I get many questions from people about my mentoring or simply about getting started in creative real estate investing. I recently asked a couple of my students in Winnipeg, Manitoba to write something up on their experiences with getting started. The idea here is not to try to have them give a sales pitch for my mentoring, but more to describe the challenges they faced and the experiences they had as they started their business.

I should mention that shortly after they wrote these up, we got a couple of creative deals in the works! As of this writing, we are now working to get them closed.

Here's the first one from Anthony-

What are my experiences with creative real estate and Matt’s mentoring?  Where do I start?  First, I’ll give a little bit of background information on myself.  I’m twenty-two years old (everyone says I look seventeen though).  I dropped out of high school, tried college for a bit but didn’t think it was for me.  I currently work at a hotel as a banquet server and I’m obviously not making a ton of money.  Oh, and I’m also Filipino.  I mention all these things because I feel that these are all factors that have played a part in my recent experiences.  I have had a lot of doubt and criticism pointed my way the last few months, to say the least.

Now how did I start becoming interested in creative real estate?  Well one night I left my TV on while I was on the computer surfing, and I heard an infomercial about a No Money Down course from one of those popular “gurus”.  He was saying how someone with bad credit and no money could actually buy a house and then sell it for a profit.  Well, it got me interested.  I said to myself, “this is what I really want to do and since people are actually doing it, it is possible”.  So I went on the internet, looked at a TON of websites, did my research by reading people’s reviews of courses, going on forums and reading their opinions.  People had been saying that most of those big courses were rip offs, these things don’t really work, and even if they were decent courses, there weren’t too many available for Canadians. 

After reading all of this, I still wasn’t going to give up looking for a way to learn about this way of doing real estate.  I knew there had to be a way because I had read that there were Canadian courses out there and people were doing it here!  One day, I stumbled on this forum where Matt posted.  I noticed that he was selling courses too.  I’ve never heard of this guy before and I really couldn’t find much about him.  So I decided to just read his replies to get an idea of how he was as a person. 

I did this for about a week.  During this week I noticed that he was replying to people’s posts and helping them without wanting anything in return.  Not only that, he actually had long, detailed replies!  I thought to myself, wow, this guy’s helpful!  While I continued to just read his replies, I noticed that he had gotten into a small argument with another guy that posted on that same forum.  They were “arguing” back and forth and right then and there, I decided to go with Matt.  What made me decide to buy his course was that during all this arguing, he was still being nice to the guy!  He didn’t reply in a way that was meant to attack the guy.  He just wanted to talk and try to have a calm conversation and try to explain his side. 

I decided to go to his site, while there, I noticed that he did on-site mentoring as well.   I thought that the on-site mentoring would help us greatly.  My friend (partner) and I look very young and above that, we are Asian.   I am not racist nor am I whining that my race is a disadvantage, however it would be ignorant to say that racism does not exist.  So we exchanged emails back and forth for a while and I tried to feel him out a bit more.  He did seem like a really honest guy.  It would be nice to have an older person along with us when we met with people.  So I thought - this guy will not only give us some credibility, he also seemed like he knew what he was talking about!  That was enough to convince me, I had decided to talk to my friend about Matt and tell him that I felt that we should go with him. 

So it was set.  We’d choose Matt, get him here, and get everything setup and running smoothly.  There was one problem though.  I had absolutely NO money! Actually, I was, and still am, in debt!  My parents are struggling right now, and filed for bankruptcy a few years ago so I couldn’t get any help from them.  I had no relatives that could help.  So I had to decide at that point, was this something I really wanted to do?  Yes.  Was this a way to help me become financially free?  Possibly, but I knew it wouldn’t happen quickly and it would be HARD work.  I didn’t get into this with the hopes of getting rich overnight.  I got into this because I wanted to do something with my life and I knew this is what I wanted to do.  I decided to do it. 

