How to become a better Real Estate Investor with Calvin Hexter & Micheal Ponte!
Calvin: I’m here with Michael Ponte with the Savvy Investors. Michael, good to see you. How are you today?
Michael: Super great, Calvin. Awesome to be here and great to see you, my friend.
Calvin: Michael, you are an absolute rock star in the real estate investing space. You are one of the few names where people know from coast to coast, and it takes a lot to do that. And I think it was, you know, I don’t want to say it was easy for you, but I would say by having, you know, having the right morals, having the right focus in real estate and just being a very strong, attractive guy that just puts out really good information. People want to be around you.
Now, one of the things that we get asked often, and I mean, we see all different different shapes and sizes of investors. But my biggest question to you is, how do you become a better investor? I know it’s a vague question, but how do you become a better investor?
Michael: Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s a tough one, because I think we should be doing better every single time, every acquisition, every single deal that we look at, every partnership that we have is asking ourselves, what went well and what could we do better? But in this space right now, with every with the market, the way it is right now for people that have done a lot of private lending, have had a lot of challenges in their deals. This is becoming a real big eye opener for people is how we’ve been so trustworthy in the process – we’ve been so trusting that the market was going to continue to go up. But we’ve taken that we’ve been very lacking in the process of due diligence on the people and also on the deal in itself has become very complacent. So how do we become better investors? We have to kind of dust ourselves off if we still believe in this game called real estate investing, which I absolutely do. And we’ve ridden through some of these challenging times as well. It goes right back to it. If I went to do this all over again, what would I do differently?
And that’s it. It’s asking some of those key questions. And the important part is learning from those past examples and really ask ourselves, you know, what could I have done a little bit better? Maybe I should do a little bit more analysis. Maybe my analysis didn’t work as well. Maybe I should have reached out to a couple of referrals or references of these individuals before I put in some hard earned money. Maybe I needed a little bit more collateral in regards to ensuring that my money was going to be protected.
Calvin: So, Michael, one thing that we get all the time – and we work with a lot of clients and you work with a lot of coaching clients – social media, as amazing as it is, lots of ideas, a great way of getting your network out there, a fantastic way, and one of the best ways to maybe build your brand these days can also work very negative. And the negative aspect of social media as it relates to real estate investing can very much be a FOMO effect. You know, you’re a part of these groups. You’re part of these chats, these platforms. And sometimes you’ll see these people posting, “I just locked up this 30 unit building”, the next week it seems like they locked up 100 unit building, and every single week or every other day there seems to be something. Now, from someone that’s just starting their real estate journey or even someone that’s been doing it for years and years and years, it can create a level of insecurity with some investors. And I think that insecurity can almost have you taking that AK-47 out and just trying to take action in any way to catch up. But that’s not the reality of real estate investing. How would you, what’s a tip you’d give to somebody that might be feeling that type of way?
Michael: Oh, that’s it’s a great one.
And to be honest, you’re right. Social media can provide this kind of whole FOMO effect or this insecurity or the fear of missing out. It’s just it’s just what it is. People are like, “look at this person. Calvin’s just bought like 10, 100 unit buildings. It’s just crazy. How is he doing that? I got to jump on the bandwagon as well”. But I’m going to use your analogy, AK-47 and start buying a bunch of real estate. That’s actually the wrong approach. Talk to a lot of really seasoned investors and myself – and I’ll share a quick little story on that one, too – it’s not an AK-47, it’s a sniper rifle. That’s how you want to be repositioning it. It’s about finding the right opportunity, the right deal, which is available in any market. You’re not missing out on anything. It’s just got to make sense to what your investment goals are. I don’t want to inherit a problem.
I want to inherit a great investment opportunity.
