Strategy #3 - Wholesaling "Revisited"...

I know I promised that I would revisit wholesaling at the end of describing all of the strategies, but I had such a great interview yesterday with Dwan Bent-Twyford (The Queen of Foreclosures), that I wanted to come back to Wholesaling a little early while the conversation was still fresh in my mind.

You probably remember Dwan from a few years back as the "Co-Partner" in the "Dynamic Duo of Foreclosures", Dwan and Sharon. For a few years Dwan and Sharon crossed the country sharing with people their secrets to making money in foreclosures. After a few years of this, Sharon confided in Dwan that she really did not enjoy being up on a stage talking to a room filled with 450, 600 or more people. Honestly, I can understand this. A Harvard University study once revealed that most people would rather put their hand in a blender rather than getting up on a stage and speaking to a crowd.

As all good friends do, Sharon and Dwan decided to re-work their business so everyone could still stay involved, but not necessarily speaking so for a number of years that followed, Dwan did the speaking and Sharon took care of the "back-office". As fate would have it, both Sharon and Dwan met the "men of their dreams" and their lives took different directions with Dwan and Bill wanting to move to the mountains of Colorado and Sharon and Juan deciding to stay put and develop an incredible real estate operation in South Florida. So those of you who wanted to know, "Hey, what's the inside scoop on Sharon and Dwan", you just got the whole story.

So, yesterday for the Real Investor's Talk Radio show, Dwan and I were talking about her early days as a recently divorced mother of a pre-toddler, how she was determined to "not starve to death" nor have to put her daughter in day-care. For many people this would be an impossible task: make money to live as the sole bread winner and not have to place your child in some form of day care. but Dwan was able to survive without sacrificing her desire to be the "only mom her daughter would know".

Her story is an incredible one, and I hope you choose to listen in to the show this week. To hear the complete interview this weekend go to http://www.RealinvestorsTalkRadio.com

The part I wanted to discuss in today's blog, however, is Dwan's "Secret to Success", combining foreclosure strategies with wholesaling, or more precisely, focusing on foreclosure and pre-foreclosure opportunities with the specific intent to wholesale the deals to other investors, mainly rehabbers.

On average, Dwan makes 20% of the total retail value of the house when she wholesales, so a $200,000 house would translate into a $40,000 wholesale fee. This is clearly at the upper-end of wholesaling fees, but she is able to command these premiums because she focuses on a strategy in which she creates huge potential profits. Her story is an amazing one, as is her approach to this real estate business and it points to one of the keys to success that most full-time real estate entrepreneurs share: Failing Forward.

Failing forward is the title of a John Maxwell book, but it can best be summed up in my phrase:
"Crawl, Walk, Run - Win Gold Medals".

There are times in this business where you will absolutely feel as though you are "crawling across the floor". That is, things are not moving as fast, and you feel like you are working really hard. This happens in the early stages because everything is new, and you are also making every possible mistake in the book. The key, however, is to NOT GIVE UP.

YOU DONT GIVE UP, because sooner or later two things happen: 1) You hook up with a good mentor, or really start to listen to the mentor you have, and 2) You begin to actually learn from your earlier mistakes, if the mistakes are small ones, you recover quickly.

It is foolish to believe that you are not going to make some mistakes when you first get started - this is true of anything in life worth doing. As my old ski instructor, Don, used to say, "if you are really trying, you are going to fall down". If you are serious about becoming an investor, then you are taking action, and if you are taking action, you are going to make some mistakes. Just make sure that you move at a pace you feel comfortable with, and not be "pushed" into moving faster than you are ready, which of course leads to potentially falling down and not getting back up again. You will fall down, but you don't have to get hurt when you do. The key is to not give up, and to make adjustments as you move forward.

In her early days, Dwan literally went knocking on doors in a neighborhood asking people if they wanted to sell their homes. Of course she realizes today that that was "less than optimum" strategy, but after three weeks of going "door to door with a baby on her hip" she did actually get someone to say "YES!". She made $22,000 on this one deal, and the rest is as they say: "History!"

Today instead of living out of her car, Dwan and her husband Bill and their three children live in a 7,700 square foot house on the top of a Colorado mountain with a view that many have described as "breathtaking". Or in Dwan's words: "Worth every door I knocked on and did'nt have to in those very early days".

How did it come about? Wholesaling houses. Albeit, wholesaling with a "twist", but this is what happens once you get past the "Walk and Run" phases and move into the "Winning Gold Medals".

More on how to do this in a future blog post.

Sherman Ragland - Thank You for reading...