Real Estate Investing in Arlington, Texas Day 4

Lorena Gerlach here with fourth and final day of my 1:1 with student Rosalind Winn and her team in Arlington, TX.

I wanted to spend our last day together making sure Rosalind has a well rounded business. We worked out her marketing plan, including target segments and matching it with the appropriate marketing piece. Rosalind had prepaid for some of the marketing, so I put on my real estate agent hat and pulled a list of 350 expired listings that matched her buying criteria. The list of homeowner names and address will be sent to the prepaid marketing provider so Rosalind can move forward with lead generation.

Another one of Rosalind’s marketing campaigns was to out of state homeowners. I again put on my real estate hat and provided Rosalind with 1,000 out of state homeowners. I’ve had good success with a similar campaign. I run mine in October before the holidays, and again in March before income taxes are due.

Rosalind had a big Ah-ha moment yesterday and realized she needed to run her business as a business. Sounds simple, but if an entrepreneur can’t wrap their head around this concept they are bound for trouble. So next we focused on an action calendar. I want Rosalind to know exactly what she needs to be doing for her business every morning of every day. We reviewed the necessary tasks and put them on a calendar. We ultimately had a plan of action that identified activities on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis that Rosalind can focus on to keep her business moving forward.

Last but not least we discussed basic organization, beyond just creating property files for prospects, having blank contract forms with you, etc. Rosalind has more than enough tools at her disposal. That is actually the large part of the problem. I tasked Rosalind with doing an inventory of all tools in her office. She’s paying for some services she’s not using either at all or effectively, paying for other services that she has no immediate plan to utilize.

How do we keep Rosalind moving forward without completely burning her out? With an assistant! I gave Rosalind an assistant wanted ad used by another student and had her create a list of the tasks that she wanted to delegate from an assignment earlier in the week. Rosalind can contact local universities and see if they have an intern program. She could get an assistant for no or minimal costs and the intern gets invaluable real world business experience. Now that’s a win-win!

I’m excited for Rosalind and her team. Bottom line, Rosalind has all the tools she needs to get started. And we are going to be with her every step of the way!