I first met Donald Trump back in 2003 at a real estate expo in LA. He didn't leave a good impression. I found him to be arrogant, acrimonious, overly aggressive, and bossy.
He hasn't changed at all.
But the moment that really told me who he was as a person was this:
A very attractive young woman asked him what she should do first since she was interested in getting involved in real estate investing. He told her, "Don't bother. Find a rich man to take care of you instead."
I've hated him ever since.
This morning I thought about this: What if I had the opportunity to ask him ONE question on national TV? What would I ask him?
And I thought about it. I would ask him ONE thing: "Mr. Trump, can we see your birth certificate? We, as Americans, have the right to know for sure whether you're an American or not. After all, you don't expect us to simply take you WORD for it, do you? So, when can you show us all your birth certificate?"
With that, I started laughing, providing me with about 10 seconds worth of cheap, cheesy entertainment for myself in the shower.
This question serves one purpose: to ruffle his feathers. After all, he'd be thinking, "How dare you?" Point served.
Well, you COULD be from somewhere else like Canada or England or Australia. After all, maybe his mother was pregnant, they took a family vacation, and out popped The Donald. We don't really KNOW where he was born, do we? And we can't really just take his WORD for it, right?
Personally I don't care where he was born. I'm not planning on voting for him anyway. He could have been born in...Kenya...for all I care. While I'm all for finding a smart business man or woman to run the country -- as I think it's what the United States needs -- Donald Trump wouldn't be the guy. He is full of ego and this is solely the intent for this race. Ego. A feather in his cap. He has no interest in helping people except for himself.
One thing I try to relay to my students OVER AND OVER AGAIN is that it doesn't matter who is in office. Nobody who ends up there -- whether it's Trump or Hillary or Sanders or Rubio or anyone else -- is going to help you better your life in any way. The national debt will still keep getting higher, the middle class will keep getting squeezed out, the value of our dollar will keep dropping, and things will keep getting "worse" on the political front as they continue turning on themselves. Read the book Animal Farm by George Orwell if you don't know what I'm talking about.
You need to look out for yourself. You need to see every advantage that there is in our great country while taking every disadvantage and turning it around for yourself. Nobody will EVER magically come into office, wave a wand, and make everybody's life full of rainbows with overflowing pots of gold in their backyards. Never gonna happen so stop thinking it will with the "next guy" (or gal). Bottom line: they're all the same and they're not in politics to make YOUR life better. They're in politics to make THEIR lives (including those who belong to the "elite") better.
With every disadvantage in this country, there are still a lot of advantages that you can benefit from. But it all starts with understanding WHAT you need to do and, most importantly, getting off your ass and doing something! Nothing happens by dreaming, wishing, and praying.
Action is the ONLY way to make changes in your life. Having a plan and then taking action can change anyone's life completely around within only a couple of months. You have every advantage. You are (presumably) in the United States and you speak English. So, the only one stopping you from having everything you want in life is...YOU!
Some of you are wearing me down to the bone, let me tell you.
Like this one f***** idiot in one of my mentorship groups -- a freaking GUY, of course -- who wants to make every excuse as to why he "doesn't understand" something or why he "can't do" something. I've gone above and beyond with email consulting, even had him call into the office several times to get the special hand-holding he needs for using the Cash Flow Evaluator (CFE) but...no, it's too easy to keep complaining rather than taking the help that is offered because, the reality is, he doesn't want to be successful. He just wants to complain.
Again, I seem to notice this pattern with these very weak, no balls men who keep showing up over and over again. I can't even remember the last time I had any of my female students flare up with a complex of apathy or outright excuse-making.
I'm thinking of buying a very large box of oversized tampons and I'll start sending these 10-inch tampons to every guy who complains about every little thing...telling him to jam it up his ass. That'll definitely "cure" their complaining, as they'll finally have something a little more pressing and legitimate to complain about. Hell, I'll even offer to fly out on my dime to shove it up his ass FOR him. And no, there won't be any lube offered in this complimentary tampon-ass jamming service.
Years ago (circa 2001) when I would do direct mail campaigns, I would actually pay extra to have all women eliminated from my mailing lists. This would cost me an extra $5 per thousand names. Back then I found that very few (if any) woman I would market to had almost no interest in building any kind of investment empire for herself and including the ladies in my direct mail campaigns proved to be a total waste of money.
Fast forward to about 2006 where there was a complete 180-degree change in the attitude among women that happen to get my mailer inadvertently; I found that there was a huge change in how they felt about wanting to take the bull by the horns and take a crack at doing the business. They would call me, enthusiastic and ambitious, willing to do whatever it took to change their lives.
What a difference only 5 years makes.
Since then, this "girl power" has gotten more and more aggressive as more women are ready to make their financial lives happen. You go, ladies! No, life isn't about finding some man to take care of you. In order to truly empower yourself, you can make money on your own and then you rule the roost.
