If you were asked to characterize the successful real estate investor, what would that profile be?  By and large, those who succeed at this business seem to follow a certain pattern of behavior that includes the following key elements:

• VISION - They cultivate an unwavering vision of what they want to achieve. This vision is not fuzzy or tentative, but specific and tangible.  They have in their mind a sensory-rich image of where they want to be, what they want to be doing at the end of their journey.  What rewards they want to be enjoying, and with whom they want to be enjoying them--family, friends, loved ones, people they serve.
• GOALS - They translate their vision into specific, tangible, timeconscious goals that can be measured, monitored, and adjusted on a regular basis. Like the woman who needed to make $25,000 per deal, week in and week out, they follow a precise set of goals without wavering.
• ACTION PLAN - They translate their specific goals into a set of behaviors designed to produce specific results. Real estate investing, like any other business activity, must be reduced to daily and weekly actions that are tied to the goals and the vision of the enterprise.
• TEAM WORK - The successful real estate investor, without exception, knows the power of working within the team context. Real estate investing is a networking activity that involves not only buyers and sellers, but bankers, real estate agents, title company officers, attorneys, accountants, insurance agents, appraisers, contractors, partners, and a host of other key people whose services and support are indispensable from time to time. Real estate never works in a vacuum. You must have a "high touch" affinity in order to bring together the various people constituencies into a win/win configuration that gets results.
• CREATIVITY - We will spend a great deal of time diagnosing this mysterious quality and attempting to clarify its meaning and operation. Real estate investing rests on the foundation of creative dealmaking and creative financing. This means that the tried and true formula for buying--put down ten or twenty percent in cash, expose all our secrets to intense scrutiny by the loan officers, and use the hardmoney lenders to finance the rest of the deal--must be declared oldfashioned (unless you have partners in your back pocket who are flush with capital and willing to put it to work to induce high discounts). In its place you must put an array of interlocking creative techniques designed to solve problems for a very small constituency of property sellers--those who are flexible in price and terms because of high motivation.  This ability to apply creative techniques to the particulars of a given transaction is a key ingredient to successful real estate investing.  The "big guys" have been doing this for decades--perhaps from time immemorial. No one in the upper echelons of investing puts their own money on the line. It is always OPM ("other people's money") that makes the macro world of real property enterprise go around. This insight has filtered slowly to the rest of us down on Main Street. It is only in the last quarter century that these insider strategies and techniques have become accessible to the "little guy" in full force. High time! No one need have a monopoly on creativity. These techniques can be learned--and it is this will to learn and apply creative measures that can lift the "little guy" out of the rut of a self-imposed incarceration of negative conditioning and limited vision. 
• PROFESSIONALISM - What is required in successful real estate investing is the same thing that is required of any business venture: a profit-and-loss mentality, attention to the bottom line, reading the "small print" in every lease, every document, and every contract involved. If you are willing to keep score, then you can play the game. Records must be kept, taxes paid, the balance sheet maintained. There is no magic wand. It takes keen business sense. And if you don't have it, then learn it, or get someone on your team who knows it inside and out.  There is more to fishing than pulling in the big ones. You have to know where to fish and when, what bait to use, what equipment to put to work, and how to clean those slimy critters after you get them on shore.  And you have to have a fishing license. It's all a conspiracy by the fateful forces of the capitalistic system--but if you know how to play the game of professionalism, you will win.
• HONEST EFFORT. It has to be honest--win/win in every respect--or you will slip and fall eventually. What goes around, comes around. What comes around, goes around. We are not working in a vacuum. Everyone has to win, or no one wins in the long run. And it has to be effort--lots of effort. Real estate investing is hard work. If you set high goals, you set high work standards. If you set modest goals, you set high work standards. If you set low goals because that is all you need, then you set high work standards.  There is no free lunch (although you can learn to work smarter, rather than harder). We have been following the case of one real estate investor in Milwaukee who never even looked at a piece of real estate before making an offer. He simply knew his town backwards and forwards and sent dozens of offers a week to declared sellers in areas he wanted to buy in. Naturally, his offers were low-ball and based on formulas that assured his success. Naturally, most were rejected out of hand. But a few--one or two a week--would say "yes." And the sellers came to his doorstep, on his terms, hat in hand, ready to do business.  Smart. But still hard work--sort of. Get the idea?

WHAT IS THE ACTION MODEL FOR REAL ESTATE?