IC Elesson: How to Become a Genius Real Estate Investor Like Me

It’s becoming hard to ignore my own brilliance.

Yep, apparently I’m some kind of super-genius, blessed with a rare real estate gene that you just weren’t born with.

It would be a lot easier to be humble if I weren’t constantly being told things like:

“Well, when I hear YOU say it, it sounds obvious that the seller would say yes—but I could never think of that while I was talking to a seller, and I wouldn’t sound that smooth about it even if I did.”’

And

“When you walked through that [creative] deal that way, I totally understood it, but if I were alone with the same facts, I never could have come up with it”

And

“How did you learn all this stuff? What book can I buy that will make me as smart as you?”

Well, lucky for you, I’ve just launched my all new, top-secret, turnkey, done-for-you knowledge system that crams 25 years’ experience into 16 minutes of audio so powerful, you don’t even have to bother to listen to it to get the full benefit automatically. Sadly, quantities are extremely limited even though it’s delivered online and instantly. Gurus don’t even want you to have this automated system—that’s how life-changingly potent it is.

Oops, we ran out of them while I was busy being sarcastic. Don’t worry, we’ll re-launch it at half the price next month.

But admit it, there’s a little part of you that wants that product to be real. In fact, there’s a little part of you that’s thinking that it SHOULD be real and wondering why no one’s created it yet, isn’t there?

That’s because we live in a culture that tells us that a quick fix is as close as our credit card. And by “culture”, I mean both the larger culture that tells us that quick, drastic weight loss is just a Jenny Craig membership or a bottle of Hydroxycut or a lap band or 30 days with the P90X DVD away. Still too hard?  That’s OK, there all SORTS of new drugs for diabetic nerve pain, back aches, and all the other side effects of choosing not to lose. It’s easy, it’s quick, and you barely have to do anything. Well, except for that P90X thing, which does look a little horrifying.

But we—real estate entrepreneurs—also live in a micro-culture that caters to the worst of the instant-gratification, “done for you” desires that I suspect even our cave-dwelling ancestors must have had (otherwise, we wouldn’t HAVE the wheel. Or the lever. Or P90X).

Yes, it’s human nature to try to find ways to get resources without working too hard. But no, there’s no shortcut that will take you from complete newbie to real estate goddess in 6 weeks.

How did I get so smooth and confident in talking to sellers that you literally oooh and aaaah when you hear me do it? I talked to approximately—no exaggeration—10,000 sellers. And how did I do THAT? I delivered 200,000 marketing messages, via mail, car signs, newspaper ads, business cards, and other media. And how did I do THAT? I read marketing books, went to marketing seminars, created marketing pieces, and got them deployed. And before that, I studied and studied and studied my strategy so that when they did call, I had some clue what I was talking about. And the whole time, I continued to read and study and talk to other real estate folks and to absorb some of what I was learning into my actual day to day activities.

How did I learn creative financing so thoroughly that I, according to my partner, can think of 18 ways to do any particular deal within 60 seconds of knowing the details? I studied ALL the different types of creative finance, and I learned to use a financial calculator, and I learned the back end of all the deals you could do creatively, so that I didn’t make mistakes on the front end, and I applied these things to real deals, and I did it a couple of hundred times.

Hear me well: I did NOT wait until I was absolutely sure what I was doing before I took my first call. I did NOT duck the fact that I felt like a complete idiot the 1^st 100 times I talked to sellers by hiring a “done for you” service to talk to them instead. I did NOT spend a year perfecting my first postcard before I mailed it. I did NOT get a Ph.D. in creative deals in an ivory tower somewhere, and then spring full-blown upon the world a genius/expert in the field. That came later. Or will come someday. Or something.

Yes, I took all the seminars, but the stuff I know that you don’t know came from the little random experiences that happen every day when you’re actually PRACTICING the real estate business. When you ask me a question about a seller who wants full price, and I am able to tell you exactly what he said without hearing your conversation, it’s NOT because I read it in a book—it’s because I’ve talked to some version of that seller a zillion times. When I’m able to predict for you that if you say ‘X’, the seller will come back with ‘Y’ after 6 weeks of hemming and hawing, it’s not because I’m psychic—it’s because I have an intuition built on umpteen experiences I don’t even consciously remember anymore. When I seemingly instantaneously come up with 5 options for doing a particular deal, it’s not because I’m a savant, it’s because I’ve already run all those scenarios with actual sellers—even if the deal didn’t actually consummate–more than once.

If you’re looking for the quick path to real estate mastery, stop looking for it in courses, seminars, and group meetings—that’s like trying to become a great football player by reading the playbook. Do that—‘cause you do have to know the rules—but if you want to be great, get out on the field and play. And when there’s no game going on, run sprints and throw the ball and hit the weight room and find a coach and expect that there will be lots of hard work and hours on the turf.

You’d never expect to become great at a sport, or a hobby, or musical instrument by buying a done-for-you system. Don’t expect to become financially free that way, either. The more practice you get, the higher level of mastery you’ll achieve—and the faster you get that experience, the faster you’ll master your business.