EXPAND YOUR VISION

Charlene was a single, older woman from the Northeast who had spent years of time and thousands of dollars on real estate education. She knew that real estate was the path for her, and she truly wanted to be an investor. But she was having a tough time getting her foot in the door.

In a field where most people are loud and decisive, Charlene was on the shy side.

She wasn’t a take-charge kind of person, and she didn’t stand out in any way at all. On top of that, she was meek and soft-spoken. She was as invisible as you can get—and she had zero confidence in herself.

Charlene tried asking people for advice, but nobody was all that interested in helping her. She tried wholesaling properties at her local Real Estate Investment Association (REIA) with no luck. No one listened to her, both because she was timid and, more important, because she wasn’t even an investor yet.

Then, finally, someone told Charlene about our turnkey company. She came to Memphis for an open house weekend of ours, and she decided to give us a try. That same weekend, she bought five houses with us. After years of struggling, Charlene was finally an investor. She felt good about her decision. For the first time, she felt confident that she could really do this.

One year later, Charlene told us a story.

“A few weeks after I invested with you, I went back to my usual REIA group with another wholesale property,” she said. “And this time, I got up on stage, with a microphone and everything. I told everybody in that room, ‘I’m a real estate investor who owns five properties, and I have a wholesale deal. Who wants to talk to me about it?’ Right after I got off stage, multiple people came up to me. They wanted to do business.”

Charlene had moved from studying real estate to taking action and investing in it. And that had opened up the pathway for her to move in the direction she wanted to go.

JUST THE BEGINNING

Many people talk about investing in real estate. Few take action. Real estate makes for great dinner party conversation. There is a world of difference between talk and action, though. The few who actually take action are special. They are the ones who are taking their futures and their visions into their own hands.

By the time you complete the process outlined in this book, you belong to the latter group. And once you become an active member of the turnkey revolution, your goals and vision will actually start to become real in your life. Everything will move forward. You will begin to reach the milestones and arrive at the places you wanted to go.

That’s a terrific feeling. But when it happens, a new question comes up: “What’s next for me?”

What’s next is to expand your vision—the final step in the Turnkey Safely System. No matter how far you go, you can always find a way to broaden your horizons, both in terms of personal goals and as an investor. This chapter will give you a preview of what you can expect as you continue on the road to real estate.

GO WHERE THE GROWTH IS

Life never goes stagnant.

Your life and your investments both improve as time goes on. As they do, your vision expands and blossoms right along with them. One day, you suddenly find yourself with more disposable income than you thought you were going to have. Or maybe when you first made your plan five years ago, it was perfect for you because you were single, but now you’re married and you have a child, and the plan you had doesn’t support your new life.

You took the necessary risks to achieve your dreams, and you succeeded. But now you have a new vision and a new idea of your perfect day. And you need a new plan to go along with them.

As you grow as an investor, you will see opportunities that weren’t there before. So much more becomes available to you once you reach your original goal. Maybe you want to expand your portfolio to include multifamily homes. Maybe you feel ready to branch out to other turnkey markets with multiple companies, or to multiple markets using the same company. Maybe you want to try your hand at different types of real estate investing.

Whatever the case, taking action and being consistent with your first plan will lead you to the next one. Not only will you see the way forward, but you’ll also have greater confidence to keep walking down that road.

The more you grow, the more you’ll be able to keep growing. Your turnkey investments have the ability to grow with you, and you can use them to support any goal you can imagine. Just keep expanding your vision, and go where the growth is.

THE FIRST STEP

Everything starts with taking that one first step.

If turnkey real estate sounds like a good fit for you, but you don’t know what to do or who to talk to first, Memphis Invest offers additional resources to help you make a plan for moving forward, available at www.MemphisInvest.com/QuickStart.

You can access these resources risk free, without worrying about being sold on properties that aren’t right for you. Our company is very proud of the fact that we say no to many more potential investors than we say yes to, because we want you to have the perfect experience investing, whether that’s with us or someone else. We want to make sure that your needs are actually a good fit for what we have to offer.

And when I say that, I mean it.

Back in 2013, I met with a broker out of New York City, a tall gentleman by the name of Byron. “I love your company,” he told me animatedly. “I cannot wait to get started with you guys.” Then he launched into an explanation of all the real estate investing he’d done so far: the flips he was doing, the properties he already owned, everything he did when he went to go see them to buy and manage them well.