Did you know that I've made more money than all of the men I've dated and have been married to you...combined? And it's relatively effortless as far as I see it.
You see, back when I was a know-it-all teenager, I used to tell my parents (in a rather snotty manner, I might add) that it's "easy" to start a business with nothing. My dad, of course, argued the latter with me, stating that this just wasn't the case in the real world.
Now, most teenagers are wrong about...well, most everything. But one thing you have to admire about the teen spirit is that their heads haven't been overly brainwashed by too many outside influences, namely the burden and disappointment of life...not yet anyway. There can be power in blindly thinking you know something when you're 15 years old, even if it mostly isn't true for the majority of how the real world works.
And that's ALWAYS been my belief system that just gets stronger and stronger by the day. It's EASY to make money and it's EASY to start a business with nothing.
I've proven this to be a REAL FACT over and over again. This started as a "foolish" and blind belief system I somehow got into my head in my early teen years and it's been substantiated as a fact time and time again, reinforcing this believe even stronger.
My first multi-million-dollar business cost me a few hundred dollars to start, in which I earned working as a waitress. I was 19 when I started the business. By the time I was in my early 20s, I was making about $60,000 a week. Yes, you read that correctly. I averaged $60,000 a f****** week from a simple mail order business. This was BEFORE the Internet, BEFORE social media bullshit, BEFORE email marketing, and even BEFORE I could get a merchant account to take credit cards. I didn't even have a phone number for people to call. I had them send me the order in the form of a check or money order.
And in case you're wondering what $60,000 a week ads up to be, that's over $3,000,000 a year.
I was barely 22 years old when I was hitting these numbers.
Of course, being as naive as I was at that time, I ended up losing everything including my business. So what? I just started over.
My next business was, again, started from scratch a handful of years after that. I had a low-limit credit card ($1,200) and I started another small mail order business with a few hundred dollars borrowed from that credit card.
And within a year, I had that business up into the millions...grossing over $4 million in its second year.
Again, it was started from "nothing."
But I am a different person than these whiny students of mine who want to make every excuse in the book as to why they CHOOSE to be mentally challenged.
Instead of seeing an obstacle, I see a way around the blockage. I figure out a way that it CAN be done instead of lining up a legal page full of reasons as to why something can't work.
And I guess that's the difference between ME and some of my bitching, complaining male students that I seem to have daily struggles with these days. (This is going to end very soon, by the way. I'm making some drastic changes that will be announced in December. Those of you coming to Detroit will know sooner, as I'll be announcing my exciting new plans there.)
This is also the difference between SUCCESS and FAILURE. You create your own failure by finding reasons as to why something isn't possible in your life. But when you stop telling yourself, "I can't" and replace it with, "I can" then everything starts to shift.
Then be willing to roll up your sleeves and get on with it. Start doing something. The universe can't send you checks from the clouds. You have to sell something to people or get out there and do something to get the money rolling in.
Pretty simple, right?
One of my most successful teaching tools are my mentorship groups because they force my students to go out into the real world over the course of several weeks and actually start doing things out there. These groups are 100% online but they make you do things to get your business kicked into gear.
Since it's "back to school fever" right now, it's time for you to go back to school too. Time for you to learn something new and to get the life you've been talking about for real this time.
You'll be able to get yourself back in school with a variety of mentorship groups I have going on between now and through January 2016 at a basement-bottom deal!
You don't learn anything new unless you make the effort and you are willing to do something about your life the way it is now. If you're not happy with it, MAKE THE CHANGES. The changes don't happen by themselves. Wishing for a better life will never happen unless you DO something about it.
And that starts today. Start doing something about it right now.
Last night I had to run to the grocery store to get a loaf of bread, milk, eggs, and a few other things. I find it to be highly odd and rather unbelievable that people who are in the business of doing a menial simple task (that would take 5 minutes worth of training TOTAL) can actually screw something up so badly.
Long story short, the milk ended up on the top of the bread in the bag, smashing it into something that resembled a wet pita. Not even the birds would have any use in bread that's smashed and doughy (because of the sweat from the milk). And a few of my eggs broke, as the lame-oid who bagged my groceries apparently decided that throwing them into the bag sideways was the way to go.
Again, we're talking about a job that requires MAYBE 5 minutes in training for the entire life of the position. Ten minutes in training for those who are especially dense and slow. And even then, my experience with grocery baggers these days are somewhat in the range of around 1/3 of them who can actually bag the items correctly.
I shutter at the prospect that any of these people may inadvertently slip into a position such as being a brain surgeon or air traffic controller.
So we always circle back to the question: Where did all the common sense go? I think by the time you're in kindergarten, you'd have an idea that it's not a particularly smart idea to put a bowling ball on top of a sack of potato chips so...what happens to that common sense afterwards?
