Realty411 - Your Source for Real Estate Investment Information CashFlow Express - Featuring HGTV's Flip or Flop! | Page 12

Setting Probate Investment Goals that will Grow Your Business P By Leon McKenzie, US Probate Leads art of the challenge for every business owner, no matter the industry, is balancing the daily needs of your business with a long term growth strategy. This is also true for entrepreneurs working in the probate industry. Taking the time to set investment goals will help you to grow your business over the long term. While this may seem like common sense, very few probate entrepreneurs take the time to set actionable goals and then track their progress. Simply put, they get too focused on the urgent and immediate needs of their business, whether it is responding to an email or taking a phone call, and don’t look to see if each of their actions helps them to move their business forward toward growth that builds profit. Taking the time to set probate investment goals is the single most important action you can take for your business as it virtually guarantees business growth and profitability. Probate Offers Exceptional Opportunities Unlike other industries, there are opportunities in probate that allow investors to meet their financial, business and personal goals easily. Before an investor takes the time to create and devise action plans for business goals, it is important to note that the probate industry encourages success with the way that it is structured. Executors, by the very nature of their job, are always interested in finding easy ways to complete the sale and distribution of assets to the heirs as dictated by the court. In the probate business, this means that of the estimated 100,000 probates filed each month in the United States, there are many, many options for real estate investors. These opportunities include discounts on commercial, residential and vacation home properties – many times of up to 50% off of current market rates. This is due to the need of the Executor to develop a cash flow that can take care of medical, funeral, tax and other bills. What does this have to do with setting goals? It means that taking the time to set goals for a probate real estate business is even more beneficial. Since the environment around the probate real estate industry is so favorable, investors can more quickly achieve well-set, actionable goals. Grow Your Business with Goals One of the first steps in building, or rebuilding, your business is to spend enough time preparing Unlike other industries, there are opportunities in probate that allow investors to meet their financial, business and personal goals easily. to enter the market. Kurt Carlton, in his article about setting real estate investment goals, said, “The most important step for any individual that may be looking to get started in this niche market is proper preparation. This avenue of investing is not like buying a CD or a bond and putting it in your bottom drawer. If you buy a home and check on it a year later, it will not provide you with a small return and no headaches. On the other hand, if you tend to it and can play an active role in nurturing the home, it does stand to provide far greater returns on your money and opens a lot of doors to access tax benefits.” Clearly, real estate is an excellent investment if you take the time to adequately prepare yourself and your business. Understanding where you’d like to go with your probate real estate business is critical. There are many benefits to a real estate business – including long term income, equity built into homes, commercial properties and vacation homes, and quick sales that can generate profits and allow you to have cash on hand. Some probate investors choose only one of these paths, and some choose to take advantage of many of them. In order to pursue these goals, it is important to do planning prior to taking action. Overall, taking time to set goals for your business will help you to be more effective and efficient. A recently written article on goal setting said, “Studies CashFlow Express • Page 12 have shown that you will save ten minutes in execution for every minute that you invest in planning or goal setting. What an incredible return on your investment of time. How often would you invest in an investment where you put in a dollar and gotten dollars back?” If you want to see your probate business grow, then taking the time to set goals is critically important. Setting Effective Goals So many people set goals for their personal lives and their businesses each year. Just think about all of the people that set New Year’s resolutions and then never complete their dream. Whether the goal of your probate business is to build short-term income or develop a long-term inv estment portfolio, there are effective ways to set goals that will help you to achieve them. The most effective goals are set using the SMART process. Phil Putejovsky believes that it is critical that goals are defined in terms of outcome. He said, “A huge error in setting real estate goals is not describing the result clearly. Be specific. ‘Doing my first deal,’ is NOT a descriptive result. In fact, doing a deal is not the goal at all. Instead, making money is probably the goal because you can do your first deal and lose $10,000! Losing money is typically not what a budding real estate investor means