Transcript:
Welcome to the Tax Sale Podcast, where tax sale investing is made easy.
I’m Casey Denman, a tax sale veteran, the leading tax sale expert and trainer, author of the tax sale playbook, founder of the tax sale academy and your host here on the tax sale podcast.
Thanks for joining me on today’s podcast, 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 talk about something that’s actually probably not all that popular to talk about. Especially in my space. I’m talking about failure. You see, I’m usually talking about the ways to see success in this business. Strategies, techniques, things to watch out for, telling stories, showing a process, that kind of stuff.
What you might not realize, however, is that by teaching that stuff I actually AM teaching you how to avoid failure in your business. By showing you the way, the process, I’m teaching about failure. How to avoid it.
But yet it still happens. Just a couple of weeks ago, I did a breakdown of a viral news story involving a new tax sale investor’s failure. And I’ve heard a number of stories like that. Those stories…those are the precise reason that my business exists. I don’t want anyone to ever lose a single penny in this business. But I know it’s inevitable. I know it’s going to happen. But I’ll still always do everything in my power to prevent it. That’s the reason I have produced more tax sale training materials than anyone else in the world. 500 youtube videos, a podcast, my book, and of course, the premier tax sale training program which is The Tax Sale Academy.
Even with all of this material, it just doesn’t reach the hands of the people who seem to need it most. And unfortunately, what often happens, is they find my training materials AFTER they’ve made a big mistake.
So today I want to take a look at five common reasons for failing in this business. Sometimes, it’s just one of these that can take someone down. Other times, it’s a combination of these things.
Alright, number one.
I call this first one the shiny object syndrome. New tax sale investors can be extremely excited. Heck, even us old tax sale investors can be extremely excited. But, this excitement can sometimes get very misguided. This is often what happens when you hear of horror stories. An investor knows what they should be doing, but they see something. It attracts all of their attention. They focus on the positives like crazy. And they tend to ignore the negatives. Despite the reality saying the opposite, everything about the property is good. There is nothing wrong with it. The value usually gets overinflated. You think it’s more profitable or desirable than it really is. This happens. A lot. A common example is seeing a picture of this beautiful piece of property and you focus on the property itself, when the county is trying to show you that they’re selling the ditch in front of that property. Another example is maybe you like to fish or boat and you see a lakefront property that’s basically flooded, but you think it’s cool because of the location. Perhaps it’s your childhood home. Maybe it’s a cute little house that reminds you of something. It could even be something that’s just intriguing for some reason – like, perhaps a lighthouse? I’ve seen those things sells for lots of money. What the heck is someone going to do with a lighthouse that could be profitable? Come on now! Don’t get shiny object syndrome. Base all of your investments on actual data, not on your emotions.
The second reason I see people failing is that they lack the understanding of the process or the laws. To many people, tax sale investing is buying properties and selling properties. So easy, that anyone can do it without training, right? Unfortunately, this is what happens to a lot of people who end up quickly failing. I’m going to give you a brief analogy of this. A few weeks ago I was playing with my son and somehow ended up getting poked in the eye pretty bad. The doctor put a very tight patch over it for a couple of days, that sealed it closed and told me it’d get better soon. Seemed simply enough. I had one eye that was fully functional and I thought that’s all I needed to see. And it was. Except everything was a little off. I can’t tell you how many times I stubbed my toe or had trouble doing something that I usually take for granted. You see, tax sale investing is the same. It’s simple, buy and sell. But, it’s also very difficult. There’s so many laws, processes, strategies, and things to look for that you don’t know, what you don’t actually know, until you realize you don’t know it. I don’t want that to get lost because I know it sounds silly. But, what I’m getting at is that most people who fail thought they knew what they needed to know, until what they didn’t know is what causeed their failure. Don’t be that person.
The next part of failure is that they understand that due diligence is important. But, they only perform what I call surface level due diligence. This is where you know, you look at Zillow, then you might look at a picture or two and you place a bid. When you’re investing in tax defaulted real estate, the county handles the process or they might contract it to a third party. Their goal is to get the properties back on the tax rolls again. That’s their job. Their job is not to be marketers. They aren’t going to do surveys and provide detailed property reports for you to go over. This is not the MLS that realtors use. This is usually a list that has a legal description and a parcel number. That’s it. YOU as the investor must perform all of the research. You must know the history of that property, the value, what is and isn’t on that property, what you can and can’t do with that property, what the local laws are and how they apply, you must know everything about it. I have dozens of hours of video teaching you how to research properties. The fact is that if you buy something that ends up being worthless, you really only have yourself to blame.
The next one . . . impatience. I did a podcast episode related to this last week. This is one of the most frustrating things for me. Someone hears about tax sale investing, they watch one or two videos and then they go to a couple of auctions, don’t win a single property, they proceed to stomp their feet and whine about how this business doesn’t work. News flash, this business does work. It’s probably you who does not. That’s the brass version, I know. But if you think you can just walk into your first auction or even your fifth or sixth auction and walkout with a $10,000 profit added to your bank account, then this isn’t the business for you. This is a real estate investing. We are investing is expensive assets. And when you do it properly, you’ll make lots of money. But it’s not a deal where you’ll get rich overnight. It takes time. As I mentioned last week, I’ve had students before that took over a year to buy their first properties and then they absolutely crushed it. Made more money in a few weeks then most people make in a year. Impatience leads to rushed decisions and it will end up in failure.
The last one I want to discuss is lack of vision. And this might be one of the more interested things that I see leading to failure. There are really two ways to look at this. The first is that you just lack creativity. You don’t see things the way you should. You are looking for the same thing over and over that doesn’t or maybe no longer exists. It’s important to constantly evolve and constantly to look at stuff in a creative and progressive manner when it comes to this business. The second way we can apply this is when it comes to growth and moving forward. This requires vision to see the possibilities, to determine how you’ll expand and how you can increase your income. I’ve got training material on this inside the academy, but I want you to understand that if you are doing the same thing over and over again, you’ll eventually get bored or whatever you’re doing will stop working. Both of these will lead to failure.
Again, these are probably the five most common reasons I see people fail in this business. Shiny Object Syndrome, lack of understanding, they don’t take due diligence seriously, impatience, and lack of vision. And the truth is that I completely get it. Much of this stuff you might have not even understood could lead to failure unless I explained them to you today. So I want you to do everything you can to avoid these issues and all the others. And so much of this stems around receiving the proper training.
That’s going to wrap up today’s episode. If you are looking for that training, I have produced hundreds and hundreds of hours worth of training materials. Obviously, this podcast is a great place to start as is my YouTube channel. When you’re ready for me to help fill in the gaps, I highly suggest picking up The Tax Sale Playbook at TaxSaleAcademy.com, the book is free, just cover shipping. And of course to learn the step by step comprehensive approach with every single detail, you’ll want to take advantage of The Tax Sale Academy. And you can join by going to TaxSaleAcademy.com and clicking on join.
That’s it for today’s podcast. I really hope you’ve found this helpful.
And as always guys, if you did enjoy this episode we’d really appreciate it if you take a few seconds to leave us some positive feedback and a five star rating. We read and notice every positive comment and are so thankful for those who have taken the time to do so already.
I really hope this has helped you out today. Take care. See you.