I have a theory. Of course, this is ONLY a theory. But I'm noticing that this lacking of common sense tends to pull more toward the Millennial crowd. Gen X seems to have been the last reliable and innovative generation and then it rapidly went downhill from that point on.
During one of my recent business trips, I started watching this movie called Idiocracy (2006) with Luke Wilson. It's basically about a Pentagon experiment that had gone wrong and left this "average intelligence" guy shoved into the future via a time machine. There (500 years from now) he discovers that he is, in fact, highly intelligent since the average intelligence of the average American had slipped well below even where most mentally challenged people are now on the IQ scale. While this was a comedy, I couldn't help but to see the truth in how this future could be our possibility...but in much less than 500 years.
Try about 50 years.
I'm not one to place a myriad of blame on any specific source of why I think people are mentally going down the tubes like this. I figure there has to be many factors involved including these possibilities:
1) The EASY button mentality. Kids these days seem to think that anything and everything is merely a click away. Any physical exertion beyond the point of a computer mouse, video game controller, or swipe of an iPad means that they simply have no interest in doing it. Plus...what's the worst that can happen when you "die"? I think you just hit "respawn" or "restart" and everything starts from scratch. There are no consequences to any actions with the EASY and RESTART buttons involved. There is also no need to get off their asses at all since everything is at their fingertips. I believe that all this iPad/video game/computer activity numbs the brain more than we think.
2) Skewed and media hype coupled with being barraged with Internet disinformation. Did you know that nobody in Europe even knows who the hell the Kardashians are? Yet Yahoo! "News" jumps on every little thing those useless people do. And this whole deal with Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner? What the f***? (Need I say more??) Isn't there anything ELSE in the news to talk about? By the way, most of these blog online news stories are churned out as fast as possible by "writers" who barely graduated college, have absolutely no life experience, and base their "research" on the rest of the bogus blogger crap they find online, thus giving out even more misinformation with each "news article" that they write. Add this to just adding fuel to the fire by purposely omitting essential details to a story and adding a writer's "opinion" and this is where things can get dangerous for malleable minds reading any given article. Unfortunately, our kids (and many others, believe it or not) who don't have the basic common sense mechanism in their brains needed to sniff out bullshit versus reality will believe anything and everything they read. Sad really. It's almost better to know nothing at all than have a load of baseless useless nonsense wasting valuable space within your brain cells.
3) A global attack on our personal health. This can include all the clouds of gas that the U.S. Airforce is generously spraying in the sky on a daily basis along with the chemicals they put in the water because it's "good" for us (including the use of fluoride which is actually NOT good for us ATALL). And if you're a meat eater (including consuming dead cows, pigs, and birds), you're getting it even worse with the vast collection of hormones and pesticides that come in your meat, all complimentary of course. This is why girls are developing at a much earlier age. This is why cancer is becoming rampant and uncontrollable, happening in larger numbers than ever before. Did you ever think that maybe it's from all the crap in the air, all the hormones from our food...and now from GMOs?? All of this, of course, affects our brain function and whether we can think clearly...or at all. And if you have ANY of the disadvantages I've outlined in #1 and/or #2 then you're definitely going to see an impact on your thinking process. In fact, if you are guilty of #1 and #2 then I'm fairly certain that you didn't even read down this far, as I would have lost you in the first sentence of this email.
You can't fix stupid but you can at least TRY to do something about it. First, start with your health. Cut your meat consumption. Drastically, if possible. Clean up your diet as much as you can. Eat organic fruits and veggies. Get on a regular exercise program. Clean out your colon with a cleanse. Do what YOU can.
No, you can't change everything but this is NOT an "all or nothing" type of deal. You can't breathe different air unless you plan on carrying an oxygen tank on your back at all hours of the day and night. You're not going to avoid every hormone or pesticide in your food. But you CAN cut some of the damage down by a significant percentage and this alone will make a big impact.
Then you'll start to THINK CLEARER. Once you think clearer, you can start rising above the rest of the dummies that grace this planet and realize success like you've never imagined.
I have another theory and that is this: Do only 7% better and you'll be happier, healthier, and wealthier than you've ever dreamed of!
And doing 7% better only means doing better than what you are doing now. It really has nothing to do with what everybody else is doing out there because, well...who really cares what everyone else is doing? Right?
This means getting healthier, educating yourself, create meaningful goals for yourself in all areas of your life, generate a doable action plan to achieve those goals and, most importantly, get off your ass and start working the plan. Don't let the noise and chatter of what everyone else is doing, thinking, and talking about become a distraction because, as we've established, they're mostly dopes anyway.
And by the way, stop watching the news. Stop reading stupid Yahoo! News articles. Focus on yourself and what you need to do to reach your goals. That's all you have to do.
