For Session 9 of Extraordinary Joes, I sat down with Keith Hand in the Wymberly Road recording studio to discuss how he got his start investing in real estate and what his current portfolio looks like. Knowing a little bit about Keith's backstory (we went to high school together), made his story all the more enjoyable and relatable to me. As I've mentioned before, I often have a hard time relating to the real estate investors I hear about online or on other podcasts, because it's hard to understand how they got where they did, or not to think they somehow got a head start that I don't have access to.
Keith got started in real estate after he decided that working a "normal" job wasn't the path for him, and he really learned his way into the real estate world. Check out what I learned from this session.
Multiply Your Beliefs AND Your Effort
This concept comes from author and investor Grant Cardone, who Keith follows for investing insight and direction. Cardone's focus is on 10x-ing both your beliefs and your effort. Side note, I've made jokes before about 10xing things, for those of you that have been following me. I do take issue with everyone, saying that we should 10x everything. But, Keith's starting point was to decide what your goals are and what it will take to get there, and then multiply both by ten. So Keith started off thinking that 10 rental properties was a good goal for him as a new investor. Following the 10x focus, he decided that he would focus on 100 rental properties and work his tail off to get there.
Keith and his partner hit his 100 property goal in his first year!
This doesn't mean that by saying 10x or even trying 10x that all your dreams will come true. However, I really like this concept of expanding both your dreams/beliefs way beyond your original focus, and ALSO, increasing your effort to align with your new, expanded goals.
The Power of the Ask
When I was working at my first college coaching job, I got a lot of the assignments that nobody else wanted to do. One of those was to find a replacement part for a piece of equipment we had in the gym. Basically, what the equipment does, is rebound the basketball and then pass it back to the shooter. It's a great tool when it works, because it allows kids to be in the gym on their own and get up a lot of shots, without having to chase down the rebounds. It's awesome when it's working, but ours had been broken for six or eight months.
The head coach asked me to call the company and see about getting a replacement part. After speaking to the representative, I learned that it was going to cost a couple hundred dollars, and we had been told not to spend any money until the new fiscal year. Despite all of this, I was still tasked with getting the part that we needed.
So, I told the customer service rep that we really needed the part, but that we were at the end of our fiscal year (which was true). If he could send us the part, we would pay him in a couple of months (also true).
And he said yes! Me and the head coach still joke today, when we can't afford something in our lives, that we should just say, "Listen, it's the end of my fiscal year..." But all it took was an ask.
Keith got his start "simply" by letting people around him know what he was up to, and strategically asking questions. By asking for help, asking for a better deal, asking for seller financing or asking for partnerships, Keith has been able to take his business to new heights, with little investment (initially) beyond the willingness to speak up.
Get Started
Let's not pretend it's easy to take on the financial risk of real estate investing. It certainly is a risk, and you have to decide what's right for you and your situation. Many people get stuck at the starting point, because they worry about getting to the end goal. For example, you may want to get into real estate investing in order to make some extra money each month. When you do the math, you may realize that you are only going to make $300 a month on your first deal. $300 a month doesn't feel like enough for your long term goals, you feel like you will need five of those homes to make a difference in your life, and because five homes seems so far away, you don't get started with your first property at all.
I'm not advocating for jumping into things all willy nilly. While there are certainly some places for willy and nilly in our lives, generally, our finances isn't one of them. But don't let the big gigantic picture get in the way of you getting started. You can't get to five properties without starting with one.
And if it's not real estate, it's something else. It's so easy for us to try and peer over the hill, see what we think it will take, and then talk ourselves in to not starting at all.
Where you can, take a step, get started, and see where it goes.
I'm pulling for you,
Bryan
Thanks for listening to Extraordinary Joes! Check out the episode here: www.bryanhendley.com/podcast
If you have any Extraordinary Joes you think would be great for the show, feel free to email me at bryan@bryanhendley.com.
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