Happy Friday folks!

This has been a really great week for me…it would be even better if I had a couple properties under contract, but they are coming soon!  I sent out just under 1000 postcards in the last 48 hours using click2mail.com (if you are doing postcards, there’s simply no better way of doing them).  They should be arriving to the owners this weekend and early next week so I’m fully expecting my phone to be ringing in the early part of next week.  I tried a new marketing message this time….a message that not only provided info that we’ll pay cash and do fast closings  (and that we’d need a discount to do so!) but also that if they wanted full market value we could talk to them about providing them with a tenant-buyer via our rent-to-own program.   Considering that SO many people who have called us in the past have wanted us to give them close to full market value, now we can actually discuss an option that can allow us to still do a deal.

We sent the offer to Mr. No Monkey Offers on Wednesday night. Now let’s evaluate the situation.  He called us at least twice every day (except Sunday!) for 3 or 4 days. We gave him our new monkey offer (which incidentally is lower than our first offer from September of last year) and we haven’t heard boo from him since.  No surprise there, but who knows?  I could easily get a call over the next week or several weeks so we’ll just let him marinate on that offer for a little while.

Finally, I wanted to thank Patrick Riddle (aka P-Rid) for choosing me to participate in his MustKnowInvesting.com Best and Brightest Women in Real Estate Investing series! As part of the series I did a quick 5-minute video and also give away an ebook that I really worked hard on to help investors who are just getting started or are in the early stages of their investing….I’m very pleased with how it came out……its a 7-Day Action Plan for Aspiring Real Estate Investors — check out the MustKnowInvesting.com series here! .  You can download the ebook directly from that page, but I’d actually like to encourage you to opt-in over on the right hand side of my blog because not only will you receive a copy of the e-book, but you’ll also receive the Good Faith Investing newsletter launching in August which will also provide helpful info and tips — some of which will not be on the blog.

Also, if you’re a seasoned investor, I encourage you to check it out and if you like what you read, share it with other less experienced investors who can get a lot of value from it! I’ve already received several emails on Facebook from people who have checked out the ebook and are excited about getting started on the 7-Day Action Plan. I can’t wait to share some of the success stories that result from people who take action!

Have a wonderful weekend!

This is too funny.

If you’ve been following my blog for awhile you may remember the story (and voicemail message) I shared about the seller who told me he didn’t want any monkey offers from me. If you never heard this…its funny and you should check out that post before moving on.  I did end up making him an offer for $98K…but I guess it was too monkey for him, his wife, and attorney at the time (several months ago) so they refused it (they felt they should get $120K).

Guess who called me at the end of last week?

Yep. You guessed it! Mr. No Monkey Offers.

Turns out he has done some work to the house now and he wanted us to take a look at it and give him an offer.  I told him repeatedly that we don’t make retail offers on homes and if we can’t get it at a discount (despite the work he put into it), we’re not buying.  He insisted that we take a look at it and give him another offer.

I even recommended that since he seems to want top dollar for his home, I can offer up a pre-qualifed tenant-buyer who has cash and will be qualified for a loan to buy his house in 12-24 months…we could do a lease option (Note: for those unfamiliar with how this would benefit us, we’d be able to keep the lease option deposit from the tenant-buyer)!

Noooo….No Monkey Lease Option Offers either.  He needs to sell now and can’t hold onto it any longer he says.

He called me again this morning. This is his 5th phone call to me in 3 days (he calls multiple phones and leaves messages on all the lines).  He leaves me a message asking if we saw the house yet and told me that he was reading the Wall Street Journal this morning and the experts were saying that housing is really turning around and there were more home sales than they had initially projected.

Ummm….ok.

So my loving hubby went over to the house today, called Mr. Monkey Offer’s cousin to let him in the house and checked things out.  Sure, there was some work done to the house, but not really anything stellar.  Nothing that would increase the value that much.

We’re going to make him another offer and I’m pretty sure he’s going to think its rather monkey too.  I don’t know though…there could be a deal here. He seems really anxious to sell the house.  If nothing else, it makes for a good story.

Stay tuned!

P.S.  I did an interview recently for real estate investor Kendall Matthews KJAM internet radio show.  It’s about 20 minutes long and it was a fun conversation!  If you’re interested you can check it out here!  Kendall has done several interviews with investors across the country so you might want to poke around on the site and listen in!

I’m a huge fan of leadership expert John C. Maxwell and seeing him and meeting him live earlier this year was a real treat for me.  During his conference in West Palm Beach a couple months ago,  I picked up one of his books Talent is Never Enough and as usual Maxwell has delivered.  He’s a fantastic writer and teacher and provides a lot of real world examples and insights in all of his books — this book was no exception.