And, finally, realize that there isn't an EASY button. Be willing to roll up your sleeves and do what it takes to achieve whatever you want in life. If you're willing to do that then...the world is your oyster.
Back to the grind, as of today. But I've been going through my emails and apparently while I've been gone (all last week), my investor partners have been busy getting deals together with my students and there were a total of 4 deals put under contract last week. This adds up to be a total of $6.2 million in deals when adding together these 4 deals.
So, I guess it pays for me to relax a little while just letting things be. Truth be told, I've been getting very stressed out in these past few months and I really needed to get away before I ruptured a nerve or collapsed from a stroke.
Yes, my life is that stressful. I'm already wound like a stretched-to-the-max rubber band. Add any type of fuel to the fire and I'm equivalent to an atomic bomb with that ticking time clock thing attached...with only 29 seconds left until detonation.
With the good, though, there's always the bad that comes along with it. There have been a slew of deals that were rejected by my investor partners for several reasons. And, unfortunately, these reasons were completely avoidable if these students would have simply followed my very basic short list of instructions.
Here are some of the big reasons for the rejections:
1) A couple of students decided not to do a mini business plan (as required) and, instead, chose to use the Offering Memorandum (OM) provided by the listing agent and/or brokerage firm. While I did my best to weed these out before sending them off, it was getting really intense at the very end and I found myself forwarding pre-approved deals (off the CFE) to the investor it was designated for. As long as there was a PDF (for the biz plan) and an Excel file (for the CFE), it got forwarded.
Here's the problem with sending the listing agents OM: it has the listing agent and brokerage firm's contact information ALL OVER the OM. Furthermore, it can't possibly include details about the exit strategy including the deal being a buy-and-hold property for 3 to 5 years...or any information about the proposed equity splity (67/33) and how much the investor partner would stand to make in both equity and cash flow over the life of the deal.
So...ALL of those deals that included the OM were rejected right off the bat. This is what happens when my students get lazy. They choose to lazily use the hard work of the listing agent and end up getting nothing in the end because they didn't at least want to take the time to print off then retype the OM in a NEW document while implementing the student's unique information NEEDED to execute the deal.
Oh well...can't retrain stupid.
2) It became clear in some of the deals that the student (but more so probably the seller or listing agent) were lying about the numbers of the property. While I do a damn good job weeding through CFEs and pretty much know whether the expense ratio is way off BEFORE submitting anything to my investor partner, sometimes I can't catch everything before it weasels its way through the crack.
Here's what I mean: you can't realistically have a 40-unit apartment building located in Chicago that has an expense ratio of 25%. Not possible. A building of that size located in a cold climate is going to cost about 55% (minimum) to operate. That's 55% of the Gross Operating Income (GOI). So, if the GOI (annually) is $100,000, it'll cost $55,000 of that $100,000 to operate that property. Yet I kept getting CFEs showing some super low Gross Operating Expense (GOE) number and I'd laugh like..."As if this property can operate at a MUCH LOWER cost than every other property of that size in the SAME area!"
A lot of deals did get rejected based on this.
Listen, it's NOT CHEAP to do due diligence. Furthermore, when you're dealing with people like me and my investor partners, we know what it costs to operate a multifamily property whether it's an apartment building or mobile home park and whether it's in Georgia or Missouri. So...trying to slide a deal in at a much lowerGOE than what's realistically possible or probable to operate that property isn't going to fly. You're not getting anywhere by trying to cheat the system because we already know what the rules are in this business. It's like telling a pilot of an aircraft who has been flying for decades that his Boeing 747 can fly 900 miles an hour. He'll freaking laugh in your face. Not possible.
So, when you or the listing agent (or even the seller) is blatantly lying about how much it costs (itemized) to operate a property and we look at it knowing that it's not possible, you're expecting us to then participate in the costly endeavor of doing due diligence. This is when the lies are uncovered. After we've spent thousands of dollars doing forensic accounting on the docs given up by the seller, we suddenly realize (GASP!) that we were right all along! In the initial income/expense sheet seller "forgot" to including the sewage bill and "forgot" to include additional marketing costs and "forgot" to include the phone bill...on and on and on.
When you're the one willing to throw good money away like that, you realize that it's better to be smart on the front-end and simply KNOW (based on experience) what each type/size building costs to operate in various parts of the country. Again, this is based on vast experience developed over several years and not something we are simply trying to invent to reject your deal. (Trust me; these investors WANTyour deals if they're as profitable as you say they are!)
3) CAP rate was too low on a lot of rejected deals. Some students tried to slip in deals that were at a 7% or 8% CAP when the instructions CLEARLY STATED that the CAP had to be at or above 9%. No exceptions.
So, it went back to chiseling expenses off, hoping no one would notice, to get the CAP rate up there (in some cases) while other deals were just sent in at a CAP below the 9%.
