Because it's important that you stay in control of some of the more important aspects of your buying, managing, and renovating, it's equally crucial that you delegate some of the day-to­day tasks to people who can do the more easily, more professionally, and more economically than you can. If you try to micro-manage every aspect of your real estate business, you'll find that the time it takes to do the things you DON'T need to be doing cuts into the time you should be spending on the things that really make you money.

Yes, there are fairly successful real estate investors who do literally everything it takes to keep their business up and running, from book keeping and tax preparation to doing their own title searches and closings to performing their own work on their properties. But sheer amount of time and energy it takes to learn and execute all of these activities limits the amount of wealth and income they can build-and the time they have to enjoy it. Whenever there are professionals out there who can do any job as well as or better than you can, it's almost always to your advantage to pay them to do it, and use your own time more profitably.

A common example of this is renovators who, rather than supervising the work on their properties, actually do some or all of it themselves. Often, these are folks who come from a building or contracting background, and figure that the fastest, surest, and cheapest way to get repairs done is to do it themselves. But this thinking is flawed in that, in terms of potential dollars per hour worked, renovation does not pay nearly as well as deal-hunting.

Think of it this way: if you are a skilled painter, you might be able to paint a home in less than 2 8-hour days. And hiring another skilled painter to do the job might cost you $1500 in labor. If you do the work yourself, you've saved-and therefore, have effectively been PAID-$1500 for 2 days' work. Not a bad return-until you realize that, in the same two-day period, you could have used your deal-finding skills to round up another fixer house that you could buy for $25,000 under market. $1500 is no savings when you give up the potential $25,000 profit to get it.

And the same applies to many functions that you COULD perform in your own business, but probably shouldn't. And that's where your "team" comes in. Your team is a group of experts and professionals who you pay for labor, services, and advice as needed. Your team members are not necessarily employees-in fact, most will be independent business people who serve other real estate entrepreneurs, as well. But, like employees, they need to be people who are great at what they do, who you trust and get along with, and who ultimately add to your bottom line.

You will build your team over time, as you meet and network with the people who provide the products and services you need. You will add team members as needed, replace them where necessary, and-above all-make the relationship profitable and easy for THEM as well as for yourself.

The team you need depends in part on how much investing you are doing, and what strategies you're employing. But some examples of people you might want on your team include:

A mentor. Unlike many of the "paid" team members below, a mentor is not someone that you hire. Instead, it's someone that you find through networking a personal contacts. But developing one or more mentors can take a lot of the fear and uncertainty about investing in real estate out of the equation; therefore, your mentor is possibly the most important person on your success team.

A mentor is someone to whom you can turn to for guidance and motivation. Your mentor should be someone who is already where you want to be in his own real estate career. He should be local, but not in direct competition with you for deals. In fact, a mentor who is so advanced in his real estate business that he is no longer acquiring properties is ideal. He should be willing to share information freely. He should have ethical standards in conducting his business that match your own.

Mentor/student relationships work only when they are two-way streets. If the relationship is one-sided, it will not be the long-term association you need to help you succeed. For instance, if you are constantly asking your mentor for help without ever providing anything in return, he'll quickly come to see you as a pest, and will be reluctant to assist you as time goes by. On the other hand, if you are constantly bringing deals to your mentor, helping him out in his real estate business, and functioning as buyer for properties he's unloading or wholesaling-but you never get any hard advice in return, you'll never learn what you need to know.

Mentors have a variety of reasons for helping newbies. One common motivation is simply the thrill of passing on hard-earned knowledge and experience to someone who soaks it up like a sponge, then uses it to better their own lives. If this is the case with your mentor, his best reward will be seeing you actually use what he teaches you to make deals. Other mentors like to be helped out with some of the day-to-day activities of their businesses; you might offer to show a vacant property that is close to you, or take calls from tenants while your mentor is out of town, or even spend a Saturday helping him paint his rehab.

One warning: when someone you don't know comes to YOU with an offer to mentor you, ask yourself why. There is, unfortunately, a breed of investor who preys on newbies by offering to help them out, ostensibly from the goodness of the "mentor's" heart. They'll actively court you, promising to show you exactly how they buy, renovate, and manage properties. And sure enough, they'll put you in their car and take you out to see all the great deals they've done. And then they'll show you a property that they happen to want to sell, and describe in glowing terms what a great deal it is, and then realize that hey, IT'S THE PERFECT FIRST DEAL FOR YOU!!! Since the property fits everything you know about what makes a great deal-knowledge that has been imparted to you by this very seller-you go for it. It's only later that you realize that the property is worth less than you thought and needs more work. But by then, your "mentor" has moved on to the next new fish.

In other words, a good mentor does not have a profit motive in teaching you to buy real estate in any particular way. Instead, he is a resource for information, no matter what direction your own real estate career ends up taking you.

Source: www.regoddess.com

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