Yesterday I stopped at my local donut shop at the bottom of the hill from where I live to get a 1/2 dozen donuts and iced coffee with the secret Asian ingredients they put in there to make me feel like I'm on speed all day.
As I come out of the donut shop juggling my coffee, box of donuts and 2 Power Bars, I noticed that this big piece of shit 30-year-old beat up Chevy Suburban is parked so ridiculously close to my BMW that I couldn't realistically get myself and the armful of stuff into the car using the driver's side.
When the driver got out of his shit box, I said, "Could you have spared me just a little more room?"
He flew off the handle, saying..."What about saying 'good morning' or 'how ya doin'?" Then..."I'm right on my line." Then..."Hit me, take your best shot." All within seconds.
I said, "Have a nice day, sir." And I proceeded to start ignoring him.
He instantly went into a rant about how I'm a loser and a c*** and a bitch and anything else he could think of. None of that bothers me. What bothers me (about myself mostly) is that I had no real fear and I didn't care. Having been in verbally (and even physically) abusive relationships, nothing anyone says to me as a real effect which is probably not a good thing.
But here's what I saw in this guy.
He's clearly over the hill in age, clearly an overweight dumpy white guy wearing a holey Dodger sweatshirt and a dirty baseball cap, driving a total shit box of a car that hadn't seen a car wash in several years, and...clearly purposely parked his shit box so close to me that he was aiming for a confrontation with anybody so that he could take his unconscious anger out on some unsuspecting sucker.
I think he was hoping for a man to confront him. Probably a high-power exec in a suit driving the BMW so he could pick a fight by purposely giving me 2 inches on the driver's side to get in. I think he was somewhat disappointed that it was a chick (me) that owned the car.
He was still hoping for a fight which even further clearly identifies him as the loser that he is.
But the fight wasn't about me. It was about him the whole time, even before he knew who he was subconsciously picking the fight with. Especially when he saw how old I was.
Here he was feeling like the complete washed up failure that he is and wanting to take it out on someone.
Since it wasn't a man that he could start swinging at (and would probably lie saying that the "other guy" swung first), he probably figured he could still bait me into a fight as a second-best option.
Except that I'm not going to stand there swinging at a fat ass guy in a parking lot over a parking space or anything else for that matter.
Because of this, he felt justified in wanting to keep calling me names. I could see that he was getting agitated to the point of breaking out into a messy and gross sweat while he was shaking like a leaf, adrenaline pumping heavily through his veins.
I made it clear that he was just a fat, over-the-hill dumpy jealous loser driving a big piece of shit who needed a new wardrobe and to take a hike. (Hey, there's only so much verbal abuse I was willing to take.)
But just as any losing fight -- verbal or otherwise -- gets old...
There's only so much "F*** you!"
"No, f*** you!"
"No, f*** you!"
...that you can do back and forth before, well...it becomes a total waste of time.
Then he had to call me a fat ass, as I was getting into my car. Hmmm...the sliver of space he gave me between my car door and his POS tank he was driving wouldn't allow anyone other than Twiggy (only those of you 40 and over will know who that is) or someone else just as thin to get in. So, I guess I can't be that much of a fat ass.
What he didn't realize was that he was a fraction of an instant away from getting seriously hurt or dying. As he got closer and closer to my window after I got into my car, even attempting to reach in the driver's side, he didn't know what I was grabbing for...if you know what I mean. Any further of a reach in where I would have felt my life in danger, it would have been over. Not for me, but for him. (No waste of life as I can tell.)
And it would have been completely justifiable. A 6-foot 300 lb.+ guy coming at me through my window in a parking lot...and I'm barely 5'8" and around 160 lbs. trying to get away from the situation by backing out.
Case in point, you never knowwho has what as far as weapons go so...neverassumeanything; never assume that the upper scale housewife-looking chick driving in a nice car in a nice neighborhood is just a dumb blonde who will back down when in danger. She just may have an AK-47 in the backseat, waiting to blow someone's head off.
The real point here is this: I've found that losers will easily get agitated and just plain pissed off at the success of others, as if it's some type of "stroke of luck" that we got to where we are...and they just missed the boat by a stroke of "bad" luck. They don't realize that people like us work our asses off to get what we have and there is no "luck" to speak of. When dealing with loose cannons like this, it's evident that they don't know (unfortunately) that THEYTHEMSELVES are to blame for their shitty circumstances in life and it has NOTHING to do with anyone else around them.
