mentoring

[Jasko Balic]

Hello Bigger Pockets community. I'm looking for a mentor in the Austin area. I am new to real estate and would like to shadow someone on a deal. I'm currently attending college and work as an Anesthesia tech in Austin. Any help and advice is welcome. I recently went to a local REIA but it sounded a lot like a sales pitch to me.

[Alex G.]

@Jasko Balic  

When you get into real estate you'll be selling houses to investors and occupants. If you own rentals, you'll be selling your rentals to your tenants. When you have projects you'd like other investors to invest their money in - you'll be selling the value of these projects and yourself. When you buy houses direct from sellers you'll be selling the value of your services to sellers. When you buy thru realtors you'll be selling yourself to these agents as a solid, performing buyer, etc., etc.

So you shouldn't really be surprised or even offended when you see various individuals and companies (including local REIAs) sell their wares to attendees. They are investing time, energy, man-power and often a good bit of money to put together these events, classes, resources, etc.  and make them available to investors like you. In fact, you might take notes and learn some salesmanship from them. 

Heck, look around on BP. A lot of folks who enjoyed certain degree of success in their investing are offering products and services for sale here, raising money, creating partnerships, etc. BP itself sell a lot of helpful tools and resources to investors & sell advertising to sponsors in order to be able to provide a whole lot of other free great services to all of us that we enjoy that much.

Now to your specific request. It's useful to understand that both in real estate and in life pretty much everybody is tuned to the WIIFM (what's in it for me) station.  So when you tell the World "I would like to find a mentor, I'd like to shadow a transaction, etc..." you are playing a tune from your own WIIFM station. Nothing wrong with that. But relationships are never a one way street.

Your prospective mentors are likely tuned to their own stations, they go their life and business that demand their attention. You want to break through that preoccupation. To tune to their WIIFM station you'll need to accentuate what exactly you are planning to bring to the table in the relationship you are seeking.

Best!