Striving to create a better life for everyone by sustainably solving real estate problems

(512) 807-8777

Tag Archives: FortuneBuilders

Moving Right Along, and Mowing

If nothing else, I can make me some Bitmoji graphics. Obviously I’m not an artist.

Hello readers!

We used the recent US holiday to take a much-needed breather. We all have “things” going on, too. Like, I have a puppy. They take up time.

What’s going on

Russell and Carol are selling his mom’s house (she didn’t want to buy from us, but we did try!). Russ had to take a breather from our stuff to train a lot of people at his full-time job, but he’s back now.

Carol has been training her daughter, Sierra, to help us out over the summer. That’s going to be really good! We also have my sister, Canova, helping out with writing postcards for one of Lee’s campaigns, so we are actively doing the house searching.

Today she is at the Austin FortuneBuilders event going on this week. Lee had intended tospend a few days at the FortuneBuilders event, too. But, a closing and a lease signing for our Hermits’ Rest Enterprises business have come up. So, he is in Cameron.

I feel bad that I can’t be at the FortuneBuilders thing, too, but my OTHER job is in crunch time week this week. I have to write me up some training materials as fast as humanly possible. So, hello to all the FB family out there! They even had a gathering that we missed (Lee isn’t on Facebook anymore, so he doesn’t see things, and I was ranching).

Lee has been doing a giant audit of all our finances, which means he hasn’t blogged recently (plus writer’s block, that thing writers get, which makes me not a writer, but a typist, because I don’t get to have writer’s block in my job!).

This is how Mandi and I looked in her back yard until it finally got mowed.

There’s been another thing Lee has dealt with lately but has been unable to discus. Now that it’s over I’m hoping he will write something up. It will be an important cautionary tale, but I would rather he tell it (ooh, foreshadowing). AND we have yet another really interesting new business project lined up that we can’t talk about yet. No wonder I haven’t been blogging; it’s like the CIA around here.

Our other frequent contributor, Mandi, has been working away on the renovation project (dealing directly with Lowe’s) and Lee’s finance stuff, too, plus going through the drama of a child graduating from high school, which is hard on a mom. But we are all proud of Seth!

Grassy Issues

I’d say our BIGGEST news that I am authorized to discuss is that the lawns finally got mowed at the Cameron office. The amount of trouble it took to achieve that seemingly simple task boggled my mind. But we did what we should have done all along, which was to stop trying to get the cheapest person possible and instead find someone with a billing system and a staff.

It’s hard to know what’s the right thing to do, though, because we have team members who strongly believe in finding the least expensive option, no matter what, and others who focus on quality over all, while others are looking for what takes the least amount of our expensive effort. There has to be a middle ground!

10Shares

Lee’s Rodent Encounter Near Dallas

Album Cover

Illusions on a Double Dimple Photo source: Amazon

I made it to Frisco (near Dallas), where the FortuneBuilder event I’m volunteering at is taking place, after taking almost four  hours for what should’ve been a two-and-a-half hour drive. Waco was probably the most interesting part of the drive. I had to go through a thunderstorm that was like driving through a tropical storm. There were times I couldn’t see the car in front of me, even though the traffic on I-35. It slowed to almost 35 miles an hour.

By the time I made it to the north side of Waco, I had driven out of the rain. The roads were not dry, and the sky looked like it could start to pour again at any second. But it had still been free of the rain long enough for the automatic windshield wipers to stop for a couple of minutes. Then my phone went off in panic mode. “Warning! Warning! Warning! Severe thunderstorm warning for the next 18 minutes. Really helpful, Siri.”

I Made It

So anyway I managed to get to the event and get checked in. My job tonight was to attach badge holders to the end of lanyards, and I did a few hundred of those. Then we broke for the evening and I went to the another nearby hotel, because I hadn’t been able to get booked at the Hilton tonight.

I got checked in at the other hotel, which shall remain nameless for reasons that will become apparent. I went up to the room and found it to be very very nice, if not worth the price that I’m having to pay for it. But that’s what happens when you go to a conference and have to get a hotel in a downtown area.

Hotel Hijinks

So I’m hungry. I go downstairs to the restaurant for dinner, and it’s pretty nice and reasonably priced—for a hotel. The waitress was really nice and made me laugh. She took my order and went away. While I was waiting for my food to come out a fairly large gray rat scrambles across the restaurant in front of me. I was tired, so I rubbed my eyes thinking, “Did I really just see a rat run across the restaurant?”

