Get Involved

Back when Brandon Turner was the host of the BiggerPockets podcast, he always stressed the importance of building relationships in order to find a mentor. He spoke about starting small by going out for a cup of coffee. From there he said to do small tasks to build a reputation as being a hardworking and dependable individual who is eager to learn. It is through these repeated actions where you find a mentor and learn all about real estate investing. You can learn a lot from books and podcasts but as I am figuring out, nothing beats real life, hands on experience. In this post, I’d like to share my experience with getting involved with real life investing.

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with a local real estate investor. This investor gave me a small job to do of taking some pictures of a home. I had offered this to him when meeting for coffee and hoped he would eventually reach out. After some time went by he did in fact reach out about an opportunity. He was working with an out of state investor on acquiring multiple properties all off market from the same seller. These homes were currently occupied with tenants living in them so he had to notify them that I was coming by.

I gladly jumped at the opportunity and got the address for the home. The next day I went out to take pictures of the home. This home was not in the best area, likely a C or slightly worse class neighborhood. I want to stress the importance of safety in moments like these. Let a friend or loved one have the location on your phone (this is really easy to set up), know your surroundings, look for exits, and at worst bring something for defense like pepper spray if you feel it is necessary. This is not to scare you as the far majority of homes will not be that bad. It is always good to be safe and to prepare for the worst. I felt pretty safe taking the job but did give my brother the location of my phone.

The home ended up being pretty nice and the tenant was a sweet old lady who was happy to help me in any way I needed. I got all of the pictures that the investor asked for and went ahead and got quite a few extra. It is always important to do good work and in this case I went beyond what he asked for. Having more pictures would help with his decision making process so I was glad to take some extra pictures.

This was a great learning experience and I even got paid for my time. I hope to work more in the future with this investor and continue to build a solid relationship with him. Take some time and put yourself out there. Get involved with local investors in your community, you’ll never know where it might take you.