Investor Cardinal Rule: SHOW UP!

Last night I went to my local REIA meeting as I do every month. This night they had a particularly big turn out for the particularly energetic national speaker. I saw people last night that I haven’t seen at meetings in a while and also met investors that I’ve never met before. Which led me to wonder, why in the world do I not see these people every month???????

When I started out I took the advice of all the books and Gurus that tell you “Join your local investor club, it’s a great resource for education and networking.” Um, yeah, duh… I joined 5 of them and still go to the big 3’s meetings nearly every month as well as some others where I can fit them in. I average attending four real estate investor meetings a month, which is pretty much one a week. And up until recently, I did this while working a full time job, working my real estate business and having family commitments including two kids, so I don’t want to hear that people don’t have the time to go to meetings. I even ended up running one of those meetings as president, which was an even greater time commitment.

So do people just not care enough to make the time and commitment to attend??? One person told me that the meetings are sometimes dull so he didn’t bother to go or even be a member any more. I seem to remember a lot of high school and college being quite dull, but I went anyway and ended up learning a thing or two, or at least making some friends to hang out with later. And that’s really what its all about for me. Sure, not every meeting is going to be relevant to what I’m doing and not every meeting will have as engaging of a speaker as last night’s did, some may be downright dull, but I‘ve got news for you: YOU STILL NEED TO GO!!!

Unless you found a magic crystal ball in your Grandma’s attic, you do not know what tidbit of information you might pick up that will help your business, or what new contact you might make that will turn things around or open you up to new deals. I actually met Robert Cass with Local Real Estate Deals Media at a previous REIA meeting and that has gotten me started on an entirely new and WAY more exciting path than I ever would have seen. Where would I be now if I had decided I was too tired or too busy to go to that meeting? A very different place that I wouldn’t like nearly as much and doesn’t have nearly as much potential, I’m sure. What other opportunities are out there that I won’t know about if I’m not in the right place at the right time?

Networking is huge, especially in real estate circles. Just look at the success of online networking sites and the enormous numbers of real estate related people on them. Real Estate investing is really more about people than about properties, and some of those important people are your fellow investors. Sure, plenty of investors are very successful without being members of groups, or maybe they were members back when they started out and just don’t think its worth their time anymore now that they are successful (and to those I ask why they feel they don’t need to give back some of the knowledge and experience to others that are now starting out just like they were). But don’t they ever wonder how much MORE successful they would be if they increased their network and did so regularly?

Find your local REIA or other investor group, join, go to meetings. Go to more than one if you can. Maybe its not even a fellow investor you meet, maybe its just a guy that does windows, or someone that has private money to lend, or the publisher of a national investor magazine. How do you know who it will be or how they can help you? The point is you have to obey one of the cardinal rules of successful business people: SHOW UP. And I mean literally!