Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Real estate investment careers often take a strange path when developing and evolving. Of course, everyone’s development is unique but many have a rough beginning. Fortunately, through perseverance, what really matters is how your career progresses. You are an entrepreneur and you are in control of your future.
It’s not uncommon for a future real estate investor to become disenchanted with a traditional school education while still in High School. This can lead to leaving school to get on with life at the age of 16 or 17. Those destine for a successful real estate career aren’t too lazy to finish school. Instead, they become bored with the slow pace of moving forward with life and have no interest in school cliques and senior proms.
Without a high school degree, some of these people find construction as an entry point for their career. These soon to be overachievers quickly learn that the people making the real money in real estate aren’t the ones pushing a wheelbarrow full of cement or ripping off an old roof. The ones making big money are the investors.
Through whatever means they can (partners, borrowed money, creative financing, etc.), these soon to be investors put together a first investment plan. Some will be successful right out of the gate while others not so much. Both will learn valuable real-life lessons from their first several investments.
Regardless whether these people succeed or suffer a setback, the next step should be the same. The state of the economy at the time the Exit Strategy is executed often affects the outcome. In fact, investors with several successful projects under their belt that were devastated when the economy collapsed in 2008 should take the same future path.
Upon completion of any real estate project, the next step is performing a postmortem of the situation to help you to build a foolproof plan for the next project. It’s be a good idea to ask others (especially those with longer and/or successful real estate careers) to give you feedback about how you performed and where improvements are needed. Getting a different perspective will help you analyze the situation from a different angle altogether.
After analyzing your previous project and current situation, is the perfect time to create your SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). Strengths are what you do well and want to exploit going forward. Weaknesses are what you are not particularly go at and need to improve at or bring in a partner that is better at these. Strengths and weaknesses are internal to your business plan.
Opportunity and threats are external of you plan. Opportunities exist in the current marketplace you find yourself in. It can be a strong general or local economy, a particular investment opportunity, available financial backing, etc. Threats typically come from your competition or the marketplace. It could be a weak economy or a better financially positioned competitor. Your next plan needs to include strategies to overcome these obstacles. Often having a “plan B” and “plan C” are wise going forward.
Your road to success as a real estate investor is having a holistic picture of your situation. You have to know where you are right now before you can develop a realistic plan of where you want to go in the future.
Please leave a comment if this article was helpful or if you have a question.
Author bio: Brian Kline has been investing in real estate for more than 35 years and writing about real estate investing for 10 years. He also draws upon 30 plus years of business experience including 12 years as a manager at Boeing Aircraft Company. Brian currently lives at Lake Cushman, Washington. A vacation destination, a few short miles from a national forest. With the Pacific Ocean a couple of miles in the opposite direction.