Talent is Never Enough is all about how to maximize your talent by making 13 key choices that make you a “talent-plus” person.  He discusses how people put too much emphasis on talent alone when the truth is that there are many highly talented people who are not highly successful.  He believes that everyone has talent, that we should all develop the talent we have versus the talent we want, and that we can all make the below 13 choices to stand out vs. stand alone.

1. Belief lifts your talent.
2. Passion energies your talent.
3. Initiative activates your talent.
4. Focus directs your talent.
5. Preparation positions your talent.
6. Practice sharpens your talent.
7. Perseverance sustains your talent.
8. Courage tests your talent.
9. Teachability expands your talent.
10. Character protects your talent.
11. Relationships influence your talent.
12. Responsibility strengthens your talent.
13. Teamwork multiplies your talent.

Here are some awesome words of wisdom from Maxwell on 4 of the 13 choices:

Belief

• Your potential is a picture of what you can become. Belief helps you see the picture and reach for it.
• “Life is a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.” ~Charles Schulz
• Accomplishment is more than a matter of working harder or smarter. It’s also a matter of believing positively.
• Hope is not a strategy. If you want good results, you need to perform good actions. If you want to perform good actions, you must have positive expectations. To have positive expectations, you have to first believe.

Initiative

• Talent-plus people don’t wait for everything to be perfect to move forward. They take initiative. They know a secret that good leaders understand: momentum is their friend.
• Where you finish in life isn’t determine so much by where you are as by whether you start.
• It’s better to be 80% sure and make things happen than it is to wait until you are 100% sure because by then, the opportunity will have already passed you by.
• Tip: allocate specific times to tasks that you tend to procrastinate on — treat it like an appointment with a specific start and end time.

Practice

• You must be willing to start with small things.  Every time you conquer something small, it makes you that much stronger.
• Very small differences, consistently practiced, will produce results.
• Don’t change your circumstances to improve your life — change yourself to improve your circumstances

Courage

When John Maxwell began his leadership career he noted that he was a very ineffective leader.  After a four year process of making small difficult decisions to improve his leadership capabilities, he gained more confidence and courage and wrote the following:

Courageous Leadership Simply Means I’ve Developed:

1. Convictions that are stronger than my fears.
2. Vision that is clearer than my doubts.
3. Spiritual sensitivity that is louder than popular opinion.
4. Self-esteem that is deeper than self-protection.
5. Appreciation for discipline that is great than my desire for leisure.
6. Dissatisfaction that is more forceful than the status quo.
7. Poise that is more unshakable than panic.
8. Risk taking that is stronger than safety seeking.
9. Right actions that are more robust than rationalization.
10. A desire to see potential reached more than to see people appeased.

I hope you enjoyed this review!  Soon I will begin Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill which is the pick of the month for my friend Steph’s Flip This Book Club. If you missed last month’s discussion, you should check it out… we discussed Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs.

Looking forward to an outstanding and productive week this week!  Hope you are as well!

Yesterday I was thinking about the fact that there are so many people I could be reaching out to regarding private money lending. The conversations are easy to have, so I just have to keep having them and creating more opportunities to give my private lender presentation (by the way, you can get your own presentation to customize from my private money mentor and pal Patrick Riddle here – opt-in required). I was sitting at my desk looking at my Endless Referrals book (another great one from author Bob Burg) and had an idea.

I went through a quick exercise called a memory jogger which is often used by anyone who focuses on warm market prospecting for their business.  It was a really useful exercise and as a result I’m remembering so many people that I never thought about before.  The key is to not qualify or make a judgment about whether the person could be a lender or not.  Just write the names down.

If you’re trying to think of people whom you can speak with about private lending for your real estate deals, here’s a memory jogger that I think you’ll find useful. If you have other categories to suggest adding please do!

Relatives

Friends and Acquaintances

Social Contacts

Real Estate Contacts

Other Business Contacts

Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend!  My wonderful hubby took the girls out for the entire afternoon on Saturday so that I could get some work and relaxation in so I was very grateful for that.  I feel like I haven’t blogged in ages, but I think its been less than a week.

I’m excited about the progress we made with private money lenders last week.  It looks as though I’ll have two lenders who are ready to begin investing with their self-directed IRAs in September.  The only reason its not earlier is because of vacations and the need to do the rollover from 401(k) accounts. Now its time to build on this momentum and speak with others about how we can help them to get solid returns on their investments that are backed by real estate.  It’s actually pretty easy to have this conversation, so its really just a matter of focus and consistency (like anything else).

We’re going to check out a house this evening from a landlord who is moving back to Jamaica and wants to sell her property instead of holding it from long distance.  The funny thing  is that we never mailed to her….we mailed to her mother at least 3 times over the past year and even though her mother has never called us, she passed along our information to her daughter and encouraged her to call us.  The woman said “My mom said that you two seemed like nice people, so I should give you a call.”  Nice!  When doing direct mail, consider that there’s always that “pass-along” rate too where people will share your information with their family and friends.  Hard to measure, but just knowing the possibilities are there is great.

