The key is Building and Leading the best team of professionals you can find.

We recommend at a minimum that your team contain the following members ... in this order.

- Property Manager

- Commercial Real Estate Brokers/Agents (more than one)

- Commercial Real Estate Attorney

- Commercial Real Estate Mortgage Broker

- Field Partner

- Escrow / Title Agent

- Insurance Broker

- CPA

And these team members must be

1) Local in the market where you are actively investing

2) Experienced in your Specific Property Niche

You don't need to know everything the Team knows ... you lead and coordinate the Team's activities to build your portfolio. With a well constructed team you might have well over 100 years of combined Commercial Property experience at your disposal. And each team member is an expert in their area of the local market. Now that is Power.

"Just how in the heck do I find all these power players?" you might ask.

Building your team is a fairly simple task. You ask for referrals from the busiest people you can find. Busy, successful people tend to work with other busy and successful people. Now you can call one Attorney at a time or email one Broker at a time to find potential team members...Or you can build your list of Team prospects in a single evening. Here's how...

Attend an Real Estate Investor Club meeting or a Trade Association Meeting in your target market and ask everyone there for referrals for your team members.

Here is a state-specific listing of 322 Real Estate Investor groups to check out http://www.reiclub.com/real-estate-clubs.php

You can find Trade Associations with an on line search or asking Brokers in the area. Trade Associations can be property specific such as the various Multifamily Housing Associations. Here is the link to the Washington Multifamily Housing Association for those of you in the Seattle area. http://www.wmfha.org/

And some Trade Associations are Regional without regard to property type such as the Real Estate Council of Austin (TX) here; http://www.recaonline.com/

In either case you will meet dozens and dozens of the busiest, most connected and most experienced members of the Commercial Real Estate Community in a single evening.

Shake as many hands as you can, tell them something like this,

"My name is [Your Name here] and I am the CEO of [Your Company Name Here].

We are a Commercial Real Estate Investing Company taking an active interest in this market. We are in the process of building our local Team. Who would you recommend as the three best Property Managers [or other Team member you are looking for] in town?"

Then get ready to write like crazy. At the end of your evening you should have at least two dozen candidates to check out. Now, of course you will check at least three references, make sure they have the experience you are seeking and mesh well with your business plan. Your work to finalize your team is not done.

AND you can quite easily pull together 3 candidates for each of the 8 Team Positions above in a single Trade Organization meeting ... that's Power Networking. And with good planning you can accomplish this even if this is a market that is 2000 miles from where you actually live.

NOTE: When you plan your Site Visit to your target market be sure to time your visit to include at least one of each of these Trade Association and Investor Meetings.

AND remember this for sure...

The way you present yourself is absolutely vital. Even if you have never done a single Commercial Property deal, you are still ... "The CEO of your own Investment Company taking an Active Interest in this market."

There you have it - Build your Team - Find them by Referrals - Supercharge the whole process by networking at Investment Clubs and Industry Association

Now it's your turn

What is your Niche?

Where is your Market?

When are you going to get started?

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