They say you have to start somewhere, right?
But wouldn't it be nice if you could get started with the right kind of wisdom, maybe a leg up?
As someone who controls $90 million in multifamily real estate, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on what works and what doesn’t
What would I advise my younger self?
Check out this video.. Here are three things I’d say to younger me if I could.
The first thing I would tell my younger self is, “Hey, Michael, you don't need five to 10 years of single family house investing experience, you can go right into multifamily.”
The truth is, you don't need five or 10 years of experience to be taken seriously by brokers.
I started with flipping houses and I did that for two or three years. I flipped about three dozen houses. But when I called brokers and told them I wanted to get into apartment buildings, they asked how many apartments I’d done and I said, none, but look at all these houses I’ve flipped…but I got no credit that.
So single family didn't actually help me get into multifamily at all. I had to start over.
Since doing this, having the podcast and YouTube channel and writing the book Financial Freedom With Real Estate Investing, I’ve noticed that people don't need prior real estate investing experience. In fact, there's no correlation.
You can appear more experienced than you are in about 30 days by doing two things.
- Educate Yourself. You can take advantage of Deal Maker Certification and the training around that. You’ll start using the right language and build some confidence.
2. Build a Team. We’ll show you exactly how to do that in the course, but also in these videos that we're releasing. You’ll want to recruit a property manager, you’ll want to recruit a lender, and then when you talk to brokers, you reference that team and you reference and leverage their track record.
This is a powerful way to appear much more experienced, so that brokers take it seriously.
The second thing I wish I would have told myself is, “Michael, you can do stuff with other people's money.”
You can raise money and you can buy a multi-million dollar building. It's actually surprisingly easy to do that. I talk about in my book, and we talk about it on the Apartment Building Investing podcast all the time.
Raising capital is at the core of what we do here.
I discovered this almost by accident when I was flipping houses. My capital was all deployed in restaurants because I invested heavily in restaurants, thinking that was my financial freedom ticket. It went really badly. I lost all of my money.
It was raising money that I discovered a complete game changer because I realized I could do something, regardless of how much or little money I had.
So can you. I know because so many other people have done it.
You can raise money to get right into multifamily right from the start.
The third thing I would have told myself is, “Get a mentor.”
I should have hired a mentor, and if I didn't have the money to hire a mentor, I should have networked to find one. I lost my entire net worth with my restaurant debacle because I thought I could do it myself. I got into apartments without a mentor, and it was a nightmare.
I could have saved myself a lot of lost money and heartache by cutting the results with a mentor.
So if you can afford it, hire a mentor who's will spend one on one time with you, someone who has done what you want to do.
We have a mentoring program here. Schedule a strategy session call with us and see if mentoring is right for you, to help accelerate your goals and avoid some of the bigger mistakes.
If you can’t invest in yourself at the level of hiring a mentor to work one on one with you, that's okay. Network and find an unpaid mentor who can help you and guide you along the way. If you study every single successful person, there's a very high chance that they either have a paid or unpaid mentor, and sometimes both.
So those are the three things I would have told myself, and those are the three things that will help you get into multifamily right away, so you can quit your job in the next 1-3 years.