Now onto the title of my post….doing the things you despise.   Last week I got busy again focusing on looking at the short sales in our area and making offers.  What I realized is that just like I hated sending out all of those REO offers back in the day (which is why I moved to direct mail), I still hate sending out a bunch of offers.   I love sending offers to private sellers but for some reason the hassle of dealing with numerous realtors (many who have been unresponsive) and sending out a bunch of offers is a bit more than I can stand.   I believe that sometimes you have to do things that you don’t like to do in order to succeed, but in this case, I’m going to have to figure out a better way.  I’ve been hesitant to have my assistant work on offers, but why not?  She’s more than capable and I will just have to review them before they go out the door.  The other alternative is to go back and re-focus on building relationships with realtors who have a lot of short sale listings….so at that point I can have 5 or 6 realtors who refer leads to me rather than me having to send out a bunch of offers.

That’s all for now.  Gotta skidaddle!

Vacation is over, folks!  I had a great time hanging with my family in Georgia, but I was also happy to get back home and back into my own bed.   During my last couple days in Atlanta, I had a chance to connect with one of my fellow REI bloggers, J Scott over at 123Flip.com.  I had lunch with J and his wife Carol (who by the way does really killer staging work…check it out here) and they are great folks! If you’re interested in learning about rehabbing, J is your guy and you should definitely check out his blog.  You have to love the power of the internet and its ability to connect people!

This week’s real estate business for me is all about handling calls from our last marketing campaign to absentee owners, making offers on short sale properties that have been sitting on the market in our key farm areas, and making progress with future private lenders.  The number of calls from our last mailing left much to be desired (3% response rate), but that’s the name of this game.  I think I’ve said this a number of times over the past weeks and I’m starting to sound like a broken record….but I’m speaking the truth.

(This reminds me of something funny and totally off topic.  I told my 9 year old daughter that she sounded like a broken record and it was like crickets.  She gave me a blank stare and cocked her head like a puppy and finally said “A broken record? What’s that?” Considering she hasn’t ever used a cassette tape either, my “broken record” comment was definitely out of place. LOL!)

Anywho, I’m just checking in to let you all know that I’m back in town and back at the hustle.  In a few minutes I’ll be on the phone with my mastermind group.  If you’re not in a mastermind group, get in one or start one!  It is such a terrific way to connect with others, provide support and accountability, and make progress towards your collective goals!

P.S. I wanted to give a quick shoutout to my friends and fellow bloggers Matt Rosen and Greg Harris.  Matt made an audacious goal to do a virtual wholesale deal in 7 days…I won’t spoil the story…you can read it here. Great stuff!

Hope everyone is having an awesome week so far!  I’m still enjoying some down time hanging out with my family in Georgia. Yesterday we went to a great waterpark called Lake Lanier Island Beach & Waterpark.  If you’re ever in the Atlanta area, I’d suggest you take a trip over there. Good times!

I wanted to simply post today to say that I’m truly truly honored for 3 main reasons that I’d like to share with you:

Reason #1: My pal Steph over at FlipThisWholesaler.net recently asked me to do a Flip This Success Story to talk about the last deal I closed that is cashflowing $600/month.  It was a fun interview…more like a fireside chat really since Steph is my bud. I’d love for you to check it out if you get a chance…its just under 30 minutes long.

Reason #2: Several weeks ago my friend Julie Broad over at LifeAsRealEstateInvestors.com and RevNYou.com asked if I’d do a guest post about my recent decision to leave my nearly 11 year career in Corporate America to pursue full time entrepreneurship.  We agreed it would be best to enjoy a few weeks of freedom first before sharing my sentiments and any insights, so now that I’ve completed my first month I hope that you’ll enjoy my guest post  “Living Life on My Terms“!

Reason #3: Today, my private money mentor and friend Patrick Riddle (aka P-Rid) just launched a series on MustKnowInvesting.com entitled “The Best and Brightest Women in Real Estate Investing – 8 Part Training Series” — quite frankly many of the women who are being featured have waaaaaay more knowledge and experience than I so I’m humbled and thankful to even be invited to the series along with several awesome ladies who I admire and respect.   We’re going to be sharing some tips and hoping to inspire others who are aspiring real estate investors male and female!  I won’t give away the details or the line up…go check out the post and video from P-Rid!

That’s all for now!  I’m going to enjoy my last few days of vacation and get back to hustlin’ next week!

