Transcript:
Be The Expert. Make The Money
Welcome to the Tax Sale Podcast, where tax sale investing is made easy.
I’m Casey Denman, a tax sale veteran and expert, the leading tax sale trainer, author of the tax sale playbook, founder of the tax sale academy and your host here on the tax sale podcast.
Before we get started today, I wanted to thank you for joining me on today’s podcast and to ask you to take a few second to leave a 5 star rating on whatever podcast platform you’re listening on or click that thumbs up button if you’re watching the video version on YouTube. And, as always, at the conclusion of this podcast, if you’re looking to learn more about investing in tax defaulted real estate head to taxsaleacademy.com. That’s taxsaleacademy.com.
Today I want to discuss something that will change the trajectory of your business if you take it to heart. I really want you to focus and pay attention during this episode, because it can mean so much to your business and income.
We’re talking about becoming the expert.
When we look at anyone who is ultra-successful, most of them are expert at something, right? Take a brain surgeon for example. More than likely, they know more about the brain and operating on the brain than most of the entire world. They’re classified as an expert.
What about an athlete? Michael Jordan can be considered an expert at the game of basketball. We can even look at entertainment . . . Elvis, for example, was pretty much an expert at entertainment in his day. I can go on an on with examples. The result is that all of these examples and many more, prove that someone who is an expert in their field can not only dominate their field but they will usually do well financially as well.
Let’s apply this to real estate. We’ll start with a broader scale. If you look at real estate developers, there are companies led by experts at places such as a AvalonBay, Simon Group, Kimco, Brookfield and many other key players. These are the largest developers in the country. On a local scale, you can probably point on a handful of developers or investors that seem to own all of the properties and seemingly make a lot of money.
That’s what got me started in tax sale investing in the first place. I came across a couple of HUGE players in this business 17 years ago and they intrigued me. And guess what? Those guys . . . the ones that tend to dominate the sales and make the money, those are experts in what they’re doing. They’ve got it figured out.
Now, before you get overwhelmed with this expert stuff, where you’re probably envisioning someone who is much, in quote “smarter” than you at whatever it is, and where you’re thinking it takes lots of college or education, combined with crazy amounts of experience, or whatever, I want you to understand the pursuit of this goal is what will truly turn you into a winner.
You don’t have to be the world’s leading expert to make lots of money. BUT, in order to make lots of money you must continually be striving to get better and better every single day as you get closer and closer to being the expert. If you do this relentlessly, then you’ll discover that you’ll gain more and more success each day. The expert that I’m talking about is not an end goal. It’s not a destination, it’s a journey. It’s a journey to become better every single day.
So, let’s get to some specifics now. How can you work towards becoming an expert in this business, which will help you to get better every single day and ultimately will help you to make more money.
Let’s talk about 5 things.
1. The first thing I want to address is the laws and the process. Become an expert in this, and you’ll be well on your way. I’ve said it many times before, but tax sale investing was not created for the investors. The entire tax delinquent system is designed to return properties to the tax roll as a tax revenue producing property once again. It is NOT designed to help to public profit for this system. The end result, however, is that we utilize the tax foreclosure laws to our advantage. We do profit from the system and we do also help our community by putting these properties back on the tax rolls once again. It’s so important to understand how you can use these laws to your advantage. You should know the laws in your state inside and out. You should understand everything in them. Follow them constantly for any updates. These are your entire business. The tax sale investor who fails to comprehend the importance of the tax sale laws is not only foolish, but they’re going to be a short lived tax sale investor if they ever even get started. The same laws of course, dictate the specific process used in your area. Know the laws and know the process.
2. The second thing you should work on becoming an expert at is the area you’re investing in. There are countless ways to do this that we discuss in other trainings, but if you know the area you have such a jumpstart with your business. Now, I’m not saying you must know every single area of every single county that you invest in. Knowing the square footage of every clubhouse inside the gates of every exclusive country club in a 50 mile radius is impressive, but it probably won’t help much for a tax sale investor. Instead, know about the specific areas that you’re focusing on or that appear on the tax sale lists in that area on a frequent basis. If there is new construction activity going on in that area, you should know about it. If Amazon is building a warehouse nearby, know about it. If the county suddenly issues a building moratorium, know about it. You must know everything possible about the areas you’re investing in.
