Daily Tax Sale Success Habits – Tax Lien & Tax Deed Investing

Transcript:
Welcome to the Tax Sale Podcast, where tax sale investing is made easy.

I’m Casey Denman, a tax sale veteran, the author of the tax sale playbook, founder of the tax sale academy, the leading tax sale expert and trainer and your host right here on the tax sale podcast.

Thanks for joining me on today’s podcast. This podcast is provided completely free to help teach you about tax sale investing and is made possible through The Tax Sale Academy. If you’re looking to learn about tax defaulted real estate, in a comprehensive, step by step basis then head to TaxSaleAacdemy.com and click on join. Again, taxsaleacademy.com and click join.

In the past we’ve discussed starting up, we’ve discussed building momentum and we’ve even discussed growing your tax sale business. But, like most new ventures, something common happens amongst beginners. The drive and interest that they have in the business weans very quickly.

If you’ve ever been in a gym during the first couple of weeks of January, the same thing happens. Everyone has weight loss or fitness related new year’s resolutions, gyms are crowded the first couple of weeks of the year and then then by February everything’s back to normal. Most gyms know this and actually rely of the many of the first of the year members not utilizing their membership for more than a few weeks.

Everything that requires constant and new effort will be like this. Sure, we take a shower daily. We eat daily, we go to work or whatever else we do daily. All of these habits require constant effort, but we don’t even notice it anymore.

Tax sale investing is certainly one of these business that required constant and new effort to see success. The amount of effort you put towards your business will determine the result you end up with. Just like working out one day a month won’t help your fitness goals, working on your tax sale business one day a month won’t help your financial goals. My challenge to you is to do something daily. There’s a saying about becoming just 1% better every single day. Essentially, by committing to yourself that you’ll get 1% better everyday, that you’ll work towards your goals everyday, then not only are your goals more likely to happen, but you’re also much more likely to stay interested for longer.

And I’m not talking about spending ten hours working on your business. I’m talking about small things that you can do on a constant basis that has the potential to change the trajectory of your business. Building a long term, sustainable wealth building business takes time . . . the requirement is that you’re constantly moving the needle forward during this time. I can assure you that my tax sale business is always on my mind – I’m constantly seeking ways to push it forward. BUT, I’m not always in so called, tax sale mode. There are plenty of things you can do every single day that might or might not be directly related to your tax sale business, but can have a huge impact on it.

Let’s go over ten things you can do on a daily basis to help your business – ten daily tax sale success habits. Obviously you don’t have to do all of these, but just commit to yourself you’ll do at least one. We’ll start with a few things related closely to your business then we’ll discuss a few other things.

1. Learn One New Piece of TSI Information
Every single day, commit to learning something new about this business. If you’re a beginner, this will likely be easy. If you’ve been around for a few decades, then it might be a little more difficult. And this doesn’t necessarily mean you must learn something life changing. Just browse a few county sites, look at our YouTube channel, read a few pages in my book, do whatever you need to do to learn something new. If you commit to learning something new about this business every single day, your knowledge of this business, and consequently, your wealth built with this business, will increase substantially over time.

2. Research a Property
Choose a property and research it. That’s a pretty simple one. It could be your house, your friend’s house, a tax sale property, or just some random property. Take a few minutes and research it. And use the research tools in a different manner each day. Don’t do the same thing over and over. Maybe one day, you’re curious when a property was built. Or you want to check and see when there were any permits pulled on a property. Maybe check to see when a property was last sold. Just today I was checking the school zones of a property. Mixing up your research and looking up something daily, can have a huge impact on your ability and familiarity of researching properties. Something that’s obviously a big deal to tax sale investors.

3. Review New and Recently Sold Listings
One habit that I have is to review every single new listing and sold listing in the markets I’m investing in. Now, before you get overwhelmed, this takes me probably less than five minutes a day. I generally tend to breeze right over the stuff that I’m not investing in. I have no need to know how the multimillion dollar country club estate or farm properties are selling. But, if I’m selling $50,000 homes or $5,000 lots, then you better believe that I’m reviewing these properties. Even if it’s just a quick skim over. The only way to know values and trends is the review this information daily. The cool thing is that when you start researching properties, you won’t need to spend all this time of valuations since you’ll already have an idea about the values because of your daily activates.

4. Read Real Estate and Mortgage News
There are a number of websites and email lists you can subscribe to for this information. But learn what the markets are doing. Are mortgage guidelines changing, rates going up or down. How is the overall real estate industry changing right now? Look at everything on a national scale. See what the big players are doing. If Bank of America or a homebuilder like DR Horton are making sweeping changes, then you must take notice. It’s not to say that what they do is anything like what we do on a daily, short term basis. But large changes produce signals that we can utilize in the future.