Continue reading →

14Shares

Polishing Networking Skills

One of the ways we find deals to work on, partners for projects, and funding for our rehabs is through networking. In fact, both Lee and Russell focus a lot of their work for the company on networking. Mandi and I deal a lot with the general public in our roles, so we spend a lot of time developing our networks. It’s a vital skill in this business. If no one knows about you, how are they going to find you to work with you?

All dressed up, equipped with giant scissors, but no crowd! I’m late, says Lee.

With that in mind, Lee is embarking on a networking bonanza this week. He’s heading to Plano, which is in the Dallas, Texas area,  for a FortuneBuilders event, where he’s volunteering to work with the “Crush It Crew,” the people who help keep the events running smoothly and augment the paid staff who attend. He is paying his own hotel rooms and most of his own meals for the priviledge of doing this work. Why on earth would he do THAT?

It’s obvious! You get to meet lots of other Texas real estate investors and redevelopment specialists at these things, and there is a lot of time to develop new relationships that can lead to future deals, partnerships, and so on. This has worked great for our friend, Larry, who met his partners in his RV Park empire at events like this.

We’ve also found a large percentage of our private money lenders through attending the real estate events as students. As a volunteer, Lee will be able to talk to lots more people and won’t be concentrating as hard on learning. We’ve both taken most of the classes multiple times, so now it’s time to move on.

Lee with Bad Hair

Fun Fact: Sometimes before Lee has his morning coffee, he can’t even find the coffee maker behind him.

How to Find Him?

So, if you’re going to be at the event, or you’re local to the greater Dallas/Plano area and want to meet Lee in person, head over to the Plano Hilton and look for the guy in the pictures. He’s hard to miss. Want to give him a call or text him? Leave a comment and we’ll put you in touch. We don’t yet know what he’ll be doing, but he’ll be around.

He would LOVE to share a meal, chat, or answer your questions about our business model and projects. We want to learn from our peers as well as share knowledge.

14Shares

Tidbits on Learning about Real Estate Redevelopment

Look at all the lovely places I didn’t go, because I was concentrating on work.

Today I’ll share some is I learned at the Ignite conference that doesn’t merit an entire post.

  • From the Statement of Work session:
    • Daily calls with contractors are a good idea, to make sure things are not going astray. My thought is each project manager should call the contractor or contractors they are currently working with in the early evening, so they can then accurately report progress to the team on our daily huddle. (Don’t have a daily huddle? Start one.)
    • You don’t have to spend hours and hours on the statement of work. Re-use ones you used before, with modifications for the current property. If something works, keep at it. Just be sure to revise your templates every six months or so, since products change.
    • If you’re in FortuneBuilders, their library of templates is fantastic.
  • Seller Financing session:
    • There are a lot of advantages to buying a home using seller financing. This is interesting, because we mainly use it to sell houses to people with poor credit at higher interest than standard mortgages. It’s an interesting way to save money while you are renovating. I’ll write more about that in another post, too. Or maybe Lee can.
  • Conference attendance techniques when only one team member attends:
    • I decided to take pictures of my notes and share them with my colleagues. We have a private Facebook group for our team, and that lets us easily share photos of work in progress, stuff we are interested in, reminders, color ideas, etc. This page is a perfect place to share notes, as well.
    • I hope to do presentations on some of the more interesting information. This will start whenever Lee’s well enough to resume our Wednesday management meetings!
  • Some medications make you fall asleep in sessions. This is annoying. I fell asleep twice in sessions I was actually interested in!

 

10Shares

My Focus This Weekend: Me

I’ve been at the FortuneBuilders Real Estate Ignite conference since Friday, on my Solo Knowledge Trek. It’s really a good conference to get new ideas for your real estate redevelopment business, but there are other advantages, too.

Paul Esajian talks about how to really invest.

The FortuneBuilders company takes in a lot of bucks from students; I acknowledge that. But they sure do give back. They always bring in excellent speakers to remind you of who you are and what you are doing, and this weekend, I decided to attend more of that kind of session than the ones about analyzing money (which I know would be a good idea, but I need the inspiration).

I’m going to do a longer post about the guy who lived with a Navy Seal for a month, after I read his book, so stay tuned for that one. He got me to thinking about my own personal growth, both within and outside of this business.

Continue reading →

12Shares