3. The third one ties in closely, which is become the expert of your market. In the second one we discussed knowing everything about the area. That’s in a general sense as it could tie into the real estate market. Now, we’re talking specifically about the real estate market. Simply put, the closer you are to being the expert in that market the better chances you’ll have of massive success. If you’re buying properties in a subdivision and someone asks you what they’re selling for, you should know down to the price per square foot what you should be getting. You should know every property that has been on the market for a long time, the newly listed properties, the ones under contract, the ones overpriced, underpriced, the price changes, the trends in the market, you should know everything . . . by memory. It should get to the point where you are so familiar with the market that you likely won’t even have to run comparables, because it’s all in your head! Do this and you’ll be able to make accurate max bids and you’ll be able to make money. It’s that simple.
4. The fourth thing that you need to work on becoming an expert in is marketing. There is no way to make money as a tax sale investor, unless you make a transaction some how. For most, this will be when they sell the property. For others, it could be when they lease it or use it otherwise. But until someone gives you money, you won’t make a dime. And in order for someone to even know that they should be giving you money for the property, you must market it. The better you are at this, the more successful you’ll become. I could write an entire book and a course on just marketing real estate. There’s so much to it. And it’s always changing, especially with the speed of changes on the internet. I really urge you to put effort into learning how to market properties the right way. Where you’ll get as much money as possible for the property in a manner as quickly as possible, with as little as possible invested in your marketing expenses and in a manner that suits your style and process. So so important to understand and become an expert on marketing in today’s real estate world.
5. The last one is one that is often frequently overlooked. I’m talking about creativity. Obviously, everything we’ve discussed to this point has a huge impact on what the success we see. And it’s all required. But the number one reason that I see success in this business is because of my creativity. My ability to think outside the box. If you look at all of the successful, you’ll probably come across the realization sooner or later that they are doing something just a little bit differently. There was coffee before Starbucks. There were tacos before Chipotle. Cars before Teslas. I could go on and on. The key aspect is that they put their own spin on things. And it doesn’t have to be industry changing and it can even evolve over time. At one point in my career, I decided to put a few properties online to market and sell using eBay – something that wasn’t done too often then. While that approach still works, it was outside of my comfort zone and creative for me. Based on that creativity, it gave me other ideas. Those other ideas led to buyer’s lists and other very specific strategies I use to this day and wrote about in Tax Sale Playbook. You should constantly be working on becoming more and more creative with your entire business every single day. If you learn to do this, you’ll be successful. It’s that simple.
There are plenty of other things that will help with your business. But if you master the five things we discussed above, if you truly are on a never ending pursuit to become an expert in these things your ability to succeed in this business will just skyrocket. And as I mentioned previously, this is not so much a destination of becoming an expert. It’s a journey, a never ending one, towards getting better on a daily basis at the disciplines we discussed and others.
Commit to yourself to get better every single day and you’ll be growing closer and closer to your goal of tax sale success nonstop.
If there is anything at all that we can do to help on this journey, we’re here for you. We have over 500+ videos on our YouTube channel, we post two podcast episodes each week, you can grab your free copy of Tax Sale Playbook at taxsaleacademy.com if you just cover the shipping costs and of course, for the most detailed step by step comprehensive training we offer, go to that same website, taxsaleacademy.com, click on join and become a member of the tax sale academy.
I truly and sincerely hope that you enjoyed today’s episode. If you found this episode or any of our other episodes helpful, please take a few minutes to leave us a five star rating or some positive feedback comments on whatever podcast platform you’re listening to us on. Or if you’re watching the video version, please be sure to subscribe to our channel and click on that thumbs up button.
I wish you much success on your journey and hope you have an incredible day.
Take care, bye bye.