Pivoting and liking it....

A couple of years back when we were dreaming and building our vision of Mogul Launcher, our initial thought was that if we loved and needed our service,everyone would love and need our service. I mean, who couldn't benefit from a regional real estate website that provides local real estate news, market analysis and mortgage rates for real estate investors? What real estate agent couldn't benefit from a real estate platform that would allow them to market their property listings? We soon found that our thought turned out to be a a bit off after holding meeting after meeting and hearing from you out there in social media land. It wasn't that our ideas were wrong or ill-conceived. In fact, everyone loves Mogul Launcher but they wanted something different. They wanted something fresh and that they can call their own. We learned fairly quickly that we needed to change direction and not only provide a better service but heed to the needs of our customers if we wanted to compete with the big boys. “Pivot” is a term used by Eric Ries to describe a change in direction of a startup while staying grounded in learning. We agree 100% with Eric! If we don't learn to pivot, we're building a company that only a few of us would benefit from. As we created Mogul Launcher from it's infancy, we had become protective founders when it came to others suggesting changes to the site. We didn't want to hear that our baby needed to be changed. We liked it just the way we dreamt it to be. We thought everyone else was wrong. It turned out that we were wrong. Through much time and consideration, we had to ask ourselves, "Who are we providing this site for?" We quickly came to the decision that it's for all of us. Ultimately, we want those in the real estate community and those associated with real estate to benefit. In the end, we ate our share of humble pie and refocused our vision to build a 'customer first' real estate tool. After all, we are customers too. Pivoting was difficult to embrace but the more we hear from you and the more we adhere to our mantra of 'customer first', we're learning that we must pivot if we want to achieve any sort of success. So, we are working toward making some changes that we hope you will like and benefit from. We look forward to hearing from you and please sign up. We need your support as we continue to move forward. Thanks for reading and Happy Hunting!

Triumphs, Challenges and looking forward

Looking back and seeing how we got to this point seems surreal to me. I know, I know, we haven't arrived but I get really excited to see how far we have come since the birth of this idea. We have experienced both triumphs and challenges as we have sought to build Mogul Launcher. To be completely honest, we had no idea how we would get the idea from my brain to the world wide web. When we started out, I didn't know the difference between asp.net, PHP and Ruby. We didn't know the price structure we wanted to incorporate in regards to our subscriptions or weather or not we wanted to incorporate ideas with another company. What we did know was that there was a void and a necessity for our idea. We knew that many of people (agents, brokers and investors) shared the same frustrations I had with the real estate sites provided for us. I knew that some of these sites created monopolies that would price some of us out of the market and didn't provide me the information I needed to become an investor in real estate. So, we did what every good entreprenuer does, we took an extended weekend to hammer out a business plan. We began to put to paper who we are, what we wanted to be and where we wanted to go. This was both challenging, fun and exciting. But this was just the beginning. It would be great to say that everything has been smooth up until this point but i want to be truthful in saying that this is not the case. We have had several challenges along the way. We are on our 3rd developer, we have changed code after building out phase one, we have had several delays and oh.....we all have full time jobs. The full-time job issue isn't really an issue because we all agree that we can sleep when we're dead but our day jobs do occupy time and effort that we would rather be spending on building Mogul Launcher into the resource we envision. We have encountered great times and we have learned a lot during this time as well. I have learned that I am not that brilliant and that I don't have that much control. I have seen my shortcomings rise to the surface and I have also learned that when you surround yourself with pros to do a job.....you let them do their thing. I had to learn to trust others with my baby and realize that it's their baby too. I look forward to waking up in the morning and tackling the challenges of the day. I love collaborating on ways to improve our site to make it more efficient and streamline the process for our users (fans). I love seeing more people "like" us on FB, become a follower on Twitter, "connect" with others on Linkedin and join as members on our site. This gives us extra incentive to build something that people can find useful. Looking back, this road has been adventurous and educational. We look forward to making Mogul Launcher into the site for real estate investors to buy, sell, manage and maintain their real estate investments. We look to always improve and provide the best vehicle to make you a better property investor. Thanks for taking the time to read. We look forward to hearing from you on any of our social media platforms and don't forget to spread the word. Happy hunting!

The beginning.....

I thought we would start our first blog from our start, with the beginning of how the idea of Mogul Launcher was birthed. Giving the background to our story, I hope will provide an insight of what we are trying to accomplish. Growing up, my father was a real estate agent turned real estate investor. As a 5 year old, most of my weekends were spent with him driving around and working on his properties . I got paid $1 a day. (Hey, that was a lot of money for a 5 year old) I learned a lot about tools and maintaining properties as the years whizzed by. I learned how to unplug tubs,sinks and toilets. I fixed leaks including roofs, built walls and dug ditches. (Fun stuff, I know) When i was 18 years old, fresh out of High school and in college, my dad got real sick and was bed ridden. He brought me into his room and asked if I could help him with his properties until he got well. So I did what any good son would do when their dad needs help. I quit my job and school and started working for him full time. I continued to learn about the real estate business and now from a managerial point of view. (I still unplugged tubs and toilets though) About 7 years ago I ventured on my own. Owning investment property for the past 7 years, we all know that you run into challenges along the way. It's not as glamorous as people want to make it out to be. As a property investor/owner, I would scour various websites to look for properties, local market news, regional analysis and vendors to help me manage and maintain my investments. A lot of these websites either didn't provide me the information I was looking for or led me down rabbit holes that I deemed useless. In addition, there was one well-known commercial real estate website that charged an arm and a leg to view it's properties and didn't provide much more then that. They were the only real estate site around. We had no other choices. So, out of this frustration, I came up with the idea of Mogul Launcher. Mogul Launcher not only brings all of this pertinent information to one site, it's a real estate hub. It's a market-place where those interested in real estate investment will be able to utilize our site to assist them with their real estate needs. We are a company of 5. We are excited about providing Mogul Launcher as a tool for real estate investors. We have completed phase 1 of our site and as we receive feedback, we are trying to button up some loose ends. It is definitely the bare bones of what we envision for Mogul Launcher. We are proud of how it has come out and are excited to get this company off the ground. Our next 3 phases are planned out and ready to go. We are currently looking for funds to get these phases rolled out and will keep you updated as to how we are progressing. We hope you will join us as we build this company into a service that will be helpful in your real estate endeavors. Happy Hunting! James

New Direction

In the past we have written or posted articles concerning California real estate. We have decided today, June 18th 2013 to go in a new direction with regards to the Mogul Launcher blog. We want to use this platform to bring you into the inner workings of our company. We want to let you in behind the ML curtain, our challenges, successes, failures and new updates. So, we hope you enjoy our blogpost as we move from our start-up phase to wherever our company goes. So, join us as we venture out and build this company to serve the real estate investors here in California. Happy Hunting, The Mogul Launcher Team