Hello beautiful people! Before I stuff my face at the BBQ later today I wanted to do a quick post to tell everyone Happy 4th of July!  I’m hanging out in Georgia with my parents, sisters, bro-in-laws, nieces, aunts & uncles (missing my hubby who is back home in Ft. Lauderdale) and yesterday we went to Stone Mountain Park.  We had a nice time too and the fireworks were pretty amazing.  Thank goodness we had fun otherwise we would’ve been pretty moody about sitting idle in the parking lot for an hour trying to get back home. It was crowded!

Stone Mountain, Georgia. We took the SkyRide to the top instead of walking (pic from virtualtourist.com because mine didn't come out nearly as well. LOL!)

This week we’re expecting to get calls from the 74 letter campaign. We’re still getting calls from our last absentee owner mailing, but nothing we can do anything with yet.  Strangely we received a call from a woman who thinks she spoke to my husband last week (she didn’t) and she seemed rather irritated that he didn’t get back to her after supposedly taking a look at the property….she has a duplex in Ft. Lauderdale that she says “really wants to sell.” It’s a case of mistaken identity which my husband has already clarified for her but apparently the other investor never got back in touch with her so it will be interesting to see how this goes!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend with friends and family and God bless America

Things are moving along well with our new property.  My hubby will be meeting with the tenant this week and getting our handyman in the house to get some immediate repairs done that have been needed for awhile.  I’m not sure we’ll keep this tenant after September, but we’ll see how it goes!  The area is a solid one for rentals so this week we’re doing a laser focused direct mail campaign.  We’re focusing specifically on absentee owners in the neighborhood where our latest purchased property is located.

We’re sending a personal typed letter this time (casual writing style, no company letterhead) and using handwritten envelopes.  We have 76 letters going out this time and it will be interesting to see what type of response we get. Test, test, test!

Quick tip: When doing direct mail with handwritten addresses, put the return mailing address on the back flap of the envelope so that people are not tempted to scrutinize the return address to figure out who the sender is before ever opening the envelope.

Have I mentioned that I love love love my assistant?  If I have, I apologize for repeating myself but I’ve worked with numerous virtual assistants and she is the very first one who does a consistent fantastic job and I can’t be happier.  I’ve become really good at evaluating my workload and identifying tasks that can be more efficiently done by someone else.  I’m using Jing and Screencast.com together to create and distribute training videos and it works like a charm!  The only downfall with Jing is that you can only do 5 minutes worth of screen recording in one video but frankly that’s not a big deal since you can always do your training in multiple parts…and besides, its hard to keep someone’s attention for more than 5 minutes so keeping videos short is a good practice.

There are likely several other useful tools out there for doing screen recording and if you use any, it would be great if you could share them in the comments section for everyone’s benefit!

Oh…on a totally separate topic, I was really honored to be included on the Top 20 Real Estate Investing Blogs list from BiggerPockets.com yesterday!  I’m in great company with many of my blogging pals like Steph, Julie, Carey, Jason, Scotty, J Scott, Rachel, and Matt….and of course Josh who runs the BiggerPockets blog!  Super cool honor and I sincerely thank Josh over at BiggerPockets for including my blog.  Go check out the list and add some more blogs to your reader!

Have a great week!

I have good news and bad news on this fine Hump Day.

Since I’m a positive kinda gal, I’d like to start with the good news first.  I have two interested private money lenders confirmed and a third potential!  About a month ago, I mentioned that I did an investor presentation for a friend who lives out of state who is interested in diversifying her investments.  Well today, she confirmed interest and it turns out that her partner is also interested so I’m going to work with them to help set up the self-directed IRA accounts so that we can have the funds in place and ready to go to make “fast close” offers on properties.  They are interested in doing the longer term loans at first for our buy & holds or lease options, but will consider doing some shorter term loans at higher amounts in the future if we choose to do some minor rehab deals.

We’re about to do another mailing specifically to absentee owners and pre-foreclosures in the neighborhoods where we currently have rentals so we can keep our properties relatively close to each other.  Once the funds are in place, we’ll also look at some of the local wholesalers’ deals and make cash offers on properties on the MLS.

So the bad news….

So far we’ve had a pretty crappy response to our direct mail campaign.  We’ve had about 4 calls from people who said some variation of: “I’m not going to GIVE my property away, but will sell if you pay at least X amount dollars.  I don’t HAVE to sell, but will entertain your offer.”  Ugh.  Those aren’t motivated sellers.  Then we’ve had a couple responses from people who said the property isn’t for sale and a few “please remove me from your mailing list.”

Interestingly enough, all these calls were from the absentee owners (and by the way this was the 3rd time I’ve contacted these people since September of last year).  NONE were from the inherited property leads.  What’s cool is that we’re not getting the time wasting calls like we did from the yellow letters ….our letters are screening people out a bit better.  However, without ANY response from the 200 its hard to know whether to stay on this path or tweak the letter.  We’re going to try it again and make a determination from there.

The name of the game in marketing is test, test, test….