Real Estate Investing Business Plan Pt 1: Your Short Term “WHY”

In my mind, there are 4 main areas to your real estate investing business plan:

1. Why are you buying?
2. What is most important?
3. What are you buying?
4. Where are you buying?

In this post I’ll focus on the first one:

Real Estate Investing Business Plan Part 1: WHY are you buying?

I’m positive you’ve been hammered with the “WHY” question before, so I don’t want to take away the importance of knowing your BIG “Why”.

However, I’ve been coaching real estate investors for a long time…and I’ve discovered a lot of them get caught up in a HUGE end goal that usually isn’t their own when they get started.

I too struggled with this.

When I was trying to write my “dream life”, I realized it was based on listening to other people’s stories…so I thought I “wanted” 50 doors too.

I also “wanted” to travel and sit on a beach “managing my real estate from my laptop.”

That’s the first problem…having a dream that’s not yours.

And a big reason investors lose momentum is because it’s NOT YOUR DREAM.

So the first part of your real estate business plan is connecting to YOUR PERSONAL DREAM.

Here’s the Second Challenge

Once I’ve helped someone get past the false “dreams” and we’ve connected to what is real for them…they often become paralyzed.

Not good.

It’s because their true dream seems TOO FAR AWAY.

The “How” Paralyzer

Then the “how” questions start popping up.

“how can I buy 10 apartment buildings when I still work at McDonalds and have no savings?”

Here’s how:

Take the FIRST step.

I don’t know what your personal situation is…but if you and me were sitting in a private coaching session, I’ll bet my left arm I could pull out your TRUE “why”.

And it’s probably not what you’re thinking right now.

THEN we’d be able to figure out your EXACT next step.

Using our above example, it probably wouldn’t be to go sit in a seminar or buy a course about apartment buildings!!

Nope.

That BIG DREAM and “WHY” are worthless at this point because there’s a few steps you need to do FIRST.

My point is…know WHY you’re buying real estate TODAY.

Know your SHORT TERM WHY.

Keep the BIG dream in the background…it’s the fuel to everything…

…but it doesn’t have to be the TASK you complete this week.

Get me?

What’s The First Step?

Obviously I can’t give a universal answer here, but going back to my example of buying ten apartment buildings, maybe the first step for you is to buy ten single family homes that you can eventually sell to help fund your FIRST apartment building…

And the first steps to do THAT is to buy your FIRST property…

I don’t know, but I’m sure you get where I’m going with this.

It’s easy to reverse engineer when you start at the end and move backwards.

Which is why you need to know the BIG DREAM first.  This will move you back to today’s REAL “why”.

And this is how I get coaching clients to MOVE FORWARD.

Remember EVERYTHING you do in your business TODAY matters.

Decisions Become Easier

Keeping with my apartment example, now you KNOW you are unable to buy that apartment with your current situation, so you STOP learning and going to all the seminars regarding apartments and you START learning about single family homes. (as an example)

HERE’S A BUSINESS SUCCESS SECRET

STOP doing something you’re doing now
START doing something you’re NOT doing now

Seems quite simple – but the challenge for real estate investors like you and me is that we want to know it ALL.

We’re afraid we’re missing something.

In reality  we’re missing  the growth and expansion our real estate investing business can give us RIGHT NOW when we constantly sit in rooms “learning” rather than doing.

What’s Your Short Term “Why”?

So “WHY” are you buying real estate today?

• To get more cash flow to pay off your VISA bill?
• To build up equity in single family homes so you can group them together later and sell them to upgrade to a hotel? ( totally Monopoly reference there, but it makes my point doesn’t it?)
• [ insert your reason here ]

The Hidden Bonus of Knowing Your “Why”

As you know I teach real estate investors everything about how to find jv real estate investors for their deals and part of that strategy is to have an awesome “story”. (read: your “why”)

Believe me, the more relevant your story is to the real world and what’s going on NOW the better.

Because EVERYONE wants to live on a beach and quit their job.

But imagine if you told someone “yea, my ultimate dream is to quit my job and live on a beach, but for now, the extra $1000 a month I get from the cash flow is paying off my VISA debt that I’ve had for ten years…what a great feeling that is…”

Do you THINK they could relate to that?

So I would say your “why” plays a HUGE part in your real estate investing business plan.

Not only because it guides and grounds you, but it also attracts others to your business as joint venture partners.

And you and I both know we’re going to need jv real estate partners sooner or later 🙂

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BTW, if you’re already looking for joint venture partners…click here to grab my One-Page Joint Venture Real Estate Presentation Action Plan

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Don’t forget to check out part 2 right here

What did you think of this post? Have comments or suggestions on what you’d like me to write about? Let me know below!!

To your real estate investing success…