Again, this goes back to the expense ratio. If the expense ratio was pushed down to 25% to push the CAP rate over 9% then...that's a really easy scam for us to ferret out. Others did a much more complicated job in boosting the CAP including eliminating all management costs or removing required expenses such as snow removal (in colder climates) or landscaping. I guess we were supposed to believe that the student was going to perform these services in lieu of a professional service.
While I'm all for saving money, it has to be realistic. We investors have to be able to know that if we need to sell the property one day, we can show these numbers (including management, landscaping, snow removal, etc.) to another investor who may not want to provide these services on his or her own.
Additionally, some lenders want to see a minimum of a 7% allocation off the GOI for management costs to ensure that a management service is affordable. A lender also wants to see replacement costs (which is a mandatory 2.5% of the GOI) to ensure that you'll have enough money when things break down and go wrong with the property. Many students removed these essential costs as well, hoping we wouldn't notice.
Here's the bottom line:
I'm assuming that most of you are in this real estate game to eventually acquire passive income properties for yourself so that you can enjoy a lifetime of financial freedom. If you don't know certain things because you're new at this -- such as how much it costs (GOE) of your gross annual rental receipts from tenants (GOE) in your particular city/state area that you are choosing to invest -- LEARN this information. There's no excuse as to why you can't take a weekend and simply LEARN the business because it's not that hard, folks. It really isn't!
So...back to what I was talking about earlier. The $6.2 million in deals. Remember, we had $7 million in down payment money to work with which leverages us around $25,000,000 to $30,000,000 depending on down payment size. Most residential-commercial buildings require a 20% down payment while MHPs require 30% to 35%.
And we're nowhere near $25,000,000 to $30,000,000 in property deals.
Based on the reports I've received from my investors on the deals that have been submitted, we're not going to hit our mark as we had hoped.
Looks like I'll have to make an offering at my next Detroit event to fill in the gaps on these deals. This is NOT what I wanted to do. The same deal will apply, however. Those who attend the event can participate. Everyone else...no can do.
Many of you know that I'm a feng shui believer. And for those of you who have NO CLUE about feng shui, I'll give you the one-second explanation: it's an Asian technique to "refocus" energy in your house and work space to make significant changes in your life.
I know...sounds a little "hokey pokey." At least that's what I thought before I became a huge believer by seeing the things feng shui have done for my life.
I've told the story in a couple of my seminar events in years past. About 15 years ago I had a lawsuit that tore my entire personal and professional life apart...down to losing absolutely everything I had.
Me and my 2nd husband (at the time) ended up moving into a rental house that was (and still is) owned by his mother. She allowed us to move in without paying her any rent until we got our sh** together.
Now I'll admit. All I focused on was my prosperity corner. I didn't care about anything else at that time. I followed the suggestions by first cleaning up the space. That corner happened to be the master bedroom closet which was a disorganized disaster. I thoroughly cleaned out and organized the space then added purple (construction paper) in that corner. (Purple is a very powerful prosperity color next to red and gold.)
I went to Michael's and bought a wooden treasure chest that I painted purple then glued a ton of jewels inside; the book suggests putting things in the prosperity corner that represent wealth and a treasure chest came to mind. (I still have that same treasure chest in my prosperity corner as we speak. It's now 15 years old...cute little thing.)
Next, I bought something called Abundance Oilby Young Living. (Available at Amazon.com.) I put this on a small Buddha that I put in my corner.
And that was it.
I didn't even put in a desk fountain (which I should have done to magnify the results much quicker) at this point.
During that time, my future was pretty bleak and hopeless.
Fast forward one year from that date...I had a successful multi-million-dollar company and was building a custom home with a pool from the ground up.
It happened so fast but yet "naturally gradual," if that makes sense. It wasn't like I bought a lotto ticket and was an overnight millionaire but the opportunities came and came and came some more! Before I knew it, I was back on top!
Now, here's what feng shui WON'T do for you. It won't make the money for you. It won't take any action for you. But it WILL allow opportunities to come through. It will give you ideas that you never had before. It'll send magic your way. It's up to you on how you follow through. It's up to you to put some type of action plan into place because it'll do nothing for you if you won't unglue your ass from the couch.
So...a couple of weeks ago I was starting to feel stuck with a couple of career/business decisions. Plus business seemed a little too slow for my liking. So, I amped up my prosperity corners.
At the office, I have a fountain that runs 24/7 in my prosperity corner. I put loads of the Abundance Oil in the fountain over the course of a couple days.
At home, I have my master bathroom in my prosperity corner (upstairs). And this sucks. The worst thing you could ever have in your property corner is a toilet. I don't exactly have a toilet but I have a bathtub. When I moved into my house, I painted the tub plug red and I keep it plugged all the time when the tub is not in use. This has helped keep the energy from being sucked down the tubes. Literally.
