Pretty much every day, I’m confronted by the following question: How much is too much to share on the blog?
The reasons for not sharing are pretty obvious: We have tons of competitors, many of whom read this blog and (try to) copy what we do. Within reason, I don’t mind this… it’s a free country, and god knows we’ve copied stuff from other operators, too.
But there’s some information that is truly proprietary. And it’s important that our investors get the benefit of it, not our competitors.
So, why write a blog at all?
Well, here is what writing almost every weekday for the last ~4 years has done for our business:
- Introduced us to our largest fee-for-service customer, for whom we’ve renovated something like 15 buildings;
- Introduced us to our second and third largest investors;
- Introduced us to maybe a third of our “normal” investors (people who write $100-200k checks);
- Generated something like 80% of the business for our brokerage;
- Generated several of our best ideas for neighborhoods / deal types / etc.; and
- Generated a flow of off-market deals, one of which is probably the best deal I did last year.
Any time I meet someone who runs a small business, in real estate or any other area, I try to convince them to blog. Very few do, because the effort and consistency required is really tough for most people. But writing Kagansblog has been among the top 5 things I’ve done for my career… and I suggest you do likewise!