Of course, they'd never admit to something so mind-blowing because (GASP!) they'd have to actually take personal responsibility for being the grotesque pitiful losers that, again, THEY THEMSELVES createdfor themselves.
It's just easier to blame the government, rich people, their parents, reality TV, rap music or anything else that makes just as little sense to blame for their lack of success and wealth.
Many of these less-than-savory characters carry anger and hatred for (starting with) themselves and then it parlays into interactions with everyone they meet. They have a chip on their shoulder, lash out whenever they can as only one means of perceived "control," and never take ANY responsibility for anything in their lives. It's much easier to claim that it's someone else's fault that to do anything about their lives.
Who the hell wants to live like that?
Yes, it's a crappy reality check to look around you and realize that you created everything in your life from your house, your car(s), your relationships, etc.
But it doesn't have to be a "crappy" reality check. It can be an "exciting" reality check instead.
Since you created THIS...what about simply creating something completely DIFFERENT then??
Good news: You can "wake up" out of your undesirable circumstances or situation(s) any time you want and create something different. And there's no limit on what you can create for yourself once you open your mind and have the willingness to take action to get your dream life.
I've talked about my friend Ruth before. She has breast cancer. Come to find out, it's spreading rapidly through her lungs. She only has a few months left to live, if that.
The last time I saw Ruth was about a month ago. It was the second to the last week of school and I was waiting for my daughter to come out of school. Ruth was there waiting for her son who is in my daughter's same grade. She was winded, could barely breathe, and finally had to sit down because she looked like she was about to pass out.
The first thing I thought of was my cat Scrappy.
Scrappy had this small tumor on her belly. It looked like a swollen nipple. The dummy of a vet I took her to decided to squeeze the reddish-purple pimple looking thing, making my poor cat scream and squirm until I told the idiot to stop it.
Apparently it burst the tumor that was inside of her because within mere days, Scrappy couldn't breathe anymore. She was winded and miserable.
I put her to sleep the week after and never took another animal to that moron of a vet ever again.
Ruth reminded me of Scrappy which I probably shouldn't admit to because I know it sounds bad. But that's the first thing I thought of...the cancer was spreading. And fast.
Then Ruth's husband emailed me and told me that Ruth was in the hospital but he still wanted to bring his 2 kids to my daughter's recent birthday party. He had told me that the cancer was spreading throughout her lungs.
Unfortunately...I already knew that.
I asked to see her in the hospital which would be a grueling 3-hour round trip but I didn't care. However, before I knew it, she was home and I'm patiently waiting for a day when the chemo doesn't knock her so hard on her ass that I can visit with her for even a few minutes.
Ruth is barely a couple of years older than I am and she's quickly dying. From what I've learned, breast cancer is much more aggressive in younger patients. And that sucks. She has a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old.
Sometimes life just f****** sucks!
I knew the moment that Ruth started dying. She was trying to get into a clinical trial earlier this year...since about February or March. It was to take place in Phoenix. She even drove all the way out there in May, just for the doctors to tell her that she didn't qualify for the trial because her cancer had already metastasized...not once but twice.
When she told me, I could see that the last bit of hope she hung onto had left. And I knew how dangerous that was because I remember when it happened to my mom and when they told her the cancer in her brain had doubled in size only 6 weeks after they tried to remove it. My mom went from functioning and full of hope to dead only 2 months later.
I saw that same look in Ruth. And it was only a few weeks after that when I noticed that she couldn't breathe anymore.
When you lose hope, it's over. Hope is sometimes the only thing that can hold you together.
I started to think about something. What if it were me? What if I had only a few months left to live? What would I be doing? What would I be thinking about?
Weirdly enough, I thought about my books. I order A LOT of books every month, mostly on business, marketing, and investing. For some reason I thought, "I guess I'd stop ordering and reading those business types of books because...I guess I wouldn't need to know anything else about business or investing."
I'd close down my office immediately and I would completely stop working in my final months. Why bust my ass in a salt mine when the final days of my life are ticking away?
I'd certainly get my affairs in order to make sure my daughter would get everything. I'd dump much more into her six-figure college education fund to ensure that she wouldn't piss any money away without at least giving herself a reasonable chance in life. After all, her dad would probably convince her to blow most of the money because of the pathetic loser that he is.
