How to Get Help Doing Your Deal (without getting a “mentor”)

by Vena Jones-Cox

When you’re doing your first few deals—or doing your first few deals in a strategy that you haven’t explored before—you need help.

Maybe it’s help evaluating the deal. Maybe it’s help with negotiation or contracts. Maybe it’s help understanding how to ‘price’ the rent or sale price. Maybe it’s help understanding how the financing will work. But you’ll find yourself needing advice from people who’ve ‘been there, done that, got the T-shirt’ over and over again throughout your real estate career.

This is no small matter; it’s easy to lose a deal (or worse yet, do a bad one!) because there’s ONE hangup. ONE question that needs to be answered or ONE problem that needs to be overcome

1-4:  EVERY Friday morning at our online Haves and Wants meeting. It’s very common for members to attend with the “Want” of “I need someone to walk me through how to do this subject to deal I found” or “Can someone help me with evaluating a property I’m trying to buy?” and to get assistance either then and there, or later in the day from someone who volunteers to help out.

5:  At our  monthly online General Membership Meetings. Each begins with an informal early bird session where you can ask questions, introduce yourself, find out who does what.

6: At our monthly in-person Chapter meetings. If you happen to live in the Columbus, Cleveland, or New Smyrna Beach areas, you can attend these meetings, all of which start with a general networking/Q&A session.

7: Our monthly online “Summit Investors Help Nights”, the last Wednesday of each month. These are topic-driven (upcoming topics include getting private money, rentals, creative deal structuring, and more) and have no presentation or lecture. They’re purely for putting active investors together with people who have questions about their topics.

8-19: At any of our weeknight online focus groups. Each of these groups meets to discuss a particular strategy, like short-term rentals, shared housing, note buying, apartments, wholesaling, and retailing to name a few. They’re another chance to meet experts in that field. (You’re a rental owner but need to know how to price a new kitchen? Go to the rehab/retail group this month and ask! You’re a wholesaler who stumbled on a subject to deal? The creative finance focus group is full of people who can help!)

20-21: Join Express Success. In addition to a monthly online group coaching call, this year-long program includes unlimited online Q&A—you post a question, it gets answered by an expert within days. (You can get more information about this upgraded program on our website).

Even if you’re newer to COREE, and don’t know who’s who yet, and haven’t built the relationships you need to just pick up the phone and call someone, there are TWENTY ONE times a month when you can get questions answered, so that you can do that deal you’re trying to do more confidently.

But the big secret is this. You have to ASK.

You have to be brave enough to ‘risk’ not knowing what question you’re even asking (don’t worry, someone will help you clarify), and trusting enough to know that this is a community that has each other’s backs.

You’ll find that when you do, you’ll be offered help by people who’ve been active long enough to remember when THEY asked for help, and got it. And you won’t lose deals, or do bad deals, because you didn’t know what to do.

Remember, you don’t have to know everything to make money in real estate. You just need to know people who know everything. And that’s why we come together as a community—because wealth building is, and always has been, a team sport.