Mistakes & Advice from Real Estate Investors

As some of you know I’m a contributor to the awesome real estate education platform,?BiggerPockets . A few months ago at their conference, I got to meet up with many of my old friends and peers in the industry and fellow contributors.?I was able to get a few of them to sit with me for my YouTube channel for a quick chat, which you can find on our channel DeRosa Group , and thought I would summarize our conversation here also.

I had the pleasure of doing a brief interview with , Ashley Kehr, Co-host of the Real Estate Rookie Podcast at BiggerPockets , Sterling White , Principal at Sonder Investment Group, Jeffrey Holst , Co-Host of Old Fashioned Real Estate Show, Jorge Abreu , Managing Partner, Elevate Commercial Investment Group, Alex Felice , Photographer, Investor, Life & Lens Photography, Brian Burke , President and CEO of Praxis Capital , Dave Van Horn , CEO, PPR Note CO. Author of Real Estate Investing, and of course, Andresa Guidelli , Co-Founder, The Real Estate Invest HER .

I wanted to ask a few questions to each entrepreneur and gather valuable advice to share. It doesn’t matter what part of your real estate journey you are on; this pertains to everyone!

Here’s a summary of our conversation, I hope you enjoy!

The first question I asked was: “What is a piece of advice for someone looking to get into Real Estate?”

Ashley Kehr: "For any rookie investors, I think the best thing you can do is to get a job working in the real estate industry. There are so many different opportunities out there, such as working as a leasing agent on Sunday's or nights fulfilling maintenance request for an investor in the area, driving for dollars, hunting for deals or wholesalers. There's lots of opportunity where you can get paid and you don't even have to quit your full-time job, and that's how I got started working as a property manager.”

Sterling White: "Always ensure that you raise enough money if you're doing the syndication for instance to take care of the renovations, because that will end up biting you later if you do not. It all starts with mindset. If you don't have the right mindset, the rest won't really matter."

Jeffrey Holst: "Get started right now. Don't wait. You only get one life."

Jorge Abreu: "The advice I would give myself when I first started real estate if I was to go back would be to skip the eleven plus years I spent in single family and go straight to large multifamily properties because it's building me the wealth I was looking for in the beginning and the generational type of wealth versus single family where it was very transactional and this is more of a long-term play."

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Alex Felice: "If I could start over, I'd spend more of my time learning big picture macroeconomics to invest in real estate rather than worrying about what deal specifics because if you buy in an economic market that's growing in an area that's growing, you're going to do pretty good. If you get a great deal in an area that's either going to deflate or it's going to be a problem, it doesn't matter how good the deal is, it’s going to be a headache.”

Brian Burke: “When I first got started, the advice I would give to myself would be set my expectations appropriately. I thought I was going to go too big, too fast. When that didn't happen, you start to get discouraged. Don't lose the faith. Just know it takes a while and it takes hard work, and you will eventually get there.”

Dave Van Horn: “I probably had opportunities to use more private money or hard money or to think bigger as well. I kind of put self-limiting beliefs on what I thought I could do because I thought it had to be my money or things like that. I just thought I'd work more to get ahead; I didn’t leverage my time very well or leverage money very well.

Andresa Guidelli: “I’d put myself on my to do list, but I'll put myself on the first spot right there, taking care of my mental health and my physical health while building a business is the best decision that I could have ever made.”

Next, I asked “If you could give yourself any advice when you first started in Real Estate, what would it be?”

Ashley Kehr: “One lesson that I've really learned over the years is that is so important to stay continuously engaged with like-minded individuals and continuing that work. Real estate, it goes up and down. It is so inspiring and motivating to hear other investors relate with them and to continue to feel that motivation and surround yourself with them.”

Sterling White: “If I were to go back and give one piece of advice to myself, it would be to find a mentor sooner, because that's when I was able to really speed up my learning curve in my very first deal was acquired using that individual's money, we partnered together. I brought them the deal and then they funded it.”

Jeffrey Holst: “So the biggest mistake I made in my real estate investing career was not getting started soon enough. The second biggest mistake was not getting into Multifamily soon enough.”

Jorge Abreu: “The biggest mistake that I made was trying to do too much and not focusing on one thing first and conquering that one thing. I spread myself out way too thin and rejected that by focusing one thing at a time.”

Alex Felice: “Oh my god, I make so many mistakes. I should have gone way bigger, way faster. I'm riddled with fear and risk aversion, and it only costs me money and opportunity that I should be leaping towards.”

Brian Burke: “Probably the biggest mistake I've learned along the way is not to stray too far outside of my lane every time I try to do something I'm not good at. I learned why I should not do that again.”

Dave Van Horn: “To focus on my unique ability more and stop trying to do everything or be good at everything and just figure out what I'm good at and outsource the rest. I got a unique way that I do it kind of now it's kind of out of the Dan Sullivan book where you do three columns.

One column is what you're great at it, you get good energy from, doesn't feel like work. One is stuff I don't mind doing, but I do it anyway. Then one is the stuff I really don't like doing, and hate doing it.

The old saying is, if you want to do what you love, stop doing what you hate and try to outsource some of these other two columns. Because we're probably all doing stuff we shouldn't be doing or somebody else could do just as good or better. Focus on what we can. We're the only ones that can do certain things.”

Andresa Guidelli: “I am not my thoughts. I am not the number of doors that I own. That is one very important thing I am. My value is not tied to my portfolio. I am who I am in the world. I am the impact that I make in this world and not my number of doors.

The underlying theme that I got from everyone was to stay focused.        

The underlying theme that I got from everyone was to stay focused.?Too many times in my real estate career, I broke that rule.?There were times when I had four fix and flips going, a wholesale deal, rental properties, and an office building in the works.?Trying to go in too many different directions will take you in no direction!?

Another lesson is to scale and reach upward perhaps faster than your comfort zone.?Those that run large companies seemed to have built beyond their fears and allowed their confidence to catch up with them over time.?I have found this to be the solid truth for my company.?There is never a perfect time to scale your business, the only way to do it is to scale and have faith that you will figure out the finer points along the way.?Jump out of the airplane and build the parachute on the way down, in a way.?

And a shameless plug, I LOVE the BiggerPockets community and the friends I’ve made there.?There is nothing hidden, just investors trying to help other investors hit their goals.?No flashy programs, no fancy cars, no sizzle, it’s all steak.?If you haven’t checked them out, click that logo right here to begin, continue, or add to your Real Estate Financial Freedom Journey!