Hi, Noha here. From the Rock Star Marketing team.
Quick update on the Karadzas:
Nick is officially back at the office after returning from vacation.
Aidan, Tom’s son, is also back in the office but only for a few more days before he heads back to his final year of university!
And Tom's expected back in the office in the coming days.
So, I’m taking advantage of that to share another personal story with you.
Last year, I bought my first ever rental property. It was the biggest purchase of my life…but that wasn’t the scary part.
Even though we (I own the house with my sister) nearly missed our closing deadline, and had to scramble for documents demanded by the bank at the very last minute...
....and me trying to beat traffic driving around town to go to different banks to deposit the down payment and closing costs...
....the sellers and their agent getting nervous because they thought we weren’t going to close on time…
....as stressful as all that was, it wasn’t the scary part.
It also wasn’t having trouble finding contractors who were good, reasonably priced, and available in the middle of a hot real estate summer.
And having to do showings with tenants and convincing them the dated house will be updated by the time they move in… promise!
And it wasn’t seeing the house a mess from renos once we finally did get a contractor, and hoping they’d finish the job well and on time.
None of the above was scary. Stressful, but not scary.
(And I swear I’m not saying this just because I work here, but the reason I wasn’t scared through any of the above was because I knew I could rely on my coach and the team at Rock Star to help me deal with these things. Can’t thank them enough!!)
No, for me, the scariest part was the part where I was taking sole responsibility.
And that’s finding tenants. Doing the showings. Talking to multiple groups of people at the same time and nervously asking them to leave a deposit if they were interested in the house.
I still had plenty of help while doing this. So why was I scared?
Partly because that summer, rental leads were slow for the area I bought in. So, I wasn’t getting enough responses to my ads.
But also because this was the part where self-doubt crept in.
“Is my ad good enough?”
“Are the pictures appealing? Do I need to make them stand out somehow?
“Am I taking too long in responding to people?”
” Am I saying the wrong things and driving them away?”
I had zero experience filling a property.
I’d done a couple of showings before for my parents who rent out their basement, but there was no pressure or self-doubt there.
I just had to let the potential tenant in, let them walk around, and answer any questions they might have (which was usually just ‘how much is the rent?’. Easy enough).
But with this house, I had already committed thousands of dollars, and was on the hook for hundreds of thousands more.
I was financially and emotionally invested into making it work.
I also had a deadline to find a tenant before my first mortgage payment was due.
So, on top of doubt, there was fear of failure. Failure to meet this deadline and having to cover the mortgage myself. Thousands of dollars more.
Suffice it to say, I don’t think I’ve ever been more motivated to get something done in my life.
But it was a happy ending.
The renos were done on time, on budget, and the place looked beautiful.
And I was able to rent the house to good tenants.
All in all, everything worked out.
So, I guess the lessons learned here are actually two things:
1. The biggest barrier to achieving your goals is often not time, energy, or money. It’s yourself.
Most of us are limited by our own fears and self-doubts, and we’re not able to see the way to success until after we’re there.
It can be tricky to find courage to push through your fear, but chances are you’ve already done it in the past.
Find out when and what that was and use that to boost your confidence that if you’ve already done it once, you can do it again.
2. It pays to have a supportive group of people around you.
If you’ve got that, count your lucky stars, and thank them for being there for you! But also keep in mind that in the end, you’re the one responsible for going after your goals.
And it’s up to you to put in the work and see the process to the end.
That’s all I've got this week. I hope it was helpful 🙂
Tom will be back with a real estate or economic update next week, so stay tuned!
– Noha
p.s. the Free Introductory Real Estate Investing Class is next week! We'll be sharing the latest numbers we're seeing on the streets from cash flow to interest rates. Don't miss it! Save your seat here now.
p.p.s. in case you're wondering what's that on my head in the pic above....it's a Kitsune mask! I got it at the Japan Festival in Mississauga last weekend. There are many different kinds of these masks which Japanese people traditionally wear at festivals. The Kitsune is a Japanese mythological fox with supernatural powers.
