Saturday, December 11, 2010

The Educated Real Estate Buyer

I recently had the privilege of attending five days of training that were amazing and powerful.  Portions of this training were available to the public at $5,000 per ticket.  A select few of my friends were able to attend the public portion at a significant discount thanks to my relationship with the internationally syndicated radio talk show host, JT Foxx.

You may ask yourself why would a successful Real Estate Entreprenuer like Tom take five days away from business and family to attend training? I will tell you why, it is because knowledge is the most critical success factor in this or any business.

Although the fundamentals of business don't chang, market conditions do. The strategies that worked in the previous decade, year, six-months no longer work with today's market. Because of that, every successful business owner will regularly engage in Zero-Based Thinking.

In Zero-Based Thinking, you start by assuming that you are starting over, completely fresh. Instead of working from what you "know" about your market, your customers, and your business, you take a fresh look.

Once you have rebuilt your market view and your customer definition/view then you look at your business and ask, "Why? Why? Why?"

Yes, you actually ask it at least three times about everything you are doing in your business. "Why are we doing that?" "Why do we believe it is working?" "Why should we stop doing that?"

Asking lots of "dumb" questions will help you to uncover the false assumptions and changed foundations beneath your current business practices. Making that critical examination in the light of a new look at your market and customers can help you avoid going down the drain with your competition or getting run over by the new business on the block who approached it with a clean slate and is killing everyone else because of not being bound by outmoded practices or traditions.

Zero-Based Thinking is just one of the many things I learned in this five days of training. I have already used it to make my business better, and there are dozens of more things I learned that I will be using to make my business and my next six months more profitable than the six that went before.

If you think it is costly to spend so much time and money on education as a business owner or individual, consider how much bad experience costs.
~ Tom S.
PS: In case you were wondering, I spent a day and half with Raymond Aaron, a day and half with JT Foxx, and then two days with Nido Qubein, JT Foxx, Raymond Aaron and Phil Grove.  If you don't know who these people are, then follow the links associated with their names and be amazed at the caliber of people I am learning from.

PPS: In addition to the instruction from the folks I mentioned above, I was in the room with a couple of dozen successful business owners from all across the country.  Many of these folks are worth millions and millions of dollars.  I was able to network with them and learn from them too.

Tom Sheppard has been successfully investing in real estate since 2001 while working part time. In 2008 he left a six-figure job as an enterprise project manager with a major national bank to manage his real estate business full-time. His goal is to help 100,000 people find peace of mind by finding quality, affordable homes. Why pay retail when you can buy a home at below market prices? www.buybelowmarket.com. He is currently looking to expand his network of funding partners who are helping him achieve this goal. If you would like to know more about how you can do well by doing good, contact Tom at TSheppard@ADBProperties.com