How to find a real estate mentor

How to find a real estate mentor

A basic definition of a real estate mentor is someone with the experience and track record of success who is willing to share their time and knowledge with you. A mentor will share his experiences with you, but good and bad, in order to speed up your learning curve. The lessons that a mentor can teach you are lessons that you can learn on your own, but it will take you many more years and cost you a lot of money. As a good friend of mine says, “If you think education is expensive, you should see the cost of ignorance”. Screw up one big deal and you will understand the full wisdom of that statement.

So how do you find a mentor?

You could just Google, real estate mentor or real estate coaching program and roll the dice with your money. You will find a host of websites, with flashy and largely unverifiable claims. Let’s be honest here, a monkey can throw up a pretty fancy website nowadays. You may have already learned this lesson, but some of the stuff on the internet isn’t true. If you are smart, you are going to want to find a mentor that isn’t a total fraud.

There are two places that you should look for a potential mentor. One is here on BP. The reason that Bigger Pockets is a good place to looks is that you can see how someone answers questions, and gauge the depth of their knowledge and experience. You can also see how others react to their advice. A room full of potential critics is a bad place for a scam artist.

The second place to look for a mentor is your local REIA or REI club. Whatever the name. a room full of investors will have a few seasoned citizens who are willing to help new people. You need to show up at meetings early and be ready to network. Ask questions, and see who has the answers. Is there one person that everyone else looks to for answers? That person might be your future mentor.

In both places, you are looking for someone who has proven to the crowd that they really do know what they are talking about. The worst thing you can do is to find a so-called mentor, who just wants to take your money and vanish. A lot of real estate careers die in darkness because someone had a slick sales pitch and nothing to back it up.