But I have 2 sinks that are next to the tub and I keep those open. This apparently was presenting a problem in my prosperity. Not only was business slow but my expenses were increasing for some reason.
So...I bought these rocks. That's right. Medium-sized pebble rocks of 2 colors: white/clear and purple. I put these rocks in each sink, sitting on the stopper in each one. And I added a feng shui mirror to sit on the side of the bathtub to push the energy to the ceiling instead of letting it fall to the bottom of the tub.
That's all I did.
Within 2 weeks my business has quadrupled with NO additional effort on my part.
So, when I tell you this stuff works...it means THIS STUFF WORKS even if it sounds "hokey pokey" or weird.
Trust me. When I first started with this, I felt weird. I felt stupid putting purple construction paper in my cleaned-out closet. I felt lame painting a treasure chest purple and gluing jewels all over it. But I gave it a chance. And it worked.
I recommend that you at least put a small fountain in your prosperity corner in your home and in your office. That corner is located to the far back left of where your front door is. So when standing at your front door, imagine where the far back left corner of your house is. That's your prosperity corner. And if you have 2 stories, you have 2 prosperity corners to contend with.
When I've recommended that students use this technique, they've been shocked at how magical that it works.
But there's another part to this. You can't just sit on your ass and do nothing. You have to implement some type of plan or strategy so that the magic can happen for you.
If you must know, I'm playing hooky for a week so I'm not in the office. I'm actually in the Caribbean right now. But I can't help but to check my emails every day that I'm gone. And I just got an email from my investor partner stating that they just closed on a $4.85 million deal with one of my students.
Yaaahhhhh!!
So...congrats to my students (it was a husband/wife team) and my investor for making this amazing deal happen. It was a beautiful deal...a once-in-a-lifetime pocket listing that was found by my students who put the time and effort into doing a mailing campaign to find it. This deal will net my students' $8,560 per month in their pockets for their partnership percentage. Not bad!
Between some of the overflow from last year's Detroit event and the deals that came in from this year's Vegas event, in this round we now have 6 deals under contract, 1 that just closed, and there will be another 22 to 25 that will go under contract in the next 30 days to come. Out of 254 deals that came in, 121 were sent over to my investors with complete CFEs and mini biz plans. So...we'll see how things play out in the weeks to come. I'll keep you posted.
I have to admit, I'm exhausted. (Hence the vacation I'm on right now...and my LAST get-away until mid-December. Poor me.) Doing partnership deals...well, sucks. Really and truly. I hate it just because of the amount of work it entails.
Truth be told, I have something that's been on the table with one of my investor partners for a short while that could make a few of my students very wealthy. But I'm being selfish. I don't want to do the work. I'm burned out.
This is part of the reason for my vacation right now. I'm doing some well-needed soul-searching to find out if I want to continue dealing with the frustrating and sometimes disturbing elements of working with my students...or not.
In the meantime, I am committing to at least one more event. This 2-day seminar is coming up in Detroit on October 23rd & 24th and it's ALL ABOUT Aggressive Income!
Powerful stuff. Stuff that can make you very wealthy in a very short period of time.
And stuff I've never presented on before!
My early-bird rate is ending soon. I'm offering an opportunity for you to be able to lock in that early-bird registration rate with a small $100 hold deposit.
But, even better, I'm giving up a mind-blowing bonus that is worth $197 by itself. And you'll get it shipped to you without paying a dime for it once you put down your $100 hold deposit for the upcoming Detroit event!
What is this bonus?
It'll give you a glimpse into the last 2 real estate investing opportunities left that happen to be about Aggressive Real Estate Investing Strategies. This set includes a heavy-duty mind-blowing report, a video, and a complete audio seminar that only a handful of my students have been able to listen to. And it tells you all about the real estate investing trends in 2015 and in the years to come including what to expect and, most importantly, how to profit hand over fist.
I'm in a bad mood. I'll just come right out and say it. No need to candy-coat anything.
Over the past week I've been getting emails from a whiny, bitchy, complaining GUY in one of my mentorship groups. I seem to be attracting the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the male species lately and I think it's time I take cover in a cave for awhile 'til this madness passes.
Not that these stupid idiots will disappear or anything (unfortunately) but at least it'll give me time to collect some mental, physical and psychological artillery to continue with this never-ending battle.
It seems that this one thorn-in-my-side mentorship group student who will remain nameless not only is a complete dummy but seriously wants to create his own obstacles in life...out of nothing. In fact, the majority of the time when people bring "problems" or "challenges" to me, it's nothing more than something they created out of thin air as a complete figment of their imagination.
Such as this dope in my mentorship group...
First of all, in addition to complaining about every single assignment, finding some type of fault in it (when the "fault" is his laziness and lack of desire to complete such assignments), and creating reasons as to why he can't or shouldn't do his assignments (because apparently he's PMS-ing and needs a tampon stuffed up his ass)...it seems that he is insistent on inventing phantom reasons as to why life needs to be difficult.