I was excited about this so I wanted to tell people about it.  So, I told my parents about it.  Their first answer was, that’s a lot of money!  You should spend that for school instead!  So right away, I had my first critics.  Then I went and told my boss at work about it!  And his first reply was, “it’s a scam”!  There’s no way of getting rich quick!  I was like, “Ok, I didn’t even mention getting “rich quick”.  Then he went on to say that I was stupid for trusting some guy on the internet, and that I won’t be seeing my money again. I knew I didn’t want to go to school and this is what I wanted to do.  I didn’t let them get to me. There were a TON of people just like this, either doubting, trying to discredit this whole thing, or just telling us how we couldn’t do it.  From that point, I knew everyone would be like that so I decided not to tell anyone and just show them that people sometimes just need to believe.  At least I was doing something!  At least I was taking some action while they just complained about their money problems or just talked about getting somewhere in life and did nothing about it!

Now I had the issue with no money and had a job that wasn’t even full time but I knew that I wanted to do it.  I was determined to get Matt here and help us start out and acquire his knowledge.  To make it short, somehow, we came up with half of the money for the mentoring fee and while he was here, we paid him off very SLOWLY.   A reason for this was because we didn’t take into account all the money we would spend for gas and other expenses while we were setting up the business.  That was our mistake.  But one thing I realized is that it is OK to make mistakes, just learn from it and make that mistake only once. 

Another thing that I like about Matt is that he is very understanding and helpful.  He was ok with us just paying him bit by bit because he knew our situation.  He trusted us, I think.  He tested us out for a bit at first, but we showed him that we would honor our word.  I’m very happy that he was ok and open to what we had to say about our situation.  Somehow, we pulled it off.  My parents were actually impressed that we were actually able to come up with that much money.

My partner and I knew that if we wanted to succeed, once Matt was here, it was time to work, and work HARD.  No distractions, no excuses.  We had to take this seriously and treat this as a real business.  I knew that the amount of money we would make would be based on how much we worked, no matter what we had to do.  I knew that we had to treat this like it was our last chance of ever becoming successful.

The day came when we had to pick up Matt from the airport.  After we dropped him off to his hotel room, any doubts of him scamming us had left our minds.  On the ride home, it finally sunk in.  I TRULY believed that we would succeed.  It was already in my mind.  I mean, what else is there to doubt?  Matt had done many deals before, he said the deals were being done in Canada and he was here, in my city.  The way I think is that if you really believe in something, think POSITIVE, and work hard at work and keep on going no matter what, you’re very unlikely to fail.  If you do, just keep trying and trying and trying, and trying!  While my friend was driving back home, I turned to him and said, “We’re going to be rich”.  We bought laughed, but we both knew in our heads, it will one day happen as long we keep our minds open and optimistic.

Matt mentioned to us that some of his students didn’t really use him while he was there as a mentor.  I thought that was weird, then I told him, “Don’t worry, we’ll use you.” or something to that extent.  And I meant it.  Every day for the first two or three weeks, we always wanted to meet up with him and do ANYTHING to help us learn or setup the business.

Our first few weeks were VERY slow.  A week before Matt had arrived, we ordered some signs because Matt told us that they were very important.  So we found the cheapest place and ordered them.  They told us that it would take 2-3 days to complete so that was perfect because it would be ready by the time he arrived to Winnipeg.  A couple days later, we dropped by to tell them what we wanted on the signs.  They told us they’d give us a call when they would have their layout done.  No one ever called.  So we called back and asked them when it would be done and they told us it would be done by the end of the week. Well, time went and Matt came, and, no signs.  We went to the sign place again but this time it was different.  Matt came with us.  We asked them about the layout, and he came out with it, already done!  They didn’t even call us to tell us about it!  So it seemed like Matt was the angry boss and the guy agreed to do it as soon as he could.  So on the date that they said it would be done, we gave them a call and they told us, they didn’t have the supplies and they had to order them still!  Almost two weeks after we first asked them, they still had no supplies?  To this day, I still don’t know what happened there.

For the first few weeks, we had to try to get our team going and find another place for our signs.  We called a TON of sign places and mortgage brokers.  After days of calling and meeting with professionals, we had a few interesting encounters.  We had “professionals” making an appointment with us, then rescheduling and then not calling back.  We had a few unreturned calls and one business actually did not want to do business with us because we phoning around for a low price! We even met up with a mortgage broker that when Matt talked to her, she seemed like she had no clue what she was saying. We also heard the “it’s not work going to work in this “hot market”” line a few times.

