There are many paths to becoming a successful investor. If you attend local investment club meetings, you will often find investors with completely different styles and personalities successfully investing their own way. This is one aspect that makes real estate investing so great. You can model your business after other successful investors or you can develop your own unique style. If you are interested in rehabbing, you can make it the focal point of your business. However, if you want to go another direction, feel free! The one thing that most successful investors do, regardless of style or personality, is to create a system that works for them. Having a system in place will give you a road map to success and allow you to realize larger profits.
You can come up with a system for almost any activity you can think of in the real estate business. From finding houses to placing offers and budgeting your rehabs, you can develop a system that can fit you and your business goals. The more specific you are, the more likely you will follow it and the more successful you will be. Any system you set up should be for your benefit. It is intended to help you be more efficient and protect you from yourself.
A system can be a general set of parameters you develop for yourself. However, do not hesitate to create a system for even the most menial tasks in your business. Every bit helps. It is even wise to have a system for creating systems. It is important that you take the time and think about what and how you want to do things before you set anything in stone. If you are just starting out, there will most likely be plenty of trial and error. Over time, you will start to get a much clearer idea of what works and what doesn’t. Use your experiences to set a plan of attack and establish how you want to handle everything you do. If you send mailings out, track what worked, what didn’t and what you can improve on. From there, you can tweak whatever needs to be changed.
If you have a defined way to do things, you will be much more organized and in a much better position to handle multiple tasks. After all, you put these in place to help your business, not to set it back. As important as it is to stick to your systems, you also need to be mindful of any changes in the market that could cause these to change. Here is where you need to exercise discipline and think about what is best for your business. Sure, it can be easy to bend your own rules or break your system to make a deal seem more attractive. At the end of the day, all you are really doing is hurting yourself and your business. Keep your eyes and ears open to what is around you, but only make changes that you think will help you and not just to make things easier.
Working for yourself is not for everyone. You have to have the discipline to work hard when nobody is standing over your shoulder telling you what to do.
