Our group was started in March of 2002 by a guy named Matt, who realized there was a need for a local REIA in the Milwaukee area. Matt was educating himself in the real estate investment world by going to one of the many web sites related to this topic. Matt then “picked-out” those people from the area that were posting messages to help educate themselves, and e-mailed them to see if they wanted to get together and brainstorm about their real estate investing experiences. Matt set up that 1^st meeting at a community room at his apartment complex. In attendance at that 1^st meeting were Matt, Jessie (who traveled about 8-10 miles), Brian (who traveled about 15-20 miles), and Dave (who came all the way up from Kenosha which is a good 40 or so miles!). The meeting was an informal round-table decision about what each of them had done in real estate investing. Lucky for all of them, Dave suggested they set up the next meeting right away. Had that not been done this whole thing probably would have fallen to the wayside right then and there. They then decided to meet the following month, AND, every month thereafter!

The next couple of meetings were at a bar in Downtown Milwaukee, but after the 2^nd or 3^rd meeting, Matt stopped showing up. Brian then kept setting up meetings and tried to find more people interested in the club.   

The meetings eventually moved to a local family restaurant and we were having 4-5 people show up, then 5-7, then 7-10, then 10-16, as time went on. We continued to just have general conversations about real estate investing. When we had about 16, and everyone asked for separate checks, the manager kindly let us know his restaurant wasn’t a meeting place.  

Throughout all this, Dave had been going to meetings of another REIA. From those meetings he passed suggestions to us about meeting locations and how to better promote our group. Two very good suggestions were that this other REIA was meeting in a hall at a local VFW post, and the person running that group posted the group’s meetings time/date/location on various Creative Real Estate Investing web sites. Once that was done for our group, the calls started coming in and we moved to a local VFW hall as well.   

Our group continued to grow by various means, with word-of-mouth probably being the best source of new people showing up at the monthly meetings. We were even lucky enough to have Steve Cook www.flippinghomes.com meet with our group twice during the time we were at the VFW hall. Now about 40-50 people strong, and the conditions at the hall were not going to be conducive for continued growth, a new location was being sought out. As luck may have it, there was a national hotel about 1-½ miles down the street, and that is where we have been meeting for about 1 year now.