There’s no substitute for the ability to handle a negotiation on the fly.

I like the hands-on investing of real estate and internet marketing because my success really depends on me.  The more removed I am from the action, the more uncomfortable I get. 

When other people are controlling the level of effort and the results, I’m never sure about the outcome.  I know what I produce, and I can always count on myself.

As much as the gurus would like to tell you that there are formulas for successful real estate investing and internet marketing that you can follow like a mindless drone, I have never found it to be the case.  The real world of investing is a little bit of training and a lot of instinct. 

That’s what I call “gut investing” where you are listening to the smartest part of yourself – the part that knows when a deal is hot, when a seller is ready to sell, when a buyer is ready to buy.  Everyone has this instinct, we just have to realize its importance and hone it.

Go to a lot of seminars, read a lot of books, and before you know it you’re over thinking everything. 

How do you research a hot keyword?  You think like the interested buyer.  Is the buyer following a formula, have they taken a million seminars?  No, they’re just typing in the first thing, the most human thing that comes into their head.  If you lose the ability to tune into this wavelength, you’ve lost the ability to connect with your source of income.

There’s a time for designing strategy, and there’s a time to think on your feet.  You can lay out all the plans in gruesome detail, but when you’re face to face with a prospect, there’s no substitute for the ability to handle a negotiation on the fly.

Gut investing doesn’t mean getting carried away with emotion, quite the opposite.  You’re not going to fantasize your way to riches, because fantasies don’t work at the street level.  Your gut does.  The point of contact is the gut’s domain.

I will never sell you a fantasy.  I don’t believe in capitalizing on people’s unrealistic delusions about what it takes to make money in investing.  I promise you will get tough talk about the ground level, the place where real money is made, and I’ll arm you with some bubble bursting truths so you can avoid ugly surprises that will cost you a ton of money and heartache.

Gut investing is the right approach to the volatile world of hands-on investing, because when you’re in the middle of a deal and the curve balls seem to be coming from a runaway pitching machine, the generic scenarios you read about in those guru programs are nowhere to be found.

You can find tremendous insight into gut investing in my book “The People Side of Real Estate Investing”.

I use deals from my own investing career to demonstrate how to integrate gut investing into real world deal making, and provide line-by-line dialogues for successfully handling common real estate investing scenarios.

Even if you think your instincts are terrible, by the time you finish reading this book you will have a significantly better understanding of how to listen to the smartest part of yourself and capitalize on it for bigger real estate profits.

Nobody is going to make you listen to good ideas or do the smart thing. You have to be the type. Are you the RPI type?

The Real People Investing member can see through hype, knows no one becomes a millionaire in three days without any hard work. 

We know it takes guts, tenacity and a love of the chase to get where we want to go.  We are a tough breed, bold and fearless but evolved.

Our fortunes are creatively designed and managed, our strategies self-driven and engaged.  We are hot for action, but we are grounded. 

We are questioners, instigators, renegades within a renegade industry in pursuit of survival first because we know it’s the true path to success.

Some of our members are people whose first thought about investing came when they read this article. 

Some of us are rapidly up and coming, a few victorious deals under the belt, who want more, better, faster. 

Seasoned veterans come here to hear echoes of the reality they’ve  lived through, and glean some nuggets from an experienced peer.

• If you are always looking for a hot opportunity, but are skeptical of everything, you might be the RPI type.
• If you can’t stand to work for someone else, you might be the RPI type.
• If you are willing to listen to a new idea, have enough confidence in your own judgment to decide it might work, and then actually try it, you might be the RPI type.
• If you need entrepreneurial action in your life, you might be the RPI type.
• If you want what you do for a living to be a challenge with unlimited reward, you might be the RPI type.

Nobody is going to make you listen to good ideas or do the smart thing.  You have to be the type.  Are you the RPI type?

Join Real People Investing today to receive premium benefits exclusive to our members.

Taking a minute to understand the people side of real estate investing may help you to quickly become more profitable.

Ask yourself a question: why am I in real estate investing? Answer, to make money. But how is money really made? Can you force your way into deals just because you want to do them?

Taking a minute to understand the people side of real estate investing may help you to quickly become more profitable.

Start by taking a look at yourself. It is possible you have a tendency to think real estate investing is a business, that everyone involved should act logically, and you should be able diagram your profits like a scientist calculating the geologic age of a rock.

The house is worth X, so I should be able to buy it at Y because the seller should agree that a cash sale is worth the discount.

Then I hire several contractors who all, like synchronized swimmers, coordinate the completion of their tasks and finish my house in 3 weeks with no holding costs.

Everyone wants to live in my neighborhood, so I’ll discount the house 1% under market for a quick sale, voila! I’ve made Z dollars, and I’m off to the next deal.

Go ahead and try it this way, everybody does at some point. When nobody listens to you, then you might realize, oops, you forgot to calculate in the people factor.

Every step of the way, the people involved have their own motives, some emotional and NOT financial, and you will make more money figuring out what those are than trying to insist everyone understand yours.

The key to the people side of real estate investing means standing in the other person’s shoes while maintaining a grip on your ultimate objective. Remember, you’re not going to fool anyone, you actually have to understand their perspective, not just pretend like you care.

First, what’s your house worth? It depends not totally on comps, but who is willing to buy it. Who is willing to buy it depends on what people LOVE about the house. They may love the neighborhood, or they may love the schools, or they may love the patio in the back yard.

So it becomes financially important to you what the buyer LOVES about your house. You can research and emphasize these emotional triggers in your advertising, then customize them to the particular buyer in your face to face pitches to sell the house more quickly for a better price.

Second, what’s a seller willing to take? They may think the house is worth twice what they paid for it because they always wanted to sell it for that, or their neighbor’s house for sale is worth that so they should be able to get that too. What the seller will take depends on what they FEEL it is worth.

So it becomes financially important to you how the seller FEELS about the house’s worth. Interviewing a seller with careful listening skills, you can gather a literal wealth of information. You can skillfully address these points in your negotiations to get closer to what you want to pay for the house.

Third, contractors are very independent, not only from each other but from you. They usually have several irons in

the fire at once and cycle in your job based on their priorities, not yours. Coordinating contractors depends on diplomatic handling of their NEEDS interacting with yours.

So it becomes financially important to you what your contractor’s NEEDS are. Sizing up a contractor’s profile in early meetings can help you find those you can work well with and avoid hiring those that you will have trouble with later, which will save during renovation and ultimately make you more money when you sell.

You can find tremendous insight into the people side of real estate investing in my book “The People Side of Real Estate Investing”.

I use deals from my own investing career to demonstrate how to integrate the people side into real world deal making, and provide line-by-line dialogues for successfully handling common real estate investing scenarios.

Even if you think your people skills are terrible, by the time you finish reading this book you will have a significantly better understanding of people’s motives and how to capitalize on them for bigger real estate profits.