We were going nowhere fast.  We didn’t get discouraged though.  We knew there had to be a place to find signs and we would find good people for our team.  To make a long story short, we found realtors and a place to find signs.  One day though, I called up a realtor that we had met up with and her and her partner were really nice.  These realtors even introduced us to another realtor.  Any ways, we needed help getting comps.  After I asked her if she could get them, she told me she was going to be busy the whole week and maybe try the next week.  Too busy to take 10 minutes and help us out?  We did not have this problem with the other realtor that they referred to us.  Is it because we’re just some young guys that they’re not taking seriously?  We get that once in awhile.

The first week that we put up signs and got calls coming in, they were all just inquiries, people wanting to buy houses, or people that were asking more than what their houses were appraised for.  Even though we were getting calls, there were no leads.  Matt told us that we just had to wait and this always happens and most of the calls would be like the ones we were getting.  It was hard to listen to him at first because of all the things we were going through but hey he’s the expert! So we listened and kept doing our thing.

But now, after 3 weeks of being persistent and working hard (putting up signs, etc) we finally have a good team setup and now more calls are starting come in!  Even though we had possible leads that lead to nothing, we are getting a lot more leads than ever.  Sure, you can say, “You still have no deals”.  But that’s not how I look at it.  I look at it as, “we’re getting more leads than before so we’re getting closer”. I think that’s how you need to look at things.  Even though we haven’t signed up any deals, we’re getting pretty close to signing a few up now and the hard work will pay off in the end.

 I’m actually surprised that we got these many leads this early.  I thought that it would take a month or two, but it picked up fast.  Why?  I think it’s because we are listening to what Matt tells us to do.  Even if we don’t agree with something he told us to do, we still to it.  It’s not because we think that he’s the boss or anything but we know that he has done this many times in the past and he knows what he’s doing.  Why reinvent the wheel?  If we follow his formula, there’s no way it can go wrong.   I’ve listened to some of Matt’s stories about how some of his students don’t listen to his advice and do the complete opposite of what he says.  That’s pretty funny I think.  If you’re not going to listen to the MENTOR, then why even pay for the mentoring fee and have him come out and waste his time?  If you want to do what you want to do, why even consider him helping you out?  It’s ridiculous!  I guess that’s why some of his students have failed.  They need to realize that they don’t know everything and start listening.  They need to realize that they need to first change their mind on how things are and realize that you really don’t know anything and that’s why Matt is there. To help you out and tell you what’s the right way of doing things.

I also ask Matt what his other students do that go wrong.  I always listen carefully whenever he tells us because I don’t want to make the same mistakes they did.  Matt’s there to tell us these things so that we don’t have to make the same mistakes as other people, but yet for some reason he has a lot of the same reasons why some of his students fail.  I really don’t understand how you can fail because of some reason that had Matt given you an example of how someone else failed, and then you go around and do the exact same thing!

Matt was pretty excited after finding out that we are very likely to sign up a deal soon but for some reason I’m really not that excited.  Yes, I can’t wait to make a deal, but it’s something that I expected to happen sooner or later.  Or, maybe it just hasn’t hit me yet.  But I do know that this won’t be our first and last deal, so I’m looking forward to the future.  It looks like it will be a very interesting one.

Another reason why I feel that things are starting to look good for us is that we are actually treating this as a business and not just a regular job.  I even actually take this as my first priority rather than my current job.  The amount of work we put into it will reflect the amount of success we will have.  Only we determine what the outcome will be.  That’s the way we need to look at it.

Even though I have no money for food while we’re out, gas, or anything else for that matter, it’s all worth it because of the success that will happen after. I don’t even think about this business failing.  I know with Matt here, and us working hard, there is no way of us losing.  Even when Matt leaves, we’ll continue to do what he has told us and try to expand on that.  So while he’s here, I’m trying to prepare myself as much as I can by asking him questions, and just watching him do his thing.

Why do I write this you ask?  It’s not meant to help Matt promote his mentoring or courses and I’m sure Matt does not want that either.  I write this in the hopes of helping his future students understand or try to think in the right positive way so that they don’t need to fail like Matt’s past students.   You cannot fail if you have the right attitude.  Now we’re not really all that successful, but with the way things are going now, I don’t see failure any time soon.  So I’m happy to say that we’re on our way to making some money and we’ve made a great friend along the way.

And here's the second one from James-