All Forum Posts by: Matt Atkins

I'm in the same boat, Elliot Glassman and I am also just as committed to learning as much as I can as fast as I can but I also have no idea where to start. I'm going to a few REIA meetings in the coming weeks and have a few face to face meetings set up with a couple of local investors I've met in the short time that I've been here. I'm also going to meet with a few friends of mine who are involved with real estate investing in some capacity. I'd love to link up with another motivated newbie on a regular basis to go over what we've learned so far. Let me know if you're interested and we can set something up. Good luck!

Good morning! My name is Matt and I'm a small business owner here in Denver. I am incredibly new to the idea of real estate investing but have spent the last 3 months immersing myself in anything and everything I can get my hands on. While I know it might change once or twice once I'm able to get involved myself, I know what my short and long term goals are and I'm realistic about my current situation. I started my business from scratch 3 years ago and have built it into a successful operation that is ready to expand into other cities. While business is good, the salary that I'm able to take out of the business isn't enough for my expenses, debt pay down, and saving to be able to invest. Over the past couple of months, I have been focusing on creating more efficient processes and delegating some of my busy work to employees so I can focus on bringing in some more income in the short term. I got involved in the sharing economy (Uber, Lyft, Postmates, etc) but I feel like I'm wasting my time, especially with my newfound love of the idea of real estate investing. Here's what I know: 1. As of now, my long term goal is to acquire enough buy and hold properties to be financially free. 2. My first short term goal is to purchase our first property by the end the year. My plan is to get a conventional loan and live in it for a year or so while we rehab it and then rent it out. 3. While I am making enough money with my side hussle to cover expenses and debt pay down, I feel like there has to be a more productive use of my time knowing that I want get involved with real estate investing as soon as possible. And now finally for my long winded question. I've read thousands of other pieces of advice to people in a similar spot and the answer is almost always to find a local investor and offer to do some grunt work while learning the ropes. How do you do this? I am not and never have been scared of hard work and I know that I can provide a ton of value, but I don't even know where to start looking for that. I've already found a few local Meetups that I'll be attending in the coming weeks. Is that the best place? Thanks for reading my long winded post. I love this community and can't wait to be able to call myself an investor.

Hey Chris Nance I'm in a similar boat and am looking to get involved any way I can. Let's chat when you're in Denver next. Did you make it to the Meetup last night?

Did you make it last night in the snow Tyler Stephens ? How was it?

Thanks for the advice Bill S. I've already started paying attention to that kind of stuff. Now I just need to know what to do when I find one.

Thanks for the note Dan Mackin I so wish I could make it tomorrow night! That's exactly the kinds of things I want to start being involved in. I will keep my eye out for the next one and hope to meet you there.

Good morning BiggerPockets!

My name is Matt Atkins and I am super new to BiggerPockets community and real estate investing as a whole. I live in Littleton, just south of Denver. I have been a small business owner here in the Denver area for the last 3 years. I started a healthy, gourmet meal delivery service called EatingPrimal from the ground up. This year, I am working on automating and delegating so we can take the show on the road to other cities. 

As so many others I'm learning, my mind was blown when I read Rich Dad Poor Dad last year. I was already a business owner and a lot of what he said just made sense to me. Mr. Kyosaki really opened my eyes to what real wealth means and just how far away from that I was. I started to really look at my current financial picture and realized that I had a lot of work to do to set my family up for long term success. All of my savings and retirement is tied up in my business which I now realize just how scary that is. I believe in the future success of the business, but I understand now how important multiple streams of income are and not putting all of our eggs in one basket. For the past 3 years, I have been so laser focused on the growth of my business that I have neglected planning for the future. There have been seasons that I most definitely should have been focused on bringing in more income. My mindset has been to work myself to the bone to grow the business and the additional income would come. It didn't come fast enough, and as a result, I put my family in a bad financial position. Since then, I found a few ways to bring in more income (sharing economy like Uber, Lyft, Postmates) but recently I've been feeling like I'm not making the best use of my time. Instead of listening to the radio while I was driving around staring at my windshield, I started listening to Podcasts and found BiggerPockets. 

Since finding the podcast and then the BiggerPockets website, I have been absorbing as much information as I can get my hands on. I am dumbfounded by all of the ways to get involved in real estate investing. I really had no idea just how important real estate was to a long term investment strategy. Every spare minute I have now is spent on the BiggerPockets app on my phone learning as much as I can as fast as I can. I've had several conversations with people that I know of in my network that are involved in real estate and will start attending some REI meet-ups in the coming weeks. I am in sponge-mode and am trying to immerse myself in as much information as possible so I can start to develop my own strategy.

As of right now, I am actively searching for ways to get involved in the local real estate investing community. I don't want to wait until I have enough cash to jump in on the investing side myself. Instead of driving around mindlessly delivering food to people or people to food, I want my necessary additional income to come from somewhere in the real estate community so I can learn from others while I'm meeting my obligations. I am open to any and all suggestions and I am so very excited to be a new member of this life changing community.

Cheers!