• Detroit Real Estate Club

Speed of Implementation

By Jeremy Burgess | Published: August 12, 2010

I think a major challenge that most of us have, myself included, is that we think we must learned every little detail about something before we can actually get started. I’m not sure if it’s a fear of failure or if it seems to complicated to do or maybe you grew up being told,”If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

The reality of the situation is that we need to know just enough to get started. Then we must immediately put it to practice in our life, relationships, and businesses. Through the act of putting this new found knowledge into play, you actually learn even more, you make mistakes that force you to continue learning, and most importantly you get the results you are looking for much quicker.
Here is an example of what I did with what I learned at the last Renegade Detroit Investor meeting. Drew and Jared gave a great presentation on building fan pages. It included how to build simple fan pages, create a landing page, implement video into your fan page, setup rss feeds, setup blogs, and most importantly, give your vanity url.

I have never done any of this before in my life. I went home that night and implemented 90% of what they told me to do. I admit I got a little stuck so I had to wait until later that day to get some help. I say later that day because I was up till 4am in the morning. Jared answered a few of my technical questions and I finished the last 10%.

At this point it had been about 15 hours since the meeting. By 9pm at night, 24 hours after the Renegade Detroit Investor meeting I had 31 fans and my vanity url which was awesome.

Check it out here:
Detroit Real Estate Fan Page

The exciting part is I already have people interacting on my fan page and asking me questions. I feel that I will get some business out of this tool very shortly. All of this happened because I immediately implemented what I had learned.

I’m not saying this to brag. Personally, I need to be aggressive with my speed of implementation because I know that if I don’t start right away, it will be the project that never gets done. This is a challenge for me constantly with all of the demands on my time.

So for me to be successful, I must have a high speed of implementation.

For those of you who missed this meeting, I did record a few clips that I posted on Renegade Detroit Investors Fan Page.

Check them out here:
Metro-Detroit Real Estate Club Fan Page

Be a Renegade,
Jeremy Burgess
The Detroit Market Expert

Posted in Non-Real Estate/Business | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Using Social Media for Real Estate Investing

By Drew Sygit | Published: July 19, 2010

Social media is the big buzz word these days, the place to be or be out of business if you believe the hype.

Reminds me of the internet craze of the second half of the ’90′s.

So called experts were predicting then that brick & mortar stores would be put out of business by Amazon.com, Buy.com and other sites like them.  You had to get on the internet or supposedly be nowhere.

Well that eventually proved to be not entirely true.  Today, not every successful business is on the internet, although most are.  Some barely use email, but again most do.

Now the experts are saying you’ve got to be on social media to survive and be successful.

The current 600lb social media gorilla is Facebook.  It just passed Google as the most visited website and has recently announced more features to challenge Google’s search dominance.

Another big social media site is Twitter.

There are thousands of investors on both though, that aren’t seeing any results.

Why?

Before the internet craze, some marketing genius created telemarketing.  It was effective for a few years and then got to be so intrusive they passed laws to regulate it.

The internet came along and soon after another marketing genius created spam.  Again, it was effective for a few years and then was regulated to control it.

Now, we’ve got people doing the same thing with social media.  Some “marketing geniuses” are spamming users of social media intentionally.

What’s scary, is all the people that are UNINTENTIONALLY using social media to spam their followers and connections.

You see, social media is supposed to be about connecting and interacting with people of similar interests.

Take real estate investors.  You want to connect with people that know someone looking to sell or buy property or has money to invest.

Connecting though, isn’t the same as spamming!

We all know what spam is – the sending of solicitations over and over again.

Well, sending out the same message over and over again doesn’t make it not spam just because you’re doing it through social media!

I see so many real estate investors just blasting out their solicitations and accomplishments, thinking they’re connecting with people – but they aren’t.

Do you know Facebook’s strategy to challenge Google’s search dominance?

They’re going to allow users of Facebook to search for topics just like Google, but the results will be based on what your connections “like”.

Stop and think about that for a moment.  Would you rather try or buy something that pops up on Google that someone manipulated SEO to get to the top of Google rankings,

or

recommendations of what your sphere of influence likes?

Now ask yourself, what are you doing to get your sphere to recommend you instead of spamming them into ignoring you?

Posted in Metro-Detroit Real Estate | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

How To Pick a Real Estate Guru Course

By Drew Sygit | Published: July 15, 2010

We all want the shortcuts to being rich.

Beginning real estate investors are no different.  Problem is, many unscrupulous “gurus” know this and peddle their wares to unsuspecting investors.

I remember looking over a course a speaker sent our team as a promotional item.  It was a pretty think book of information, but most of it was so basic it was useless.  The speaker was obviously using the method of “charging by the pound” and stuffing his book with drivel.  You wouldn’t believe how much he was asking for it!

So, how can a new investor not be taken and spend thousands of dollars on worthless materials?  Let’s look at some steps.
1. Don’t Buy on Impulse
Ever hear the saying, only fools rush in?  A lot of the gurus tell you to buy their stuff to get educated so you don’t rush in – but they try to get you hyped up at an event so you rush in and buy their stuff.  Most common tactic is the, “tonight only price”.  Buy it tonight and get it at 20% off, no – 40% off, no – because I like this group I’ll do 50% off my normal price!

Take your time and don’t buy it.  Many of these gurus now have a 30 day money back guarantee that you may also be able to use.