For example, he keeps telling me that a "double-close" is illegal. Hmmmm...I've indicated SEVERAL TIMES that a "double-close" is simply SLANG for something that's REALLY CALLED a "back-to-back" close. This means that you buy the property then resell it to someone else within a day or so. Nothing illegal about buying and reselling a property unless you're in a state like Texas that requires you to hang onto your newly purchased property for a year before reselling it. Otherwise, there is NO LAW AGAINST buying and then reselling your property to someone else.
It would seem that he's too busy doing all this "online research" finding all the "facts" through online bloggers (who know pretty much nothing about nothing anyway) instead of being proactive in the business of investing as he SHOULD be.
Next, he's claiming that doing letter campaigns by U.S. Mail is considered SPAM and that's illegal too!
Holy shit! Now the guy is claiming that mailing letters to people is SPAM. Hate to break it to you, pal, but ANTI-CAN SPAM laws apply to EMAILONLY, dummy. Has nothing to do with buying mailing lists and mailing a letter to a property owner. If this was the case, every catalog company sending catalogs to people from a mailing list would be cited by the FTC for violating SPAM laws and every mail order business would be bankrupt by now.
Again, spending a lot of time chasing his tail doing hours and hours of meaningless and baseless online "research" (INSTEAD of doing his mentorship group assignments) just to fall into the throes of a blogger website which, again, is written by a know-nothing "writer" who makes money entrapping people into his/her site just to make money on Google Adsense. So, they essentially write about ANYTHING just to attract traffic and many of these blog sites have very inaccurate information. And for those who think they're doing "studious smart research" by doing "online research," I'm telling you now that at least 75% of the stuff you'll read online is wrong, wrong, WRONG!
So, stop doing it! Stop getting your "facts" online because they aren'tfacts!!
This is PROOF that people simply create their own obstacles...obstacles that simply AREN'TTHERE TO BEGIN WITH.
Here are a few more examples of people who I've recently dealt with in the past couple of weeks who simply want to create obstacles that were never there, clearly designating their "path to failure" completely by their own doing and unnecessarily at that!!
1) I was trying to put in an ALL CASH offer on a property deal. I had the offer in hand, legit proof of funds by showing my bank statements, and I wanted to offer 95% of what the asking price was and...well, the listing agent simply said that she'd "prefer not to deal with an out of state investor" and stopped returning my phone calls. Huh? Who gives a shit if I'm from Mars? It was an EASY COMMISSION for her, she'd get the entire commission without a split with a buyer's agent because she was just dealing with me direct, and all she had to do was take my email (with POF and LOI attached) and forward it to the seller without getting off her lazy ass! And she refused to do it. Again, creating obstacles that simply aren't there. She lost about $40,000 on that deal because of creating "issues" that only existed in her pea-brain mind.
2) I'm in the process of booking a special professional for an event I want to do in the first quarter of 2016. It's a very unique event that I've never done before so I took the time out to put my feelers out for an additional professional on top of the one I already have secured just to have a "back up" in case I need it. I let her know that it was a corporate event that that she'd stand to make thousands of dollars off it. When she found out that I'd have at least 25 Platinum VIPs (that she'd have to consult with), she decidedly told me that she was booked. Mind you, I never told herwhen the event was but that it would be 10 months out. Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to make a minimum of $5,000 on the event, she decided that she was "busy" instead. Easy money that came to her...yet she created a reason as to why she didn't want it. I guess she's happy making $50 here and $100 there, struggling her ass off with each one of these "hits" when they come instead of getting the motherload dropped in her lap. Hey, some people just can't stand getting an easy opportunity like that so they have to create invisible obstacles.
3) I have a handyman who bitches and complains about his boss who is a general contractor. So, I give him side jobs here and there just to help bolster his side business. I gave him a very simple job that's right in his wheelhouse: landscaping. Easy job. Just dig some holes and drop some bushes in here and there. He quoted me almost $2,000. Fine. I didn't argue. I'll pay it. Seems kind of high but I'm trying to help the guy out. So...what did he do? He fell off the face of the earth. Week after week after week -- for 6 freaking weeks now -- I've been waiting for him to plant the bushes. No call no show. (And no, I didn't pay him.) Next time he wants to bitch about his boss, I'll tell him he's lucky he's got a job and he clearly needs the structure of an asshole telling him what to do all day because it's evident that he doesn't have the self-starter ability to get things done on his own. Again, creating his own obstacles to success.
Are you blocking your own success in some way by inventing reasons for failure??
I hope to hell that you're not. Opportunity is everywhere now. The economy is taking off like gang-busters and, like Woody Allen says, "Eighty percent of success is showing up!"
It's amazing because every once in awhile a student actually listens to me.
