Just be ready to pay for that experience either directly or indirectly like giving them a better equity position in your joint venture.

  $5K will not go far in direct mail or online pay per click ads. 

It likely will be a smaller slice of the profits, but it could be a much bigger operation overall.If you are in direct competition, you could offer your partner a bigger share of the profits.  

March 1st, I actually indirectly committed to taking massive action on this investing thing.I've procrastinated a lot, visited the BP site off and on, listened to a lot of the BP podcasts, got all motivated, but would fold under the pressure of life (work, business, family, school, etc) I've learned a lot from BP, a host of other free podcasts and youtube videos (Sean Terry, Cris Chico, Cody Sperber, etc) and a live event in Anaheim, CA with Ginger Macias (on March 1st).

But, if you buy a house in a city 500 miles away and rent it out, and later you drive over to look at buying a second house, that prospecting trip is now deductible because you have a "business" in the area.In your case, I believe you are OK deducting the mileage driven in direct support of your rentals.I am not an attorney or accountant and this is not professional tax advice.

Following up is very important in direct mail.

The Dodd-Frank law prohibits me from lending directly to a borrower, but I can lend indirectly through a licensed broker.

You can’t have indirect benefits from property that is owned by your self-directed IRAYou can’t buy a vacation property and live in it occasionally.

This leads to them paying crazy amounts of money in direct mail just to get a deal.

There can be no direct or indirect benefit between a plan and a disqualified party.A self-directed IRA can invest in real estate and that can be a powerful path for wealth building, but the transactions have to be 100% exclusively for the benefit of the plan at "arm's length".