5. Read The Local News
I find that I am the most popular person to ask about when it comes to the “what are they building there” type questions. The reason is that I usually know because I track the happenings of the areas I invest in very closely. I always find it odd when investors ignore signals. For example, if a Starbucks is moving in nearby, you had better believe that’s probably going to be a hot area in the future if it isn’t right now. They spends tens of millions of dollars of market diligence. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of it? The same can be said of any new projects – for example, if amazon is building a warehouse nearby, don’t you kind of think buying a house or a lot close to that new building would be worthwhile considering it’ll only go up in value and demand? Or maybe a new subdivision is being built, of course that impacts us. Know about what’s going on in every area you invest.

6. Learn Something About Marketing
This is a suggestion I’ve mentioned a few times before. When we sell real estate, in order to do it efficiently and effectively we must also become marketers. Spend a few minutes learning about marketing – and this can really cover a broad spectrum. Maybe it’s learning how to write sales copy, or where to advertise properties, how to build a buyer’s list, search engine optimization, website building, lead generating funnels, graphic design, people and communication skills, marketing isn’t just selling. There is so much more to it.

7. Practice Creativity
One of the keys to operating a successful tax sale business is learning to think outside the box. As I look back at the biggest deals and times of my career, I realize that the more successful I was, was during the times where I was also the most creative. Getting stuck in the same rut that every other investor is in won’t take you anywhere different from where they are. I urge you to practice your creativity. Even if this is just a thinking type excercise. And you don’t even necessarily have to attempt to execute it anytime soon. For example, I saw a small house the other day, it reminded me of the tiny house concept that is gaining popularity. Around the same time I saw a semi truck and that further reminded me of so called container homes. Then my mind began to wonder, would a container home style subdivision be feasible. Where would it work, what kind of margins, all of this stuff. It pushed me to think creatively. Now, the odds of me developing a tiny house container style subdivision are pretty slim. But, it helped to grow my creativity muscles.

8. Observe Others
I’ve lived my entire life basically to the beat of my own drum. I’ve never had a boss my entire adult life, besides my clients and customers, and I’ve always done what I’ve felt best. I’m telling you this to demonstrate that I’m the last person to copy or really focus on what others are doing. BUT . . . we can learn from others. There are plenty of people who know much more that I do in their specific displiplines. Master marketers, business men, developers, forward thinkers . . . I observe what these people are doing and see how I can apply it to my own business.

9. Push Your Plan Ahead.
Paralysis by analysis. In English, you learn every single day but never but anything into action. I urge you to develop a plan and push it forward every single day. We’ve got a 30 day challenge in the tax sale academy designed for this specific issue. You should constantly be moving the needle forward as you execute your plan. What did you do TODAY that moves you closer to executing your plan? This is a question that you should ask yourself every single day. What did you do today? And it doesn’t have to be a huge step, but if you’re staying stagnant then you’re actually going backwards. Do something to push forward daily.

10. Write Down Goals
This last one is something that has personally changed my life. And I’ll likely talk about this in more detail in a future episode, so I’m not going to get into the specifics about how they’re written exactly. But every single morning, I write my goals down. It doesn’t take long, maybe five minutes at the most. And they all aren’t certainly business related goals. One every single day relates to being the best father possible, for instance. Obviously tho, there are many that are business related. BY writing them down daily, it serves as such a strong reminder of the commitment to myself to push closer to these goals every single day. You can do it in a simple spiral binder like I do, on an app or in your computer. Whatever works for you. But write your goals down daily and it’ll make a difference in your life.

There it is guys. There are ten things that you can do daily to help you reach the level of tax sale success you desire. The point of this episode is to help you develop the habits necessary to constantly be moving forward. You’ll also likely discover your own habits that you can begin to develop that will help your business grow and expand.

That’s it for today. As you’ve probably noticed, many of these habits relate around learning as much as possible about this business. If you’re interested in leverage our years and years of experience in this business, just head to taxsaleacademy.com and click on join and become a member of our academy where we’ll show you the step by step process you’ll need for your desired tax sale success.

Thanks so much for joining me on this episode.

And as always guys, these episodes are completely free of course. In exchange, we absolutely appreciate you taking the time to subscribe to our podcast, and ask that you leave a 5 star rating and some positive feedback.

Take care guys and make it a successful day.