There are a lot of skills you need to master in order to run a successful real estate investing business.  Perhaps the biggest skill you MUST master is the ability to make mistakes, correct them quickly, and move on.  Managing your mistakes (you will make some at some point) must be learned early in your career.

Management of people, process and a slew of various products.   It all combines and the outcome can be either terrific – or costly and terrifying when done wrong.

People will include the various contractors who help renovate the home, but don’t forget the inspectors from the county, state, and the home inspector that may recommend other more specialized inspectors to follow up on their work.   It’s a lot of people focused on  finding defects, which is  easy to do in older homes.

Process involves keeping everything on track and moving forward.  Nothing drives me crazy like having a foot of snow on the ground and being trapped inside for a week or more.  Knowing that our projects are out there without anyone paying attention to them, nothing getting done, and everything just sitting at a standstill – it just makes my skin crawl.

Aside from keeping things moving though, you job is also to make sure things are happening in a logical and thought through way.  Painting walls is silly if you are going to tear them down to open up a room – yet I see new renovators do this more often that you might believe.

And the long list of projects that go into a renovation project?  Hundreds of different pieces. All of it chosen and installed by dozens of people from various backgrounds.  It’s an amazing moment when a project is done and it all comes together nicely.  It’s a disaster if you don’t keep a close eye on things and you get a “mish/mash” of various styles and skills.

This month at our monthly WREIA meeting you will have a chance to listen and talk with some of the areas top renovators.  These people actually make a living going through the process we just described.  They keep track of all the people, choose all the products and keep everything moving in a logical process.

Everyone brings their own experience to this business.  You will too.  As your business grows, you will make your own process and choose your own products.  A great short cut to growing your business faster is to simply hear what these experienced business people are doing correctly, and learn from their mistakes as well.

Mistakes – we all make them.  It’s how you handle them that makes the difference in your ultimate success or failure.   The easiest thing you can do Monday night is ask questions, listen and learn from other peoples successes and failures. We say it all the time – “Sometimes avoiding a mistake could save you thousands of dollars.”

Reserve your seat and join us on Monday night at our May WREIA meeting.