The Real Estate Success Formula – Pt 1

Ok, I am about to teach you what I know about the real estate success formula.  You can find many courses and read hundreds of books about ‘how to be successful’ and if you let me, I’ll add to your research using my decades of experience.

I have been blessed with years of practice, mistakes, rewards and challenges most people do not experience and although these businesses were not multi-million dollar companies, I have learned a lot.

Today I am learning and improving on areas I needed help with (such as financial understanding) but I can easily apply previous business ethics to Real Estate investing.

If I had to choose the ONE thing I based my businesses on it would be this:

Real Estate Success Formula Rule #1 – DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE GOING TO DO.

Sounds easy right?  But believe me, when challenges arise or you are faced with losing some money to make good on a promise, you are tempted to back pedal and wiggle your way out of things.  To me, this ‘fine print’ attitude doesn’t work.  My fear is for someone to come back to me with “why didn’t you tell me about that?”  so I make sure EVERYTHING is laid on the table.

There is no point in trying to convince anyone to buy from or work with you if you have to ‘hide’ certain areas of you, your business or the deal/product.

Let me draw from experience:

If you don’t know, my first major company was a world-wide mail order distribution of specialty records only for DJs.  It was impossible for customers to listen to these ‘remixes’ before they purchased (remember, there was no internet or mp3).  They had to buy purely on speculation.

The challenge was two-fold:   the product was already double than a regular record and I thought “would I buy something I couldn’t listen to first?”  The answer was NO.

So, BEFORE the Bricks, Best Buys & Wal-Marts, I implemented the “100% Customer Satisfaction Guarantee”.

The ‘rules’ were exactly as it is written, no fine print, no loopholes, no shenanigans…just that  customers needed to be happy with their decision.

As a result, customers could order the record and if they did not like it, send it back for a full refund.  Today it’s common practice and may not seem that new to you, but my guarantee also went a step further;   the only way to get the product back to us was by mail or UPS.  So WE paid for UPS to go right to their door and pick it up from them…all they had to do was have it packaged and ready to go.

In normal business practice this was probably not a great way to cut costs, but all I truly cared about was the CONFIDENCE the customer had in my company and products.  In this era, it was hard to have a company fully refund your purchase so we were very much ahead of our time.

Was there a risk to this fantastic idea?  You bet; realistically a DJ could record and send it back for a full refund over and over which would eventually cripple us.  But I’m a true believer in positive attraction and by offering such a backing to our company we would attract more honest than dishonest people.

However, in order to deal with the dishonest ones we set up the “3 strikes” rule.  Once a customer returned the product three times, the next  purchase would not be eligible for return.  They were told upfront about this – EVERYTHING DISCLOSED so they could not come back later telling us we did not let them know.

This is how we built a very loyal customer base from 12 to 5000 in less than two years and it has been a staple in all my businesses so far with no plans to change.

Doing exactly what you say is probably the most powerful real estate success ‘formulas’ you can employ.

For those who ask my advice about talking with potential joint venture partners, this is one of the most important things you need to learn – if you say it, JUST DO IT.

Be honest with yourself, what you are willing to and CAN deliver, and the rest is easy.

Just my thoughts.