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Posted almost 10 years ago

Two things every investor should do when first starting out

When starting out as a real estate investor, most investors have an extremely large to do list - setting up legal entities, business cards, finding contractors....and yea most importantly finding leads.  These are all critical things to do, but there are two small and easy things every investor should consider doing:

  1. Create a separate email account for their real estate endeavours
  2. Set up a separate phone number for real estate

These two simple steps can prevent some large headaches down the road.  By separating their real estate vs personal communications, it will allow investors to quickly distinguish between the two.  When someone become an active investor and network more, their email address will find its way onto every wholesaler's email list in town.  If they happen to be in an active market, this may mean dozens of emails daily.  Their mailbox may become as polluted and deter them from even checking your personal mail.

The other benefit of separating the two comes when their business is humming along and they start bringing on help.  With a separate email/phone number, one can readily hand those accounts to their assistants to help manage.  This may become a more difficult task if it is connected to  personal accounts.  On the flip side, if an investor ever decide to take a break from real estate, they can simply turn off those accounts or merely leave them dormant.  

As to which email account and phone system to use, one set of options include gmail and google voice.  These work in tandem as one could register for a gmail account and then register a google voice number with the newly created gmail account.  The best thing is those are free!


    Comments (4)

    1. From what I hear, it is better to have a local number.  Imagine you were driving down the street looking for a service, let's say Tax Preparation.  If you see two signs (one with a local number and one with an out of town number), which one would you be more likely to call?

      On occasion, Google will run out of numbers for a local area.  Eventually, they get a fresh set of numbers for the area.  Can I suggest you try getting a local number again at a later time/date?  A couple people I know have had the same issue, and they just had to wait it out until more numbers became available.

      Hope that helps!


    2. Any thoughts about having a local number for local marketing?

      I signed up for a google voice number and because all the numbers in my area were taken (I mean ALL of them!), I settled for a number from Tennessee just because it had the word HOUSE (46873) in it.

      If I put that on my signage and postage, would it be a deterrent or instead, appear like a larger company trying to get leads in another state?


    3. Thanks for the tips!


    4. This is pure gold, thanks!