I remember how excited he was to tell me the details of his latest multifamily property in New Jersey. How he had picked the colors for the inside and refinished the original hardwood floors. He had prospective residents lining up before he had the property finished. He told me of his weekend routine and how it included driving by his properties to make sure they were the best in the neighborhood.

I knew from our conversation that I was talking to someone who truly loved real estate. He had a vision, too. He had a concrete vision for how real estate was going to lead him away from his full-time job and give him his time back. He knew exactly how many properties he wanted to own, and when he explained how he wanted to spend his time, it was clear he had put a lot of time and thought into how to achieve his vision.

This was one of those conversations that I wished could have gone on all morning. I was really enjoying myself, but I knew the hard part was coming.

“I’ve got money, and I’m ready to go,” he said, full of excitement. “Where do we start?”

I looked him in the eye and said, “We don’t.”

His eyebrows went up. “Why?” he asked.

“Because from everything you just told me, you’re a hands-on real estate investor—and you love it,” I explained. “You’re finding, buying, selling, generating activity, making money here in New York and New Jersey. I’ve got suburban homes, and not only is there very little activity on the houses themselves, there’s zero activity for you. How are you going to feel about sending me half a million dollars to own five houses that you won’t have a say in the management of, at all? Passive investing isn’t what drives you. It’s not what makes you happy.”

When we were done that morning, Byron reached over and shook my hand. “You know, that’s probably what makes you guys so great,” he said. “You’re willing to tell somebody no who was going to buy houses, because you know I won’t be happy.”

The truth of the matter was, if I tried to make everyone happy who said they wanted to buy houses from me, I’d be dealing with a bunch of investors like Jack from earlier and making no one happy. There was no way I could provide great customer service to Byron and provide great service to my other clients. I would spend too much time and energy on Byron. I knew that we were not the right investment, and by saying no, I could meet the needs of our other clients—the ones whose needs match perfectly with what we provide.

The way you treat people matters. We truly believe that you can have anything you want in life, if you honestly help other people get what they want. And everything we’ve done has been built around that conviction.

PEOPLE FIRST

The personal relationships we have with our clients are why we go to work each day.

The impact of what we do constantly amazes us. We’ve helped people transform not just their own lives with turnkey investing, but the lives of their families as well. Our clients have taken their parents’ retirement funds out of buildings that weren’t doing anything and invested that money in single-family homes with us instead. They’ve used vehicles like 1031 exchange programs to sell large properties tax free and reinvest those funds into turnkey portfolios. Their parents now have a comfortable monthly income that will support them through their golden years.

We’ve also had clients who have had to put their lives on hold when their children were affected by life-changing illnesses. When scenarios like that happen, suddenly nothing matters to us but how that person’s portfolio performs. The team pulls together and sends gifts to the hospital. Anything that happens with that client’s properties—vacancies, repair fees—we just handle quietly at no cost to him or her in the hope of making the person’s life a little bit easier.

When you have the ability to affect somebody’s life like that, it changes your whole outlook on why you do what you do. There’s a lot to be said for personal relationships. Wherever you invest in turnkey, take the time to build that relationship with your team, and everyone will benefit.

ACT ON SUCCESS

At the end of the day, turnkey real estate investing comes down to this: you need to be bold enough to take action if you want to find success.

Action doesn’t mean jumping into your investments with blinders on. It means moving forward patiently and methodically. It means understanding the calculated risks you’re taking, and making decisions based on facts over emotions.

It takes courage and confidence to walk the path to success. And you will find both the courage and the confidence you need by moving forward steadily and systematically, staying focused on your vision.

Remember, you became a “real” real estate investor from the moment you took those first steps planning a portfolio of homes to build your vision. Now as you continue to move systematically toward your goals, celebrate your small successes along the way, and continue to build upon them, evolving and fine-tuning your vision.

Nothing makes me happier than hearing back from investors who have continued to build their portfolios and moved beyond those first few homes that they started with. Stories like Charlene’s and Sam’s, who both became active real estate investors after starting with turnkey properties. Those are the most satisfying conversations for me.

Now, it’s your turn!