How to succeed in real estate investing as an introvert?
This was the question I set out to answer when I started the current iteration of my REI business, ivegotahammer REI in 2020.
My goal was to change my financial paradigm from one of month to month living, with little or no reserves in the bank, to financial freedom- having enough money to get up every day and do what I want, without the need to figure out how to make money.
I was determined to find a way to make the big dollars that so many real estate investing gurus promise, without having to talk to a ton of people everyday all day, and get out and network in person.
It’s been four and a half years now, and through lots of trial and error and working at the edge of my comfort zone, I have a business where I mostly don’t have to talk to anyone on the phone or in person if I don’t want to, and the business still makes money.
I’ve accomplished this by building a team to do the work I don’t like to do. My minset around this was largely influenced by the book Who not How, by Sullivan and Hardy, with a shout out to The Emyth, which I read first and got me on the track of working ON the business, not IN the business.
I was also able to do deals as a solo-prenuer prior to building the team, but it did cost me more in terms of talking to sellers on the phone regularly, buyers too. This can be stressful as an introvert, to feel that there’s a quota of people to talk to daily in order to get results.
If you’re reading this, you’re probably an introvert who wants to make big money in real estate without having to do lots of on the phone and in person work, so I’ll try to break down both tracks I’ve traveled down here- solo or with an assistant or small team, and having a bigger team.
Strategy i- solo
For solo deal making, if you want to minimize your interactions and avoid cold calls, there are a couple of strategies that have worked for me. Let me say that even if you’re an introvert, it’s probably good to develop some comfort level with talking to people on the phone. I believe it’s possible to do entire deals via text and email, but for trust building and clarity of communication, I judge that hopping on the phone is best. As introverts, the goal is to minimize the phone interactions because they can be draining for us. We want to be having primarily convos that have a high probability of leading to deals.
SMS: You can text a lot of sellers and then only talk to the ones who express interest in selling. You can try some basic bulk texting platforms fairly inexpensively. If you’re on a super low budget you can send individual texts, but SMS is a numbers game, so as soon as you can find a way to send in bulk, you should.
Direct mail: This is more expensive, but when you send direct mail, you get sellers calling you, and those are very different conversations than cold calls, where you might get angry people hanging up on you. Because the seller is calling you, they are indicating that they are interested in selling, and they are willing to have a convo with you about it. I built my business on direct mail, using it as my primary strategy for the first 2 to 3 years.
Stategy ii an assistant or small team:
You can hire someone to talk to people. There are tons of VAs with real estate experience that will have the initial conversations with sellers, gather info, and qualify them, so that you are only having a handful of meaningful discussions with sellers. This will help keep your batteries charged as you grow your business. As introverts, normally we have a limited bandwidth for talking to people each day.
If you decide to bring on an assistant, then a VA is a cost effective way to do it. My first VA hire was for a contract based, hires for specific and finite tasks. She was good, so I made her permanent part-time, and eventually full-time. Using this graduated approach helped mitigate the fear of taking the risk of hiring someone and having to pay them.
Another way to get help in the early stages when you’re not sure you can afford it is to get a friend or family member who is flexible with how much they work, maybe has a job already, and maybe they would even work for commission, or a % of sales, or a small interest in the company. My brother helped me part time in the early days, around his full time job. He took a % of what we made. This took pressure off me to pay him weekly or monthly as I was figuring things out.
Strategy iii- team building and outsourcing.
Using platforms like Upwork, onlinejobsph, facebook VA groups and others, you can hire a cold caller for about $4 an hour USD who will make calls for you and push you warm leads to talk to.
As mentioned above, you can hire skilled sales people and admin people as VAs and have them do a variety of roles. For example, my current team has 2 people working on disposition (selling properties), 4 people working in acquisitions, and an operations manager. This frees me up to be the strategic thinker and to work on growing the business without having to work on the day to day.
If you’re just starting out and it seems implausible to you that you would have that many on your team, here’s how I started- First, I asked my brother to help me part time, working around his full time job. He helped with a variety of tasks in the early days. I didn’t really have a budget to pay him, but I gave him a % of closed deals and equity in the company. About 6 months in, I brought on an admin assistant, a VA hired off of upwork. I think they started at $5-6 per hour. Next, I brought on an acquisitions person to answer the phone and talk to sellers, getting basic info from them and logging it. I eventually taught this person property analysis and negotiation. They have been with me 3 years now. This was my team for the second year of the business
In the 3rd year, my next couple of hires were a dispositions support person, to help my brother who had started to specialize in disposition, and then an SMS specialist, to manage SMS, which we started in year 3. My brother was able to quit his job and come on full time in year 3 as well.
In year 4, we added cold calling through agencies, and eventually an in-house cold caller. We parted ways with our admin assistant and brought in a replacement who had more REI and systems experience and that person has become operations manager. We will be adding a full time admin assistant as well.
The result of this gradual team building is that I have a business now where it runs day to day without needing my involvement. As an introvert and a visionary, that is a beautiful thing. I am free to work in the areas of my strengths, which are largely solitary tasks dedicated to growing and maintaining the business.
In conclusion, you can do deals as an introvert, but I think you need to stretch to the edge of your comfort zone with regard to talking to sellers. If you are an extreme introvert and you don’t want to talk to people at all, then I suggest using sms and email and hiring a “mouthpiece” VA- someone who can do your phone communication for you. I believe that there is a range of introversion. I am good at talking to people and selling and building rapport, but if I was to do that all day, it would drain me and I would burn out. When I was starting out, I just set a goal for myself daily and made sure I hit it, such as talk to 10 sellers, or 20. Your goal might start at 3 or 5.
Susan Cain, in her brilliant book Quiet, the power of introverts in a world that won’t stop talking, says that the difference between introverts and extroverts is that extroverts get energy from interacting with people, and introverts recharge in solitude. I think the important thing is to find your healthy balance of solitude and interaction, and to build around that.