RG 062 – How to turbo charge your investment career by starting a real estate meet-up with Lisa Hoegler

About Lisa

• Lisa is the found and executive director of the LA South REIA
• Lisa joined her first REIA in 2004
• Lisa also invests in multifamily properties that she finds through REIA connections.

Nuts and Bolts

Lisa is the founder and executive director of the LA South REIA (real estate investors association) which is a group she set up when she moved to LA 14 years ago. Lisa originally went to business school and after graduation she worked for corporate America based in North Carolina. Outside of work she volunteered with Habitat For Humanity which started her interest in real estate and construction. Lisa started to get into real estate investment and worked full time for 8 years while investing on the side. When she started investing she had very little knowledge so she joined a local REIA. After 8 years she decided to go full time into real estate investing and move to LA, Lisa says that it was clear she had to quit her day-job because her passion lay in investing and being an entrepreneur. Since moving to LA and starting her own REIA Lisa has been a primary investor on many rehabs and rental properties and now grows note portfolios and coaches other investors.

The South LA REIA

Lisa started the LA South REIA 14 years ago as a way to learn about the local market after she moved into the area. She didn’t know anyone in South LA and so starting the REIA was a good was to get to know people, build credibility and start a network. Her first meeting was with 12 people in 2013 and it took 28 months to get proper traction in the market and grow to 200 members. Lisa put on one monthly event and also oversees several educational smaller meet-ups throughout the month. On the day of the big event she hires people to come in and look after the audio, but otherwise the event relies on volunteers and current members who help with content, new member sign-ups and registration. For the future Lisa is looking to grown the group into more education this year and add more opportunities for new members within the group. She is also looking at expanding to new sites within the South LA area.

Why start a meet-up?

There are benefits to starting up your own meet up group, for example Lisa explains how much the LA South REIA has affected her career by plugging her into the network at lightning speed. She has gained opportunities in speaking, investing, fairs, panels and networks much more quickly than if she’d joined someone else’s group. As she meets all new she can connect with potential new partners in note inventory, borrowers, lenders and possible business partners. Lisa estimates that she reaches 1200 investors each year. Lisa has a  broad range of attendees which started with lots of new investors looking to learn and has now grown into many experience levels. Lisa’s REIA is also part of the National REIA which has 300 active groups across the US which are all run independently with different kinds of content. By having a parent association members can receive additional benefits that they couldn’t find elsewhere.

Advice for beginners

If you’re looking to start your own meet-up Lisa’s main advice is make sure you know why you’re going it. Your REIA can be anything you want it to be but it will only reflect the work you put into it, so make sure you know what you want to use it for and how it should be designed from the outset. You should also ensure you have enough time to put into organization because often the REIA’s that fail are the ones without thought behind them. The other thing to consider is constancy of content for your members. Lisa runs 5 events each month that require content which she bases on member requests for topics and repeated questions. She also considers what is going on in the market, for example there aren’t many foreclosures happening at the moment so that hasn’t been a content topic for a few years.

Top 5 investing tips

Most important habit – Creating focus by using her calendar everyday and writing down goals at the beginning of the week.

Most influential event – The crash of 2008 which made Lisa re-evaluate her entire business and create renewed focus.

Most important tool – Her email marketing system.

Most important mistake – Leveraging too much money and feeling the effects in 2008 which taught her to become a more conservative investor.

Contact – [email protected]

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