The energy of our Mastery Students who joined us down in Memphis was incredible. The high level of teaching and training that I was able to be a part of was one of the best experiences of my career, however that cannot even hold a candle to what we did Saturday night.

I have always wanted to be a part of something bigger, something greater than what I could achieve on my own. FortuneBuilders is a perfect environment for that. Combined with the incredible leadership at FortuneBuilders and the incredible community we have between our staff and the Mastery Student Family, I constantly am in an environment that pushed me to excel and fosters an amazing thirst for knowledge and success.

Saturday night helped me achieve a life long goal of mine. To be able to give back to a worthy cause, and be a part of making an impact on children’s lives that otherwise would not have the resources to survive is an incredible thing. Donating to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital was the fulfillment of my lifelong desire to be able to reach out and positively affect the lives of others. Together with FortuneBuilders and Memphis Invest I was able to do this in a way I would never have been able to achieve on my own.

With our partners Memphis Invest, we had the honor of collectively donating a $61,000 check at a special Celebration Gala we held Saturday night to benefit the incredible cause that is St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Additionally, with the help of Memphis Invest, our Mastery Students picked up 21 houses this past weekend for their own Real Estate Portfolios. In less than 48 hours we helped raise an additional $23,000 on top of the $61,000 we had already donated to St. Jude Children’s Hospital!

To be able to support such a worthy cause is one of the most rewarding experiences we have had as a company. The ability to not only change our own financial futures, but to be able to impact the life of a child in such an incredible way is truly something that no one can put a price tag on.

Standing on stage with the CFO of St. Jude Children’s Hospital Jeff Pearson and Memphis Invest, presenting a giant check was one of the proudest moments of my life. Knowing that my efforts for the past 4 months will help to save the lives of children with cancer who otherwise would have no other option was truly moving.
In all honesty – I teared up.

St. Jude Children’s Hospital is a phenomenal organization that is on the forefront of Pediatric Cancer Research. They have done some absolutely amazing things in reducing the mortality rate of childhood cancer, and continue to be a major source of innovation in the field. Hearing Mr. Pearson speak to us and our Mastery Students about the work that St. Jude’s does for childhood cancer research was incredibly moving. The idea that “…no child should die in the dawn of life….” is truly a cause to stand behind, and the success in increasing childhood survival rates for cancer is equally as impressive.

I have found the charity that I will be personally supporting for the rest of my life.

Thank you FortuneBuilders and Memphis Invest for such an incredible opportunity.

Many new real estate investing business owners believe that as long as they push forward hard and make tons of money nothing can bring them down. This may be a feasible strategy if you live in a third world country and can pay off the cops at every turn and bribe your way out of trouble but not for real estate investing in America.

Those who neglect this sometimes unsexy part of their real estate education could be setting themselves up for massive failure just when they think they have finally made it to the big time.

Just ask Mark Zuckerberg who has lost somewhere in the region of $4 billion in the last few days. Of course it may not burn so bad if you still have a few billion to play with but no one wants to lose that kind of cash.

Real estate investors who don’t have a few extra billion in their pockets can find that unforeseen changes in markets, marketing trends, regulations and anyone of a half dozen potential disasters can bankrupt them overnight, leading to horrific consequences.

Part of being ultra-successful for the long term is planning for the unforeseen and unexpected so that you are never caught off guard. If you don’t then there is no one else to blame when it blows up on you.

5 ways to secure your real estate investing success:

1. Set aside personal savings and a reserve fund for your investment business
2. Maintain good insurance for both properties and your business
3. Be careful about paperwork, make sure contracts and partnership agreements protect you
4. Distance yourself from liability with 3^rd parties when possible. Attorneys, property managers and real estate agents can all be invaluable sometimes
5. Stay on top of your real estate education and consider advanced coaching so that you know what will get you in trouble and what not to do

Marketing can be one of the most challenging aspects of real estate investing. Investors are hammered by pitches with all sorts of channels, media and strategies they ‘should’ be using. These often come in the form of slick websites or sales people with even slicker pitches that just seem to make so much sense in the moment. Unfortunately sales people like real estate investors are also often easily sold.

There are endless marketing ideas that could work but before jumping on a new one take a real look at the numbers. What are others really achieving in terms of results with these campaigns? What are the guarantees? What is the real ROI when everything is factored in? There are dozens of types of marketing which work for real estate investing but if you are going to beat out your competitors you have to demand the absolute best return, not just a return.

The same goes for hiring especially when hiring marketing related staff. Do you want to gamble on cheap staff because they are cheap and risk paying double or more to fix it later or is it smarter to spend a little more and get quality team members for sure from the beginning? Whether local or outsourced staff there can be a big difference in paper boasts and actual performance. Hire on results. Take into consideration history as well as current feedback and ask to see what tangible results a provider has achieved for others before hiring. Even Yahoo’s CEO just got fired after being caught lying about having a degree.

However, it isn’t even deciding on channels and choosing between different types of media that is the most confusing or the center of the most controversy today. It is whether the focus should be on providing value and hoping to get some deals or a direct sales pitch is the best way to go.

Real estate investing pros have been bombarded with the message that hard selling is out and that is definitely doesn’t work when it comes to social. Then just a couple weeks ago Facebook comes out and tells business owners that they aren’t being direct enough and including enough calls to action.

So what’s the deal?

There is a lot to be said for both arguments and perhaps the right answer is a good balance of both. However, when it comes to real estate investing the right strategy can also depend a lot on what your needs are and budget situation is.

Focusing on value, taking yoru time like Facebook did in the beginning to just build a network and following can be smart. Unfortunately not every investor can afford to wait years to start doing deals and actually bringing money in the door. Most new real estate investors got in because they need fast cash and are running out of it fast. This makes a direct approach almost essential. Hit or miss you will get deals by being direct, even though you may alienate a few prospects in the process.

Perhaps you can afford to blow a few prospects now if they don’t mean immediate cash in the next 30-90 days but that isn’t a winning strategy for the long term, or you will always be struggling to find a deal to eat on next month.

Ask for the business but also begin building valuable content for long term success.

Frantic website and blog owners have been hitting up outsourcing platforms and freelancers this week in a panic after receiving notices from Google. Why?

As announced a while ago on the FortuneBuilders’ blog Google has been making new changes to hunt down those spamming the web with masses of junk, spun content and amassing tons of junk backlinks. Unfortunately there have been many real estate investing pros who have gotten themselves caught up in these practices, trying to take short cuts and attempting to fool Google.

Sometimes trying to go too cheap ends up costing far more in the long run and doesn’t even produce results. Now the operators of these real estate investing websites have to try to take down the hundreds or thousands of articles, blog posts and links they have out there and have paid to have written and submitted and pay for their removal. If they can’t get them down they won’t just be relegated to the search engine abyss, dozens of pages deep but will likely be de-indexed and banned. Plus of course then this means re-creating all content from scratch and losing months or years of lead time.

The search engines have made no secret of the fact that they are on a witch hunt and are at war with those who are trying to cheat the system.

Real estate investing pros cannot afford to underestimate the importance and value of high quality original content. If this means producing less of it then that is preferable to spinning unreadable copies of junk that has been posted 1,000 times already. However, content will continue to separate those who win a real estate investing and those who struggle. Posting daily and multiple times a day when it comes to social will make a huge difference in search engine rankings.