How a Wannabe or Experienced Investor Can Obtain a FREE/PAID Education

One of my most popular blog posts was based on an interview I had with Master Tony Robbins’ coach Trevor McGregor, where he outlined the 5 reasons why you aren’t scaling your business (read the full article here).

One of the five main reasons investors fail to scale their business is due to lack of accountability. You don’t have somebody holding your feel to the fire to make you follow through with what you say you are going to do. Or when the going gets tough, you don’t have an experienced person to turn to. Instead, you follow the path of least resistance and cheat yourself out of what could have been.

While Trevor’s advice was specifically in reference to investors who already have a few deals under their belts, it can apply to the wannabe investor who is having difficultly buying that first deal, sending that first direct mailer, or attending that first meet-up group.

How can we find that accountability we need to overcome that initial barrier to entry? Trevor believes finding an accountability partner is the solution. However, like many things in life, there are always multiple solutions to a problem.

Another solution, along the same lines as an accountability partner, is to find an experience investor to take you under their wing. In a conversation with a wholesaler Josiah Rosebury in early 2017, he explained how he was able to enter the investing arena through apprenticeship. First, Josiah offered to be the boots on the ground for an experienced rehabber for free. Instead of paying hundreds – if not thousands – of dollars for a mentor, he exchanged his time and effort for knowledge, which allowed him to scale his business to the point where he was wholesaling two deals a month for an entire year.

Once Josiah scaled his business to two wholesale deals a month, he wanted to pursue fix-and-flipping as a second revenue stream. Again, instead of paying a mentor, he partnered with another experience rehabber, helping to finance their deals. With this approach, not only did he get paid, but he received first-hand knowledge of fix-and-flipping, which he was able to then apply to his own business.

Related: Two Ways to Gain Direct Knowledge From Experienced Investors for FREE

Education is a must if you want to be a successful real estate investor. And there is many “free” ways to learn how to become a real estate investor without having to hire a mentor or stumble your way through your own failures.

David Phelps, a nationally recognized speaker and full-time passive investor, echoed this educational and accountability/apprenticeship advice in our recent conversation.

What was David’s best ever advice? “Before anybody starts investing, I would tell you today to start by being an apprentice,” he said. “It means find somebody in your marketplace, in the space… Just find the best person who you know well enough that has a great platform and is doing something that interests you and you believe they have a lifestyle also that reflects what you’re really looking for in the long-term.”

Once you find that person (here is an article for how to do so), David said, “tell that person, ‘Hey, I’ll come work for you for free for a period of time.’” In fact, that person may actually pay you, so, like Josiah’s situation, you may have the dual benefit of education and money coming in.

Like Trevor and Josiah, David stressed the importance, and in fact, the requirement of investing in your education if you want to efficiently scale your business. “Mentorship, apprenticeship to me that is the fastest track, inclusive of just reading a lot, being around the people, going to conferences, seminars, listening to podcasts,” he said. “All those are great, but I think actually being able to tag along with somebody who has already created the path and can show you so many things so quickly about life in general, business principles, finance principles, specifically about real estate – you can learn so much faster and kind of skip your own training wheel, which for most of us are wobbly at first. We fall off and scrape our knees and there’s nothing wrong with that, but if there’s a faster track where I don’t have to have patches in my knees and elbows as often and as long, then I’ll take that path every time.”

If you have any comments or questions, leave a comment below.