Why Moving at a STEADY Pace is the Secret to Real Estate Success

Kevin Amolsch, who has spent more than 14 years as a real estate investor and 10 years in real estate lending, closing on over 1,100 transactions as a buyer, seller, and lender, is one of many speakers who will be presenting at the 1st annual Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever Conference in Denver, CO February 24th to 25th.

I interviewed Kevin on my podcast mid last year and he provided his Best Ever advice, which is a sneak preview of the information he will be presenting at the conference.

What is Kevin’s Best Ever advice and the secret to his success? It’s simply and straightforward: Move at a steady pace.

Let’s unpack this advice and address the two important points: move and steady pace.

Move

Kevin believes move is the most important word in this statement. He finds that many newer investors get caught up in the education trap. They read book after book, blog after blog, and attend seminar after seminar, but they never actually take any action in the real world. While education is essential for an investor’s foundation of knowledge, you don’t need to know everything before you start moving, taking action, and doing deals. Instead of waiting until you know everything (which is never going to happen anyways), Kevin advises newer investors to attempt to implement what they learn along the way. No matter how much education you get, you are going to make mistakes, so as mistakes occur, simply correct them, learn from them, and then keep on moving forward. In other words, it is an iterative process.

Now the question is, how fast or slow should I be moving?

Steady Pace

The second part Kevin’s advice is to make sure that you are moving at a steady pace. When 2007 rolled around, Kevin had mastered the move portion of advice. However, instead of moving at a steady pace, he was struck with the “Ready, Fire, Aim Syndrome.” “Ready, Fire, Aim Syndrome” is when you just go after it, guns a blazing, at an extremely quick pace. While this is great if you are an Olympic sprinter trying to shatter the 100-meter world record, it is not advantageous for a real estate investor that is in it for the long haul.

Adopting this “Ready, Fire, Aim” mentality early in his career really hurt him.

What are the consequences of not following this advice?

Kevin had quickly amassed a portfolio of 35 properties. He was well on his way to accomplishing his goal, which was to create a huge real estate empire… Or so it seemed. The goals and milestones he set for himself were:

• How many homes he was going to purchase in a month
• How many of those houses was he going to keep
• How many was he going to sell

This may be the way you are setting your real estate goals as well, so you may not see it as a problem. Kevin soon learned how ridiculous and dangerous these types of “means to an end” goals could be.

If your goals are based strictly on the number of transactions you complete, you will ultimately end up doing bad deals in order to get to your goal. And if the market were to take a tumble, like it did in 2007, and you are stuck with a bunch of bad properties that are highly leveraged, you are going to be in trouble.

This is the exact situation that Kevin faced. He had a portfolio of properties that were not that great AND were purchased with no money down loans. Once interest rates started creeping up and rents started going down, which is the signal to sell and start unloading properties, he couldn’t because he was so over-leveraged. As a result, he ended up losing a couple properties and had a really stressful couple of years.

The main lesson Kevin learned from this situation is to avoid the “Ready, Aim, Fire Syndrome” by moving slowly, instead of full speed ahead, so that you mitigate the chance of getting in over your head, and potentially losing everything you’ve taken the time, effort and money to build.

Want to learn other real estate professional success habits, as well as a wide range of other real estate niches? Attend the 1st Annual Best Ever Conference February 24-25 in Denver, CO. It’s the only real estate investing conference whose content and speakers are curated based on the expressed needs of the audience. Visit to learn more!

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