From Investor to Business Owner

By Patrick Francey

As our REIN Members quickly discover, a core fundamental of investing success is learning to treat your Real Estate investing like a business. Instead of selling a service or buying inventory for a store, every cash flowing property in your portfolio is its own business.

This is a powerful concept for investors to understand and embrace. Surprisingly, few investors (outside of REIN Members) think of themselves as business owners, but when you understand that investing is a business, it changes your mindset. Tenants become customers, home space becomes the product you market and sell , and your team (such as your realtors, mortgage brokers, renovators, property managers and others) become strategic partners. Your financials transform from burdensome administration into the metric that you use to measure your business success.

Opportunities to elevate yourself, your business acumen, discover new (for you) proven investment strategies and create an amazing life become not only significantly more relevant but absolutely essential!

In order that we best serve REIN Members and the investing community at a deeper level (and to help the REIN team in our own personal and professional development), we recently began working with a strategic partner and now good friend Anurag Gupta, Founder of The Difference Engine (TDE). Anurag and his partner Nick Banks are responsible for the significant transformational shifts and growth of well over 100 businesses for example, they were key in helping the founder of Lululemon take his business from a garage to become a publicly traded company and the success it represents today.

I recently attended Anurag s workshop called Business Without Limits along with several Members of my team here at REIN. Perhaps not unlike you, our team regularly attend workshops, seminars, and conferences and, like anyone, our experiences are mixed some conferences are good, some are okay, and sadly many are simply not what they say they are. But the results of attending Anurag s workshop were what he has now become known for transformational, in a way that blew us all away.

Every member of the REIN team who attended the workshop wrote pages and pages of notes, and we came away with many transformational discoveries that we could apply to our own lives. I ve been implementing these discoveries not only here at REIN and in my own investing business, but in my marriage, my business relationships my LIFE!

Much like what we aim to do at REIN, the key lesson from the workshop was this: It s not about transforming business to achieve success and create a better life in the future. It really is about LIFE and business is included. Being fulfilled, happy, and clear on how we define success by living a LIFE (including business) that truly lights us up not waiting for the future, but living that life today! Of course, having a successful business and life is heavily based on the work that you put in to making your own success. If you know where to look for assistance with business related issues, your business will soon grow and get more successful. For example, websites such as Digital Supermarket are there to offer the best digital tools from one place, which makes running a business a lot easier.

The workshop was so impactful that Richard Dolan, , and I felt compelled to write an endorsement letter. We even brought Anurag out as a special guest speaker to our March pre-meeting in Vancouver and Edmonton. I hope you were fortunate enough to have had the chance to attend.

In the interest of helping you grow in your investing business, I thought you might benefit from a few of the notes I took at the workshop. There are some things that go without saying, such as the importance of SEO. There are so many companies out there that can help with this, such as Denver seo companies and many more. Search engine optimization, local SEO, keyword optimization, and a lot of other strategies that come under online business development. Google My Business is another important marketing tool that I remember, and GMB agencies like GMB Gorilla make it easy for business owners to manage the listings. Besides these, I wrote many pages of notes and gathered a small selection of ideas and strategies here that I think you might find useful in your investing business (and where relevant I’ve made some additional notes to help you use these strategies):

Develop a model of success:

• Be the creator of your view of the world, or the world will impose its view of it on you.

• Performance is a reflection of low tolerances. The highest performing individuals and businesses have the lowest tolerances. Ask yourself what do you currently tolerate (think about it) and how is it affecting your performance in your real estate investing? and What about in your LIFE?! Not only should you do not tolerate bad or mediocrity but also never tolerate just good – create your environment to tolerate only excellence.

o Change the tolerances within your environment in a way that inspires everyone to raise the bar by changing their view and commitment to high performance.

o For example: Eliminate gossip and sarcasm, clean up your messy office and desk, give more compliments or introduce different employee reward types to illustrate your gratitude and appreciate the hard work of your team. It sounds so simple, but these are often the marks of an excellent organization.

• Don t try to manage actions; manage views. Managing actions is incredibly hard work but when you shift views then right actions will follow.

• Define success for you and design and build the model to achieve it.

o I listed several takeaways as part of the model of success I want to see at REIN. For example, I want REIN to be the catalyst for our Members to have happy and fulfilled lives, to live inspired lives, using the vehicle of real estate and that REIN is the stand for Members in fulfilling their vision and intentions by being a powerful resource and community.

o Unparalleled creativity and financial limitlessness are great examples of defined success , just to name a few.

• No matter how useful I think something is it s useless until I use it.

• Overbuild your architecture: Your business architecture is all the systems and processes and strategies you have in place. Most people build their architecture in a reactive way designed for the way things are right now, but if you own 10 doors, for example, and intend to own 20, your systems should be built for 20 or even 30 doors instead of 10.

• Insist on clarity and competence: As an investor, you work with a team of people and they don t always bring the same perspective to the relationship. When working with your team of contractors, property managers, or strategic partners, insist on clarity from them when they re reporting to you, and expect competence from them in the service they deliver.

o Tighten tolerances by being willing to have the hard conversations with them if they aren t as clear or competent as you need. Expect excellence from everyone. High performance is a result of low tolerance.

• Be willing to do more than you have to do: It s natural to want to do only the base amount required. Unfortunately, that doesn t leave an impression on tenants, buyers, lenders, or your team. You must be willing to go farther and give a little bit extra. This will amaze the people you work with and that helps to create loyalty and a stronger position in the market. Where can you go above and beyond?

• Change your screen: Everyone you meet is viewed through a screen of your own assumptions. That screen influences what you say and how you treat them, and ultimately how they act. If you want to connect with people better and get something different from them, you have to change YOUR screen (The implications for investors about how they deal with tenants and private money is mind-blowing!).

I hope you discover some useful nuggets of business wisdom from my notes above.

As a real estate investor, you run a small business; you re an entrepreneur. So the best thing you can do for your business is to start thinking like a business owner by developing skills, strategies, systems, and creating clear intentions that support and grow your business.

Patrick Francey is the CEO of REIN. As a serial entrepreneur he owns many businesses and has been a real estate investor for nearly 20 years. The majority of his holdings are located in Edmonton and Grande Prairie.

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