10 Rules For Success In Real Estate

Real estate investing isn’t complicated.

But it isn’t easy either.

Over the years, I’ve noticed the investors who succeed tend to follow the same basic rules, and the ones who struggle usually break them without even realizing it.

In this episode of REI In Your Car, I go through 10 rules for success in real estate investing. These aren’t theories. These come from real deals, real failures, and real experience.

We talk about why most people quit too early, why consistency matters more than strategy, and why you have to treat this like a business if you want real results.

If you’re serious about building a real estate investing business, these rules will save you a lot of time, frustration, and money.

What I Cover:

0:00 – Real Estate Is Hard (And That’s Normal)
0:12 – Why Most People Never Make Money
0:33 – Rule #1: Be Ready To Work
0:52 – Rule #2: Expect Failure
1:15 – Rule #3: Treat It Like A Business
1:47 – Rule #4: Consistency Wins
2:05 – Rule #5: Follow The Numbers
2:23 – Rule #6: Ignore The Drama
2:36 – Rule #7: Rejection Is Part Of The Game
2:42 – Rule #8: Believe Deals Exist
3:04 – Rule #9: Stop Blaming The Market
3:18 – Rule #10: Keep Going Longer Than Everyone Else

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you don't quit, you will win. This business rewards the persistent, and success comes from being persistent. Hey guys, what's up? Joe again. This is part two of a podcast I just did recently. So go listen to the last one I talk about the keys to success in this business. But I'm gonna now kind of expand on that, and I broke it down into 10 different rules for success in business and especially in real estate. So, number one, you need to understand this principle of money or time. And sometimes actually not having enough money is better because it forces you to get creative and it forces you to just sit down and really figure it out and make it work and not just throw money at the problem. Sometimes I see people who have a lot of venture capital or they have uh money from another business, they get lazy and they just try to throw money at the problems. People that usually succeed the most are the ones that have very limited resources but try to figure it out with what they have. And they put they they they they work it hard, they they they they try to figure it out. You need though either money or time, and if you don't have money, then you need to put time into it. Let me explain what I mean here. If you're wanting to do real estate deals, you need to spend some money on marketing. Sometimes people are afraid to spend their money on marketing. Why? I don't understand. You'll go and you'll spend 15, 25 grand on coaching and mentoring, right? But you won't spend a thousand dollars on direct mail. The education's important. I'm not saying that's not important, right? But just as important is investing in marketing. Why? Because marketing creates momentum. The more you can put into the marketing consistently, don't just do money, spend money in marketing for say, all right, I'm gonna dip my toe in the water and see if it works. I'm gonna send a thousand postcards and see if it works. Forget it, don't even do that. You need to be committed to the marketing plan for at least three to six months before you get to decide whether it works or not. Because marketing creates momentum and you've got to give it time. It doesn't happen right away. It's just like you're pulling a train with a you know with a rope. It's really hard at first, obviously, but once it's the train starts moving, it becomes easier. That momentum starts to grow. So you've got to give it three to months or so. Now, if you don't have money, you need to spend time, hustle, sweat equity. That will get you deals as well. So, what I'm saying is like if you can't send out the postcards, then get on the phone. You need to get on the phone and start calling. If I had no money and I had 30 days to do make five grand to do a deal or not, you know what I would do? I'd be on the phone at least 10 hours a day. On the phone, calling sellers, calling realtors, calling investors, calling buyers, and I'd be asking everybody two questions. Hey, have you got any deals? Or number two, do you have any buyers that are looking for deals? And eventually you talk to enough people, you'll find deals that you can wholesale it and flip it. The fastest way to a deal is actually on the phone. This thing right here, it's the fastest way to a deal. If you don't have the money for marketing, you don't want to wait for leads to come to you, you need to go out and get leads. Sometimes I see the people that have the most success are the ones that are just hustling and grinding because they want it so bad that they will go and do the hard work to get the leads. They'll go out and get the leads and make a hundred calls to get 20 leads, to make uh 10 offers to get one deal. And number two, I want you to commit to at least six months. No quitting early allowed. If you're if you are a quitter, then stop, get off my podcast, and and go listen to some audiobooks. Do not quit, okay? Results compound over time. You need to learn to stay consistent because consistency beats talent in this business. Number three, never blame anyone. Own your results. Come on, you're a big boy, you're a big girl, right? Anytime I'm talking to somebody who's interested in coaching and I ask them, hey, so tell me about your experience, tell me about what you're doing, you know. If they start complaining about another guru, another program, or something else, or somebody else that failed them, I'm they're out. I'm not gonna work with somebody who does that. Even if they're right, I don't want to work with people who blame other people for their failures because you know what? They're gonna do the same thing to me. When it doesn't work for them, when I don't give them what they want or what they think that they want or what they need, and I know what they need and they think differently, they're gonna quit, they're gonna give up, and they're gonna blame me. They're gonna blame my team, and so that is negativity. I do not want anywhere near me. So even if you were screwed over by somebody else, take ownership of it. This is maybe a dumb example, but you know, if somebody maybe stole your money from a deal, you can talk about it, but don't blame them for it. You could also take some ownership for yourself and say, Man, I should have like vetted them better. I should have made I should not have trusted them, I should have like used a title company or hired an attorney. So take some ownership, don't just blame them. If you buy another coach's uh real estate program, you know, I don't care how bad it is, there is ways that you can make money doing what they tell you to do. It might be old, but if as soon as you start blaming them of like why you're not having success, I'm like, nah, I don't want to work with you. Blame kills progress. You cannot fix what you refuse to own. Own your mistakes, own it, and then get over it, get past it, and move on. And you're the kind of person that will succeed when you have that attitude. So stop blaming other people. Number four, work hard, do more