I did this presentation at my Vegas event in May where I was talking about creating new opportunities in 2015 and beyond because...well, a lot of opportunities to get properties that are 95% or 100% occupied are gone. No inventory left. Competing with a lot of investors, many of which have cash of 20% to 25% down. Many have management resumes longer than your arm with a portfolio of properties to go with it. Many have personal credit FICOs of 800 or above with stellar business credit to boot.
The challenge list gets longer and longer as one who "dreams" about becoming a real estate investor still stays glued to the couch continuing to dream...
Although lately I can't complain. In the past 2 years, I've had more student success stories than the prior 10 years before, combined. So I must be doing something right.
But I have to point out this one student who sent me this email yesterday about a deal he did based on a rather short (and definitely not comprehensive) presentation I did on "second-hand" foreclosure investing this past May:
"OK, I did what you said to do in Vegas when you were talking about 2nd hand REOs. I found a wholesaler in Ohio with a list like the one that you let us download off your website and I was about to buy a 4-unit vacant building that needed a lot of work but it was listed for only $19,900. I offered $9,000 and they took it, like right away! I don't think my offer was in for more than 2 hours before they got back to me. I have business credit that I've been building since 2013 so I basically bought the property with a credit card convenience check. I know. you tell us not to do that because of the fees but they wanted to close in a week and I didn't want to waste any time. i wrote the check and put it right into escrow, pretty easy. Closing took a week and then the building was mine so I found some guys through a handyman ad on Craigslist who helped me rehab each unit one by one, the total rehab cost was approx. $8,000 a unit, all on biz credit cards. After everything including a few misc. costs, I spend a total of $44,340 on the project including 'marketing' for the units. (I put a big yellow banner up in front of the place that said FIRST MONTHS RENT ONLY $1, the banner cost $120). I put the banner up while we were still working on the place so I was getting phone calls to my cell when we weren't even rent ready yet. By the time the place was ready, all 4 units were leased up inside 11 days then I put the property back up for sale with an agent for $119,900 as a 'turn key' investment like you said to do. An out of state investor (from California) ended up offering $109,000 and I took it. It just closed escrow on Monday and I got a check from escrow for $58,731.82 after all the fees and commissions. Total turn around time for the deal was 6 1/2 weeks. So I can testify to anyone that this stuff works. It really works. Anyone who says it doesn't is just lazy is all." ~A.J.
And this is from a student who didn't even attend the Vegas event. He bought the videos, watched them, took notes, and most importantly, kicked himself into action and did something with the knowledge he had just learned.
I try not to be hard on my students because I do realize that there is one huge obstacle to overcome, perhaps the most challenging obstacle of all and that is FEAR! Plain old fear and lack of confidence that you can pull this off.
This is why I give my students all the tools you could possibly need so that you can quickly see the fear melt away as you realize that I've made the playing fields even for everyone, even against those "experienced wealthy investors" who have cash down, credit up the yin-yang, and a portfolio of properties to use as both collateral (if needed) or to show experience with property.
In fact, I will go so far as to say this:
Many of my students who (a) have been following me for years, and (most importantly) (b) have actually read, listened to, and watched my presentations on everything including fixing/rebuilding personal credit (if needed), building business credit, and understanding my methodologies on real estate investing actually have more knowledge about this entire business and how it works than many of the investors (and commercial real estate agents) that you'll run into out there.
Case in point, I had a student of mine who went to [Nameless Real Estate Guru]'s seminar, ended up popping $35,000 for some "exclusive investment group," purchased a property, then came crying to me because the property was losing money. This student was incredibly smart (he's a doctor), has tons of money (is liquid about $2 million buck-er-oos), has a ton of collateral in other properties (including the medical building he owns) and was freaking DUPED by a so-called real estate investing "expert" (AKA "used-car-salesman-now-real-estate-"guru"). So he came to me last year to figure out what to do with the property.
My response: You have to sell it and start over. This time...use a CFE (Cash Flow Evaluator) BEFORE considering any property. "CFE...what's that?" was his response.
All of this could have been avoided by understanding some basics and NOT by throwing $35,000 into the lap of some wanna-be real estate "guru" who herded this doctor (and probably hundreds of others) into losing deals because this "guru" simply doesn't give a shit about you or anyone else he is "teaching." He only cares about the money he can extract from your credit cards.
Once this doctor learned how to use the CFE, he was kicking himself on how a small spreadsheet tool could have saved him such a huge loss. I told him that you can't cry over spilled milk. The best remedy to loss is to quickly pick yourself up and start over on another property or project while chalking the past off as a learning experience.
You, my friend, know a lot more than you think. You have enough knowledge to be able to have success as a real estate investor.
But maybe you're missing a few things. Here they are:
1) The cash.
2) The latest ground-breaking strategy for real estate investing in 2015.
3) The ability to show sellers that you HAVE the cash for the deals.
