Thread by @TheRealEstateG6

HOW TO GET A MENTOR:

I was a junior in college

And I knew absolutely nothing about real estate

While at a meet-and-greet for my upcoming summer internship,

I met a successful local RE developer/operator (worth $10MM+ in his 30s)

I could tell immediately he was the real deal so after talking to him for a while and really hitting it off,

I asked him for his business card

Told him I really wanted to learn and that he could send me any extra work or anything he didn't want to do and I'd do it for free

Since he liked me and had nothing to lose, he agreed

He started off by sending me all kinds of menial tasks that would be "below" most interns

(formatting word docs, checking 50+ page documents for errors, and even one time manually downloading 3,000+ contacts in excel)

Eventually, as he began to trust me more, he'd send me more important stuff to do

Next thing I knew, I was checking models for errors and researching submarkets to see if they were viable

All for free

While I'd do the bitchwork, I'd pepper him with (intelligent) questions

How does xyz work?

Why do you like this deal?

Wouldn't doing it that way leave you open to xyz risk?

Why do you structure xyz like that?

Wow, doing it like that must be very profitable

And he was more than happy to answer all of them

I learned years' worth of info in weeks

Everyone was happy

He thought he was getting the better end of the deal (free work and all he had to do was talk about topics he enjoyed)

I thought I was getting the better end of the deal (trading the hours I would've spent boozing to acquire absolutely priceless knowledge)

Eventually, after picking his brain for a few months, I figured out his acquisition strategy

I signed up for every broker's email list I could find and started sending him deals,

Analyzing it first and then sending it to him

I had no idea what I was doing at first, but gradually I learned to spot a good one from a bad one

I started becoming very good at it and found him several extremely good deals (although we never ended up buying any of them)

Once I started working full-time, I stopped working for him

But we've remained really good friends ever since and talk regularly

He has even invested serious cash in my personal deals and always helps me out whenever I need anything (and I do the same for him)

I see so many people asking about how to get a mentor and they all approach it the wrong way

They all try and extract value from him

In reality it should be the other way around

For those of you who say it's not possible or that you don't know enough about real estate to provide value,

You're dead wrong

Everyone, even multimillionaires, have something they want or some part of their life made easier

I knew nothing about real estate, but was able to provide a ton of value as a college kid

(Hint: The easiest way to "provide value" when you have no skills is to find out what someone hates and offer to do it for them. Very few people will say no)

Ironically, once you start providing value, you reap far greater rewards than you could have ever gotten from solely trying to extract value

So if you want a mentor, don't cold email him and ask to pick his brain over coffee

Instead, try to provide value in any way you can