When you enter into the world of real estate investing, you must constantly be focused on bettering yourself. The advantages of bettering yourself are numerous. One of these benefits is increased knowledge. You should always have a focus on increasing your knowledge, no matter what your focus is in life. Increased knowledge will definitely lead you to becoming a better real estate investor.
One of the best ways that I have seen as to how a real estate investor can better himself or herself is through what is called a Mastermind group. The idea of the Mastermind group has been around for many years. One of the best, if not the very best definition of a Mastermind group is contained in the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. If you have not read this book, I highly recommend that you read this book. The principals talked about in this book, if practiced as to how they were intended will literally help you to grow rich. Most if not all of the modern day books written on wealth and how to acquire wealth echo the principals outlined in Think and Grow Rich. Once you read Napoleon Hill’s book, you will be able to notice all of the modern day references to the book Think and Grow Rich. There are numerous references and they show up everywhere in modern day literature!
The first step to becoming a better real estate investor is to establish this Mastermind group. When putting together this group, you do not want the group to be too big or too small. A size of about 6 people is the amount that I would recommend. You want all of these people to be real estate investors. If you do not have any rental properties as of yet, you will want people with experience who have purchased at least one property. This is crucially important. It is important because these people have experience. You will want to be able to ask advice from these other people. For instance, if you are looking to buy your first rental property and cannot decide on a particular geographical area, you can ask your fellow Mastermind members for their opinion. When these people are asked for their advice, they often times will have no problem sharing with you the pros and/or cons of the geographical area that they are invested. In fact, for the most part, people with experience with real estate investing generally have no problem with sharing their experiences or information with you. On the flip side, if your Mastermind group is full of people who do not have any experience in investing, this can be very problematic. It is problematic, as all of the advice that you would receive from these people will be based on theory and observation alone, not on practical experience. Theory and observation means nothing. Practical experience means everything!
One of the best places that you can find people to be on your Mastermind group is from local real estate investment clubs. This is a great place to find your group members as often times like minded people as well as action takers are associated with these groups. I caution you here however. Your Mastermind group will fail terribly if you simply just select people to become members who have no real estate investing experience. This needs to be a powerful group that you assemble. Each member has to have his or her own individual strengths. Each member must be able to bring value to the group. It is the value that each person brings that will make this group effective.
You also have to determine what your individual value is that you bring to the group. Do some introspection and figure out the things that you are naturally good at. Once you have identified these natural abilities, you will be able to confidently share these strengths with your fellow Mastermind members, as perhaps there is a member in your group that is not as strong in one particular area, that you are strong in. By sharing your knowledge with this individual, you are able to help them to grow and improve. As an example, I have been a member of a number of Mastermind groups. Some have been great, while others, not so much. The current Mastermind group that I am a member of is excellent. It is excellent because we are all action takers, and very motivated individuals. We each have our own individual strengths. One of the strengths that I bring to the group is my familiarity, comfort level, and experience with blogging. This is a topic that some of the Mastermind members do not have a lot of experience with. As such, I share with them my knowledge, in order to help them learn. Conversely, I learn a lot myself from one of the Mastermind Members who has a lot of experiencing doing Joint Venture Partnerships. He has a lot of experience and is very comfortable with this investment strategy. As such, he is able to field any questions that I throw at him. It is through my association with him, that I am better able to improve my knowledge on Joint Venture Partnerships.
You will also become a better real estate investor if you meet with your Mastermind group on a regular basis. Frequency of meetings is very important. This is important because effective Mastermind groups serve as an excellent way to keep people accountable towards their own goals. If you can meet with your Mastermind group once per month, this is a good thing. The frequency of monthly meetings allows you to go out in the real world and implement some of your goals and action items that were established by yourself or your fellow Mastermind members.
If you are not able to find people from local real estate investment groups in your town or city, another option is to check out online forums. There are lots of online real estate forums where people talk about real estate and real estate investing. If you search carefully, you will come across certain forums of people that are taking action, and that actually are real estate investors. By choosing this method, you could be able to form your Mastermind group virtually. The geographical locations where people live would not matter here, as you can connect via the Internet. Again, here you have to be careful, as you only want to associate yourself with action takers and real estate investors. Again, this is an important point because these are going to be the people that you learn from. You are not going to learn from someone with less experience than you in real estate investing. It simply just doesn’t work that way.
