I am about to share with you my shameful start in real estate investing.  It is actually quite embarrassing and telling you practically kills me but as you will see, we will both benefit from my mistakes.  What I was doing was insane!  Who knows?  You might even be doing it too!  But don't worry, I'm all better now and in a moment I am going to tell you how one simple seven-word question can change everything!!

OK, I think I am ready to fess up.  Just be forewarned - you may discover that you are killing your real estate business like I was!  You'll never guess what I finally started doing to turn my business around.  It was so simple that I felt stupid for not doing it sooner, then I realized that you probably aren't doing it either!  That is what led me to build this site and convinced me to offer you the REtips newsletter absolutely FREE.  It is full of marketing tips that can only come from asking one little seven-word question and let me tell ya, finding motivated sellers hasn't been the same since!

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Whew, here goes... The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  (Well - maybe a hint of self-denial too.  You decide.)

Do you remember when you first started searching the Internet to learn about real estate investing?  You probably found a bazillion websites full of stuff for the wannabe investor.  You were introduced to terms like "No Money Down", "Lease Purchase" and "Owner Finance".  You learned the names of a few real estate gurus like Ron LeGrand, John Beck and Robert Kiyosaki.  This happened to me in 1998 and I was ecstatic!  I couldn't absorb the articles and message boards fast enough.  There were even times I thought my eyeballs were going to pop out or that my brain was going to explode from information overload!  PLEASE tell me you know what I am talking about! 

After reading everything I could find online, I bought a few courses.  After digesting the material I still didn't feel prepared enough to start buying houses.  So what did I do?  You guessed it!  I bought a few more courses!  We'll call that mistake #1.  Have you ever heard of the eternal student?  That was me.  Man, oh man.  I knew all the basics (and then some) about real estate investing.  Sadly, after all I had learned, I still didn't think I was ready to start buying houses.  I sure wish someone had slapped me upside the head at that point because what I did next STILL makes me shake my head in disgust.

I Made Two More Stupid Mistakes

I had read that a successful real estate investor needs to have a team of qualified real estate professionals to work with.  Of course, no one ever said that your team is built over time and through experience, so naturally I put everything else on hold (mistake #2) while I hand-picked my very own, top of the line, highly qualified group of real estate giants.  (As if I knew how to tell who was qualified?!?).  Anyway, team in place.  It was time to buy some houses.

But wait!  I needed a business image first.  Yep, you guessed it.  Mistake #3.  (Quit rolling your eyes at me.)  I wasted a lot of time debating "I BUY HOUSES" vs. "WE BUY HOUSES".  Average Joe vs. business professional.  Jeans vs. slacks.  I'm the employee vs. I'm the boss.  Of course none of this really mattered.  What good is a business image if you have no clients?  UGH!

Picture this.  There I was with a bookshelf overflowing with courses.  I had business cards, stationary and a few highly polished contracts.  I had found a tolerable real estate agent, a good title company and an attorney that were all willing to work with me.  I even had a separate phone number and an official-looking business mailing address.  But was I buying houses?  Nope.  Not one.

Looking back, I clearly had WAY more than any newbie investor needs, so my only option was to blame it on someone else.  It couldn't have been MY fault.  After all, I had been reading the classified ads every day and making phone calls like a good little Carleton Sheets student.  But so were the other investors in my area and it seemed like they would always beat me to the FSBOs.  So, (are you ready for this?) I convinced myself that I was never going to make it and it was all their fault.  (OK, so I was a little melodramatic.)  I needed to do something different.  But what?

I had no clue.  After all, everything I had ever read told me, "If you do 'ABC' and 'XYZ',  you will succeed!"  Of course those words usually came with a sales pitch for some REI course that promised to teach me 'D thru W' in "much more detail"...  Grrr.  I did not want to spend any more money.  (Remember that bookshelf I mentioned earlier?)  I started participating in the message boards and chat rooms at the investor sites that I had found.  I began asking all sorts of questions to anyone with an inkling of experience.  I was discussing all of the technical aspects of buying and selling houses, but would often be instructed to "go buy a course".  Then it hit me like a ton of bricks! 

I was asking the wrong questions!

I didn't need any more lessons in real estate.  What I really needed (besides a swift kick in the butt) was the answer to one simple seven-word question but my startling lack of creativity kept me from answering it myself.  I decided to hit the REI sites from a different angle.  I stopped asking all the procedural questions that I had been asking and started asking a question that every serious real estate investor needs answered but most fail to ask.  I found that a lot of seasoned investors gladly answered my new found question and I was dumbfounded by the some of the answers I got!

Investor after investor gave me their priceless little marketing gems all because I asked them that one simple, yet powerful question.  I started getting such a wide range of marketing ideas that I decided to put up this website so that I could ask even more people.  You know, kinda like "super-sizing" my efforts.  I ask every REtips subscriber the same seven-word question and the replies have been amazing!  Maybe you will have an answer, maybe you won't.  Either way, when you subscribe, I will email you some of the very best of all the answers I get FREE in the REtips newsletter.

Click Here to Subscribe NOW!

Your FREE subscription will bring you real estate tips that cannot be found anywhere else.  The REtips newsletter is filled with different answers to one question and one question only.  If you haven't been asking it, you are missing the boat on some serious opportunities!  If you are smarter than me and have already been asking the right question, REtips will compound your efforts and put an end to your hit and miss search for motivated sellers.  Getting this invaluable information delivered right to your inbox is MUCH easier than sorting through all those massive message boards.

Sure, I could use this site to sell you a bunch of courses and I could probably make a ton of money doing it.  But only some of those courses would attempt to answer the question I ask and NONE of them would be FREE like the REtips newsletter. 

Very few of the real estate marketing products out there are truly worth your time and hard earned money anyway.  Save your money and let the question I ask yield more ideas for FREE than any "guru" could ever cram into a notebook and slap a price tag on.

My friend, I truly believe that no single real estate investor has it all figured out, but that collectively we can churn out some unique and amazing money-making ideas.  Some practical, some edgy and maybe even some that are downright insane.  The end goal, of course, is to find pure marketing genius!  As I said before, I ask every subscriber the same seven-word question.  Subscribe today so I can ask you too!  

-Kay Young, REtips.com

P.S. - When you subscribe I will send you the most recent issue right away so you don't have to wait for the next one.  Happy Investing!

P.P.S. - I don't sell my list of subscribers to anyone, so you will only be hearing from me.