Hey guys! So this month’s Simple Guide is all about how to find a mentor.
The world’s best athletes have coaches and in fact, they have multiple coaches who work alongside of them to help improve their skills and provide the training they need in order to compete at the best of their ability.
The same thing applies to real estate investing and practically any area of your life. We all need a little guidance and having a real estate mentor is literally the best thing you can do for your business.
Now there’s a right and a wrong way to go about finding a mentor, so my goal with this Simple Guide is to inform you how to go about finding and approach a mentor for real estate investing.
Why Do You Need a Mentor
Guys, to be quite honest, I don’t know many successful investors who have succeeded without a mentor.
Just think about all of the advantages of having a seasoned investor to bounce ideas off of and guide you along the way to help prevent you from making costly mistakes early on.
“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed,” Proverbs 15:22.
Having a mentor keeps you on track and holds you accountable because accountability is huge. You must have someone pushing you, someone that you trust, and someone that you do not want to let down.
When I look back at my life I now realize that I had many mentors. Many of them I did not realize that they were mentors at the time. Now looking back, there were all kinds from all aspects of my life. Some of those mentors taught me the right way how to do things. And from others, I learned how not to do things.
Building a business, being successful, and growing with a mentor is all about learning.
Here’s part of my personal story…
My dad introduced me to a gentleman who owned a timber company. He would buy large pieces of land (at least 100 acres) throughout Indiana. His business model was quite simple, he would purchase land, then his timber company would harvest the timber, and then once the timber was harvested, he would sell off the land.
He followed that simple system over and over again and was a multimillionaire because of it.
Now I didn’t know how to cut down trees or how to work the machinery so I wasn’t any help in that area. But I knew I could help him find land deals. So I worked for his timber company for about a year and a half as an independent contractor where I received a 10 percent commission on the deals I brought in.
I would carve out 2 to 4 hours out of my day to drive across Indiana searching for land and call landowners to simply ask if they wanted to sell their land.
My mentor was around 65 years old, he didn’t use email, he was terrible at answering phone calls unless it was convenient for him and he wasn’t a good speaker. He was a terrible business man and I just couldn’t understand why this man was a multimillionaire!
But I remember riding around with him and during our car rides and he would give me little nuggets, and one of the greatest lessons I learned from him was that bigger isn’t always better.
See, he had once had a pretty big business with 15 employees and a huge overhead. He almost went bankrupt and almost lost everything when his business expanded.
The lessons I learned from him have made a tremendous impact on the way I do business today. His stories about almost going bankrupt have prevented me from making a lot of costly mistakes in my company.
Bigger isn’t always better.
As I got into the real estate investing game and I started making money, I found myself being pulled in so many different directions. I was wholesaling, rehabbing, flipping… just so much of everything. I wasn’t happy.
I was trying to go to BIG with my operation. I needed to simplify. That is when I decided to focus on one thing, wholesaling. And I was not going to complicate how I did it.
That is how I arrived at the name for my company, Simple Wholesaling.
It was that advice that I got from the man I worked for in that land job that helped me to build the cornerstone of my business that is growing today.
That man was just one of the examples of a mentor that I had in my life and didn’t know it at the time, but helped me to realize how important having a mentor truly is.
When it comes to real estate investing, one of the key components to being successful is experience and that is why I do think that it is tremendously important to have a mentor.
Throughout the sections of this month’s Simple Guide we will discuss what to look for in a mentor, how to find a mentor, and the effects of having a mentor… but I think this section is the most important.
For someone to understand the importance of why they need a mentor and accept that notion, is a game changer.
Once my company, Simple Wholesaling, got rolling and I started to feel like was doing well, I stopped doing some of those things that were influencing me the most.
I stopped asking questions.
I stopped seeking help.
I stopped reading books.
When I stopped all of those things because I thought that I knew it all, I also lost me DRIVE.
And that is one of the greatest things that a mentor can give you, the drive to want to be better.
I mentor is going to help you gain experience, share stories of things that helped and didn’t help them, listen to you, and help push you.
Why do you need a mentor?
To help you get you from where you are to where you want to be.
Now I am constantly seeking advice and help. I seek it from people that are doing what I want to do. I read and listen to books from experienced entrepreneurs, real estate investors, and christian leaders any chance I get.
Think about it this way, when do I feel closest to the Lord? The answer, when I am deliberately seeking Him. If I am not spending the time I need in scripture, serving, or in prayer, I feel further away from Christ. I have to pour into Him for my cup to be full.
It is the same in business, I can’t just sit back and let the business ideas or deals come to me. I need to educate myself and put myself in situations that allow me to be successful.
Two of the greatest things that have happened for me and my business over that last two years were in for form of mentorship.
I hired a business coach and I joined a Mastermind Group of real estate investors.
I had to allow myself the to accept that I needed help and I went out there and found the help that I needed.
There are so many places out there to find that right mentor of you, but not every mentor is for you. Over the next few weeks we will take a look at how what to look for, how to find that mentor for you and the possible results that can come from it.
Thanks for reading! God Bless!