Just be sure not to get all emotionally excited and stop thinking clearly.

In short BE CAREFUL!
2. Be skeptical
People who can’t do, get stuck teaching.

This is not 100% accurate, but in Real Estate Investing the good money is in actually investing.  Ever wonder why so many “gurus” have the time to travel the country speaking instead of investing?  They say it’s because they love to teach and share what they’ve learned with others.  It may be because they failed as investors.  Not always true, but something to think about.
3. Research Before You Buy
If you’re going to an real estate investor meeting, you can usually find out ahead of time who’ll be speaking.  Google them!  Find out who they are and if they have any skeletons.  Then when you go to the event and are tempted to buy their product, at least you’ll have a better idea of what you’re buying.

4. Join The Guru’s Community
Most well respected teachers of Real Estate Investing have blogs, twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, forums or some other semblance of a community.  Join them and check them out. Here are some criteria for a good guru based community

* The guru participates in the conversation frequently (once a week minimum)
* They don’t just try to sell products
* There is an active community of other investors who follow the teacher and can help you
* The teacher will respond to emails or questions in a timely manner (1 week)

If there are active, successful investors participating in the community, then you can be 100% sure that this teacher is the real deal. If all the followers are beginners, just asking questions and only the teacher is there to help out, there is something wrong and I would move on.

5. Can you find the Information for Free?
Almost everything in real estate isn’t a secret.  It can be found online or at a local investment group.  So why buy it?  Well, music is for free on the radio, but we still buy songs.

We only buy songs though that we really like.  The same should apply to guru products.  Do some online research and determine if the material really motivates you like good music.  If it does, than buy it.  Otherwise, look it up online.
Conclusion
In the end, the course you buy will not make you a successful real estate investor.  The real secret is taking action and working hard.  If you buy a course, it will just be a waste of money if all you do is read it or worse – let it sit on a shelf.

Posted in Real Estate Mindset | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Real Estate Market Recovering?

By Jared Pomranky | Published: June 2, 2010

Is the real estate market in Metro-Detroit recovering? We have limited supply, increasing prices, and what seems to be more buyers. Less houses are for sale. Taking all that data, it sure sounds like a recovery but I’m hesitant to call it that. What has spurred our economy to have this turnaround lately? I’ll agree we’re doing better but I don’t know if the real estate market should be turning around as quickly as how it appears to be turning around. This coming from the ever-optimist. I’m, however, a realist.

Where did all of the inventory go that we had last year? What happened to all of the foreclosures that were coming and all of the inventory that the banks were going to have? I think they still have it. Where else would it go? I can take you down any street in Detroit that has boarded up houses that aren’t for sale. Sure, some of these are just caught somewhere in the process but many of them are just being held by the banks. These houses would have been sold if it were the market 2 years ago when banks needed money but deals with the Government and shored up financials now have the banks sitting on the houses to not flood the market. I don’t know if there was a behind the scenes deal with the government to have them hold on to houses or what but either way, they’re losing out.

What happens to a house that sits in Detroit for 6 months vacant? What about 12 months or 24 months? What I know from experience is the loner it sits, with the poor security that banks use, the more of a chance it will be vandalized or be opened up to the elements. Keeping a house around that long vacant is going to make it pretty worthless. Also, they’re creating a false bottom in our market and false positive signs. That is unless they have endless resources to hold on to the houses and trickle them out over the next 5 years.

I don’t know what’s going on but it doesn’t seem like just a great recovery right now. What do you think?

Be a Renegade,
Jared Pomranky

Posted in Real Estate Market Analysis | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

No Short Cuts to Success

By Jeremy Burgess | Published: June 1, 2010

It seems that in the pursuit of the American Dream another idea was born with it. The idea of short cuts to success. Some idea or way of doing something that will guarantee success instantly with little to no effort on your part. I call them get rich quick schemes and yes, I have even fallen as prey once or twice myself.

I see so many people ignore ideas and plans that would make them money in six months for the chance at a instant riches with some new get rich quick scheme. It saddens me because many of these people never try again or worse, they move from one scheme to the next never making any money. We all know these people and many of us have “dabbled” in it ourselves.

Deep down we all know that there are no short cuts to success. My question then is why do we keep looking for the magic pill when we know it doesn’t exist? Because the answer is too daunting and requires so much work and time that we can’t ever see ourselves as actually being rich.

When we sat down to discuss the name of our local investment group, we put a lot of thought into it. We didn’t just pull the name out of the hat. Renegade Detroit Investors was chosen to shake things up and to change the idea of what real estate investment groups can be like. For those of you who attend our meetings, you have had some amazing speakers at various stages of there road to success who have achieved great things. Not once has a speaker given you a get rich quick scheme.

Our Renegade speakers all had one thing in common. They did something every day to get them closer to success. It’s amazing how one thing a day can completely change your life in a few short years. They became Renegades by shunning the desire for instant riches and short cuts to success and focused on doing just one thing a day. We can all do just one thing a day and when you think about it that way, the road and idea of success becomes far less daunting and much closer to becoming a reality.

My father said something to me as a child that sticks with me till this day and it has really helped me keep my expectations in line. “So what if it takes years, you are going to live that long anyway, you might as well be successful.”

Be a Renegade,
Jeremy Burgess

Posted in Real Estate Mindset | Tagged , , | Leave a comment