All Forum Posts by: Alex Gates

Hi,

After one and half years of declining housing sales, the trend is changing and sales are bottoming in most regions. The latest US Housing Numbers reported that the rate of declining home sales is decreasing at a lower rate and is on a path of actual overall growth by year’s end.

At this time foreclosed properties become a very profitable investment opportunity

To Your Success
Alex Gates

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Trying to “Succeed†with one big deal is quite common amongst people who expect to be millionaires in a week and perhaps need to be a little more grounded. The fact is that you cannot defy the laws of the universe and that’s what these people want to do.

There is a process that you must go through in order to “succeedâ€. Why? Because you must grow and learn enough in order to do the things that make you successful.

These people seem to think that the ‘stories’ of a process that you must go through are made up by boring people who just aren’t born to succeed and are quick to tell you of many a person who has enjoyed a rapid ascension to success. However, if as an example, we take a look at the many people who enjoyed some short term success on the back of the dot.com boom of the late 1990s, we’ll see that there were not too many that held onto their fortunes or whatever it was by which they measured their success.

So stop trying to take the short cut and just do the work you need to do because it will probably get you where you want to go a lot faster anyway and then you get to keep the success as well because it is inside of you.

To Your Success
Alex Gates
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This trap is very common amongst people who are risk averse. As we mentioned earlier, knowledge does indeed reduce your risk in the world of investing. However, the undeniable truth is that the best knowledge only comes from experience and not from text books. It can be very tempting to sit at the starting line, learning and preparing, hoping the conditions will be perfect before you begin but that’s simply not how life works. You must face challenges as you come across them by learning and improving as you move forward.

I definitely think it’s wise to get SOME education of what you are going to do before starting but then you need to get going and TAKE ACTION!! Experience is without a doubt the best teacher of how to do something.

But, just as with mountain climbing, in the world of investing you should recognize that your first climbs or deals should be treated as a learning experience and should accordingly be quite small in stature. As it’s a learning experience rather than the pinnacle of your career you should not begin with Everest. Start small so you can learn AND reduce your risk!

To Your Success
Alex Gates

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The power of goal setting has been well documented and communicated so before you skip over this point because you’ve heard it all before I’d like you to consider how well you are doing it. I’m a firm believer that you don’t understand something until you are doing it.

The point I want to make about goals is more to do with the measurement part than with setting them. I know that sounds tedious but it can be really exciting. The most successful companies in the world track their progress against their goals because it is effective to do so.

Imagine putting a simple graph on your wall that has the months along the bottom axis and the cash flow you’ve developed on the vertical axis. You can draw a red line across the graph representing your target of $4,000 per year and then you can draw an angled line that adds another $333 to the cash flow each month. This gives you some very good feedback as to how you are progressing and motivation while there is still time to do something about it. That’s obviously much better than just seeing how you went 12 months later and finding that you only acquired property that produces $1,000 per year. It’s a very simple and powerful tool.

If you are really disciplined you can take this one step further and use the same approach for the activities that produce the outcomes that we are measuring on the other graph. This really helps ensure the result. For example, if you know you need to evaluate 100 properties and make offers on 10 to acquire that amount of property then you could graph those drivers as well.

To Your Success
Alex Gates
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I know of some people who have become totally caught up in the euphoria of newfound knowledge and just couldn’t stop buying tape sets and attending very expensive seminars and bootcamps. So much so, that they must have spent at least $50,000 within a 12 month period and still hadn’t bought their first investment property. They were just bouncing around from one great idea to the next.

I don’t know whether, in their case, it was because they were just caught up in the excitement of that environment, whether it was their way of convincing themselves they were active when they may have been too scared to get started, or they were honestly trying to find the best strategy for them. I’m guessing it

So get your hands on any resources that review the gurus’ strategies so that you can optimize the return on your learning investment. Do broad research of your options early in the process and you’ll minimize the risk of wasting money on unnecessary or unsuitable educational products. I’m sure that investors would agree with me, so please learn from their experiences.

To Your Success
Alex Gates

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Many financial advisors and educators do not act in their clients’ best interests because they need to worry about feeding their own families. Since many do not practice what they preach, they need to earn an income from the advice they are providing and very often the advice serves their best interests and not yours. There are also genuine educators and advisors who DO walk their talk, who do invest, and do exactly the sorts of things they advise you to do. So, it is important that you don’t tar everyone with the same brush and give up on your dreams just because you have decided that the industry is full of crooks. As one guru suggests, that would be like choosing not to experience the joys of swimming in the ocean simply because you are too afraid to go in, on account of dangers such as rips and undercurrents. Instead, why not use that knowledge to take precautions such as swimming on patrolled beaches and enjoy the experience to the full?

So, when it comes to advisors and educators we want to make sure that you distinguish between the following two groups:
1. Those who after you’ve learned how they will profit, you still wish to do business with.
2. Those who are set to gain an unreasonable amount or the nature of the gain reflects a conflict of interests and thereby is not in your best interests.

Think about it…

To Your Success
Alex Gates



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This trap is pretty obvious but it’s so important that it simply cannot be excluded from this list. Education is paramount to success in any endeavor but when we are speaking of investing it is most important to consider its impact on risk.

Investing is widely regarded as a risky pursuit by amateurs and those who are uneducated in the field. To professional investors, a person’s education or knowledge of an investment is by far the single greatest determinant of risk. A well-educated investor can always walk away from a ‘risky’ deal.

Professionals will only help you in the long term if there’s something in it for them. That’s perfectly okay so long as you understand it, after all why shouldn’t they benefit from helping you? But the only way to make sure your needs get top priority from your investing is to take the driver’s seat yourself. In other words, don’t outsource the ultimate responsibility of knowledge acquisition and decision making.

To Your Success
Alex Gates

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Hi ,

There are many good books on the market, however as an active real estate investor, I suggest one that shows a series of advanced strategies and practical steps on how to succeed with real estate investing based on easy to follow instructions and weekly tasks.

If you'll follow - you will succeed.

To Your Success, Alex Gates
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