is not going to get us living the shivas life on a beach anytime soon unless we can do some serious scaling, outsourcing, and automating.  

This realization has also got me thinking about how I can monetize everything that I do to generate other streams of income.  It appears to me that paying for a stager is a quick fix, but starting a staging business to compliment my rehabbing business is better.  Why give free advice when I can become a coach.  How can I sell this excel spreadsheet I spent months refining.  How can I capture all of these profitable ideas running through my head and manifest a real business model around them; maybe write a book like @J Scott did.  

All of these ideas have once again got me feeling stuck, not sure which direction to go in.  I can see that focusing on too many things at once can lead to every aspect of my business suffering.  I can spend the next decade rehabbing 500 houses too.  Ok, then what.  

I guess I was hoping to open this discussion and hear how other people feel on the subject.  Does anyone have experience monetizing aspects of their business?  Success stories?  Challenges?  

I was a bit surprised to see that there was very few threads on BP discussing monetization. 

Jason

[Scott Costello]

Hi Jason,

As a person who has fallen victim to this myself, you have to watch that you don't spread yourself too thin.  It's a great thought to try and monetize different aspects of your business, but splitting your attention at this point in your flipping career might be a mistake.  

Every time I try and do multiple things at once, everything suffers.  I say, keep working on flipping houses for a year or two more.  When you have a more automated process and have people working for you.  Then try to add another piece to the business (coaching or selling your spread sheet).  

This is just my 2cents.

-Scott