Deliberate & Intentional Not Accidental

Q:Gerald, I have been trying to wholesale for over a year and I can’t seem to find any deals. I had one deal that was about to close and then the seller’s cell phone was disconnected. Any advice? Mark, Mahwah, NJ

A: In general when you are not getting the results you want, you need to change what you are doing–as a real estate investor, this normally requires getting more deliberate and aggressive rather than being passive and waiting for things to happen or for someone else to act. There are things in the world that we control and then there are things (most things) that we don’t control. Focus on what you control. Getting good real estate deals is a function of the number of purchase offers you make, so start making more offers and more importantly, follow up on the offers you made before–only 2% of sales in any business are done on the first contact. As far as the seller whose phone is disconnected is concerned—go to the property yourself, knock on the door, send a postcard, leave a sticky note on the door or hire a skip tracer or PI. Run your life and your real estate business deliberately and intentionally not accidentally and you will get better results over time.

Next week is election day. Voting is the beating heart of democracy. Democracy requires participation.

Voting boils down to simple math, if you don’t vote, you magnify the vote of everyone else who does.  Elections are decided by the people who show up.  As astronaut, John Glenn said, “to sit back and let fate play its hand out & never influence it is not the way man was meant to operate”, so live deliberately not accidentally.  Thanks for your question, Mark.

For more real estate tips and information visit my blog at geraldlucas.com.