Why I Still Take Every Call Even After Getting Burned by Time Wasters

I don't market myself. A few posts on Facebook and Instagram, nothing paid, nothing elaborate. And yet the calls keep coming.

Investors of every type. Complete novices and so-called seasoned veterans. All of them finding their way to the same phone number through the same thin digital footprint.

Here's what I've noticed after taking more of those calls than I can count. The ones who come in claiming to be complete novices are almost always completely honest. They don't know what they don't know, and they say so. The ones who claim experience tend to prove fairly quickly that they're performing it rather than living it. I can smell a lie like a fart in a car. It's not a skill I developed intentionally. It just comes with the territory after long enough.

What I want to be clear about is this, nobody needs to exaggerate their experience to get my help. I've spent an hour on the phone walking a complete stranger through how to get out of a bad situation and never thought twice about it. I don't mind helping people. I don't mind giving advice. What I mind is being lied to about things that wouldn't have mattered if they'd just been straight from the start.

The problem is that people without real experience don't always know what they don't know, so they fill the gaps with whatever sounds right. A couple of deals becomes a track record. Looking into something becomes actively investing in it. There's a natural instinct to put your best foot forward and I understand that. But there's a meaningful line between that and fudging the truth, and most people know exactly which side of it they're standing on.

My real frustration is the intentional time wasters. The ones who have no interest in doing business and are only there to extract whatever they can before moving on to the next person. They ask a lot of questions. They want their deals reviewed once, twice, three times. They stay engaged just long enough to get what they came for. Then the texts stop. The calls go unanswered. The emails disappear into nothing. If you've spent any real time in this business you know exactly who I'm describing because you've met several of them.

You would think after writing a novel about it I'd have stopped taking those calls.

I haven't. Not because I enjoy the punishment but because I like to be surprised. Those calls are a lot like deals. I go through a lot of them that turn into absolutely nothing. But that's the necessary part of finding the one that actually leads somewhere worth going. I look at dozens of properties before I buy one. I talk to dozens of people before I find the partner with real deals or the investor worth working with. The ratio is frustrating and the process is inefficient and there is no better way to do it.

People are harder to evaluate than properties because you can't run a title search on a person. There's a lot of hidden history that takes time to surface, same as real estate. Liens don't always show up on the first pass. Neither do character flaws. But you keep taking the calls anyway because that's the only way to find the ones worth talking to.

Don't lie to anybody. Don't quit. Success gets considerably easier after that.

If you're one of the honest ones ready to actually do something, let's talk.

Schedule a free 15-minute call at calendly.com/jeph-reit