No, I’m not about to get all lovey-dovey in this post, but it’s late at night and I just realized I’m remiss in writing lately. So as the midnight hour approaches here in Honolulu and my attention drifts off into dreamland, I wanted to recap the past few days. I was asked by real estate investor friends of GD Solutions to emcee their seminar that they held at the Blaisdell this past weekend. It was a fun weekend full of fantastic, local speakers. While there was a lot of real estate investment knowledge to take away, I also made some new business contacts and friends, and that’s kind of the point of this post. You should like people in your industry (and not the Facebook “Like”, although that’s fine as well — I can’t believe we’ve gotten to the stage where I even felt the need to say this!).
It’s often the case that when real estate professionals get together, especially investors, we inevitably talk about the numbers behind a deal. What was your After Repair Value? What was your MAO and what did you go to contract on? But what really drives real estate, and many other industries, is people. Again, I’m not getting gushy here, but it’s important to go out of your way to spend time with fellow investors, agents, officers, etc. Get to know them beyond just real estate so that you can form a real bond, both professionally and personally, so that when the time comes to actually do business, you’ve built a foundation of rapport and trust to work with.
In addition to being the guy behind my own Hawaii real estate company, Big Rock Investments, as well as HawaiiHousingNews.com, I’m also one of the co-organizers of The Action Takers. We’re a real estate, investing & entrepreneur mastermind group that meets for a fun, casual happy hour every other Wednesday. We’ll be meeting this Wednesday from 5:30-8’ish at Pearl club in the Ala Moana mall, and you’re all welcome to join us. While we do, of course, talk about the numbers behind current deals in addition to other general business talk, we’ve also forged some solid relationships that we hope will benefit all of us down the road. We just want to bring together good people who are out there trying to achieve their objectives and dreams (over pints and pupus :)).
And before I go off on a tangent, let me complete the circle (so I can go to bed). The reason that I was asked by my friends at GD Solutions to emcee their event this past weekend is not because of my smoothness with a microphone (actually that might be part of it); it’s because our mutual friendship and respect has eclipsed the sense of competition. Do we market for the same buyers? Yes we do. Do we seek the same sellers to keep our businesses running? Almost definitely. But as I’ve volunteered for another organization over the past year that they are involved in, they’ve continued the good karma by bringing me on their weekly TV show and allowing me to be featured this past weekend during their event. And I was happy to do it. Competitors? Sure, but most investors know about the Abundance Mindset, i.e. there’s enough to go around for all of us. That mindset can be hard to embrace, especially in the beginning of one’s career as a real estate professional, but I find it to be more and more true everyday.
Trying to go it alone is for the weak – instead, go seek out fellow professionals and see how you can help each other. And MEAN IT! Join us this Wednesday for The Action Takers. The next night, go check out the Real Deals group – they’re all about sharing deals. Doesn’t that sound better than trying to be successful while holding all your cards to your chest? This is Hawaii – the Aloha State. No one’s saying give up all your business secrets, but I’m sure the biggest pros in the industry here would tell all of us that there’s greater power in numbers and partnerships than in being a real estate lone wolf.
So go spread some Aloha and embrace the Abundance Mindset because there really is enough out there for all of us.