than you think you need to do, right? Most people underestimate the effort. You need to work harder than everybody else if you want to succeed. And success requires sweat, right? This is a contact sport, it's not a spectator event. You can't just sit on the sidelines and expect to make money in this business. You need to be in the game and you need to force yourself to do what's uncomfortable. You can only win by being in the game. You can't just outsource your success. You can't just hire VAs and people to do and manage and run the business for you. You need to learn how to do it yourself. Eventually, yeah, you can hire people to do the work that you don't want to do or you can't do. I'm not saying that, but like you can't just expect, I'm gonna throw a bunch of money, I'm gonna hire a bunch of people, and you expect it to work. You've got to be intimately involved. You need to be in there working hard, you need to be leading by example by your hard work. Number five is you need to treat this like a business. I see so many people that treat this like a hobby. You need to treat it like a business, you need to track your numbers. You can't improve what you don't track, what you don't measure. You gotta have structure, not randomness, and not just fly by night. Some people can do that, but you know, that behind them though, you might think, oh, they're look at them. They're just like, but they behind them they have somebody that is actually the systemizer, the organizer, right? I remember one time I was in a mastermind and a guy said, Hey, if you don't know your numbers, you do not have a real business. I was like offended by that. I was like, what are you talking about? I I have a real business, but I know I didn't know my numbers, and I realized later on, yeah, uh, that's not okay. All right, number six, you need to learn sales, you need to learn how to sell things, no matter what kind of business you're in. You need to learn how to sell yourself. And sometimes it's just a you just have to learn how to ask questions. That's all it is, and find out what the customers' problems are. Your buyers, your sellers, your realtors, and your private investors. Find out what their problems are. Ask a lot of questions. Learn how to sell. Learning how to sell is not like pitching and trying to convince them and win arguments. Really, it's just listening. But sales is the million-dollar skill, it's the number one skill in real estate today. And so to do that, that means you need to practice. You need to practice every day. Repetition builds confidence, it builds clarity. And so I really want to challenge you to practice, which leads to number seven. This is where we get a little uncomfortable for some people. But number seven, I want you to talk to five people a day. Five people a day. You're gonna build skill through that repetition. Conversations will actually sharpen your instincts, and the more you practice, the better you'll get at talking to people. The more you talk, the more opportunities are going to appear, and your pipeline is going to grow now with more conversations. Okay, so number seven, really important. I'm telling you, if you just talk to five people a day, five sellers, five realtors, five investors, five buyers, and just ask those two questions. Hey, do you have have you do you have any deals? Do you know anybody who has any deals, or do you have any buyers, anybody looking for deals? You will find opportunity eventually, okay? Number eight, you want to make at least three offers a day. Your speed to income is directly proportional to the number of offers that you make. So if you want to make a lot of money, you need to make a lot of offers. So I want to challenge you to make three offers a day. Speed comes from action, so offers create potential deals, and imperfect offers are better than no offers. So sometimes people are afraid of making mistakes, making a bad offer. I say get over it. Make offers, you know. And if you don't, if you make an offer and you don't feel like this queasy, uneasy feeling in your stomach, then you're offering too much. If you want to make sellers happy, then give them whatever they want, you know. But you need to make offers that are gonna make you uncomfortable where you can make a lot of money. So you learn by doing, not by waiting. Don't wait until the perfect opportunity comes. Sellers are really, really good at hiding their motivation. They might say, I want five million dollars for this property that's landlocked in wetlands and all of that, but maybe they're you got them on a bad hair day. No means not yet. So you need to learn how to make a lot of offers and don't wait around for the perfect quote unquote motivated seller to all of a sudden appear and beg you to make an offer on their property. So you've got to make offers, which then follows up to number nine follow-up every 30 days. This is where the money happens. Most deals come from the follow-up, right? The fortune is in the follow-up. You want you need to stay on top of mind to the sellers, right? People many times, almost always, will say no before they say yes. No means not yet. So you need to follow up with every offer that you make. Gavin and I looked at my coaching business partner. One year we looked back in the previous 12 months on how many deals we did. We did 58 deals that year. And of those 58 deals, only four came from that first conversation with the seller. If we would not have done any follow-up, we would have only done four deals that year. But instead, we did 58. And on average, we did seven to eight touches over two to three months. If you're not following up with your offers with your sellers, you're throwing away money. So follow up. And finally, number 10, I want you to lead with value. Learn how to serve first. Help people solve their problems. When you are there to serve other people and give them what they want, you will always get what you want when you come back. Right? So learn to be a servant, protect your reputation. Integrity is super critical and it compounds over time. One little mistake can ruin years and years of your reputation. So always put integrity first, be humble, ask for help when you need it, and uh focus on that. So, in closing, right? Ask yourself, guys, are you willing to do the work? This business rewards the persistent. And success comes from being a persistent, from being consistent. So show up daily and you will win. If you don't quit, you will win. When I first heard that, I heard it from one of our pastors. If you don't quit, you will win. And that was like, wow, that is so amazing. That's so true, right? Like, so it's so easy in business and in marriage and in your parent parenting and in life. Like, it's just so easy to quit and go to the bottle or smoke a joint or just have an affair or or steal and lie and go do something because you might think, ah, just forget it. You know, who cares? Nobody cares anyway. Uh, you lost. So do not quit. Do the right thing, don't quit. So that's all I got. If you like this podcast, if you're watching this on YouTube or listening to it, give me a thumbs up, like, and comment, subscribe. I really appreciate you, and we'll see you later. Take care. Bye.