The American business community is speaking with a unified voice - NAM called to invoke the 25th Amendment; the Business Roundtable and Chambers of Commerce urge a peaceful transition of power; all have denounced last week's violence. What might this mean? A few implications:
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There is a lot of bad advice floating around online when it comes to real estate investing.

Time for a stiff drink and some stuff you might not want to hear.

A thread 👇

Most real estate influencers spend 99% of their time trying to sound smart.

They purposely make things too complicated.

When you do this for a while you can tell if a property is worth buying with a napkin and 30 seconds.

The problem with being a big real estate PE firm:

You need to do good deals year after year and deploy 10s or 100s of millions in capital.

It’s a hamster wheel making others wealthy.

The advantage of being you:

One building like this can change your life.

Buying real estate that doesn’t cashflow well because values have risen 10% / yr for 10 yrs while wages have risen 3% / yr for 10 yrs is very risky.

I don’t care how long your interest rate is “fixed” for.

Markets are cyclical. Trends change. Bankruptcy is real.

If you don’t know anyone with money and you have less than $250k of your own cash real estate isn’t the best way to make money.

Even a $500k property (like the one pictured above) requires $150k down and another $100k in cash reserves.

If you make more than $100k per year you should have a Virtual Assistant.

If you don't, you're wasting your time on stuff that doesn't matter.

Here's the process I've created to find, interview, and manage great VA's after doing this for 5 years:

There's a lot of tasks you work on that are well below your intellectual capability.

Booking haircut appointments, ordering groceries, and finding flights is a waste of time.

First, you want to find out what tasks can you delegate.

Here's how:

Track everything you do every 15 minutes in a spreadsheet. Create 3 columns w/ the below questions

1. Do I like doing this?
2. Is it repeatable?
3. Can it be delegated?

If the answers are No, Yes, Yes -- you've found tasks to delegate!

We'll jump back into these tasks later.

Before we learn how to find them, let's understand the types of VA's:

1. Individual Freelancers (Low cost & High cost)
2. Agency VA's (High cost)

My experience has been with low-cost VA's (under $6/hour). I've gotten the same level of quality that I would with most US VA's.

Now, here's how we craft the right job post to attract the best ones: Be as specific as possible with what you expect. Here’s an example:

Also ask for a screenshot of their computer specs & internet speed results and a 2 min video of their background & why they want the job.

General Warning: don’t work for or hire @IanMmmm - he’s a zero-integrity-self-serving manipulator. He destroyed an entire org at AWS.

He’s the reason I left @awscloud. He’s not just incompetent, he’s dishonest in the extreme. You’re throwing away your career working with him.

Also, pro-tip: record every call you have with a manager that you suspect is lying to you.

Here's what happened: I lost my shit when I didn't get promoted, because I was a child. That's on me. I had worked my ass off for 3 years and Ian said that if I moved to Seattle and signed a non-compete then I would get my promotion. I did those things - I didn't get promoted.

What does losing my shit mean? I sent a message to Ian and others that said "Fuck you, I'm not moving to the depressive hell hole that is Seattle. I'm not signing a non-compete. I'm going to stop working 100 hours a week for a company that doesn't give a shit about me."

Later, I found out that Ian had never actually reached out to anyone about my promo document. He just lied. He just ignored it until the last second because he was too focused on taking credit for my work for his own promo document. He got promoted.