I'd type my ass off and write a memoir to the best of my collection but it would be different. It would mostly be a manual to be successful mixed with my own personal stories and experiences. I'd do this for my daughter mostly and, if I had time, I'd have it mainstream published for others to benefit from.
I think I'd meditate more and get a massage daily until I die. Maybe I'd take my daughter for a 2-month trip throughout Europe even though I hate traveling. I'd want to give her the best final memories possible.
And that's it. That literally would be it for me. There would be nothing more to do, right?
Shouldn't we all be living like we're dying right now? Have you created the life for yourself to enable yourself to live like you want to? To give yourself more options? To make you happy while you're here, alive and kicking?
Because if not, you need to sit your ass down and seriously start thinking about what you can do to live a better life.
If you're not happy with your work, fix it. You have options.
If you're not happy with money, fix it. There are tons of opportunities to make more money.
If you're not happy with your relationships, fix it. Kick people to the curb, be a nicer person, whatever you need to do. Stop settling.
It's very simple, folks. If you don't like something, fix it. Change it. Do something different. It's no harder than that.
Now, I can't help you with relationships, as everyone knows that this is my weak point.
It never ceases to amaze me on how stupid some of the emails I receive from some of my students.
So...after I sent my email out about how I'm abandoning the Detroit area for good (in reference to property/real estate deals), I get a bullsh** email from one of my students who started following me back in 2001/2002...a long freaking time!
And what does he say exactly?
Something that makes very little sense to those of us with actual brain cells in our heads...
He says, in a nutshell, that I basically deserved taking a loss by being in Detroit because I must be "greedy" by having been there in the first place.
Huh??
First of all, I didn't take ANY kind of loss. In fact, I made a ton of money in that market.
Second of all, like everyone else who wanted to see one of America's greatest cities come back to life, so did I. Detroit was one of our nation's great cities and, believe it or not, was actually one of the most affluent cities in our country at one time. If you've ever been to Detroit, even recently, you'd see the most amazing architecture in all of America since it is the largest surviving collection of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century architecture.
In fact, it's the last city in America left with such an incredible and large array of Neo-Classical, Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Gothic, Art Deco, and Italian Renaissance (among many other types) of architecture left standing.
Having been in real estate as long as I have, one of my weaknesses is seeing a decrepit building and wanting to return it to its former glory, especially a building that is so beautifully designed and built. After all, what a waste it is to see these buildings fall apart and remain standing -- barely -- without any hope of every being restored?! It's like letting all of the hard work of our long-gone ancestors be pissed away in vein.
It should be a crime, really. This is history. Our history. American history. And it's almost like letting items in a museum be exposed to the elements, ripped apart by local citizens, burned down by bored and unproductive idiots...what a shame! A crying shame really.
So, that's what I saw in Detroit. I saw its former glory and I wanted to do my part to help restore it. This is no different than taking a broken down, oxidized Model T Ford and wanting to restore it. It's about preserving the past and, at the same time, trying to pave a way to a better future.
But I guess that makes me greedy. Well, that's according to ONE Numb Skull anyway.
Forget about the fact that I took on a HUGE risk, even brazenly and blatantly ignoring one of my base cardinal real estate investing rules (of never investing in a city of population decline) so that I could make an attempt to make a difference in some small way. I, like the other millionaires and billionaires investing in Detroit, fantasized about helping to bring a city considered beyond the point of return back onto its feet and even into a state of thriving as it once was back in its heyday.
But, according to Numb Skull, I guess I'm just greedy because I was trying to help make this city a better place for its citizens and for our nation as a whole.
Oh, and by the way, this highly judgmental Numb Skull Dinosaur (who is just too mentally outdated to understand that maybe some people want to do something to help better society) hasn't done a freaking thing himself to (a) create nice yet affordable housing for lower class citizens, (b) done anything to help anyone at all, including himself it seems, and (c) hasn't even purchased a tiny bit of real estate since he's been a student of mine...for fourteen f****** years now!!
Please! Tell me now...who is being greedy? If you're not helping, you're hurting. If you're not contributing to society then you're wasting the resources simply by breathing and drinking all the water.
To top it all off, I get an email from another equally as mentally challenged student who calls me a "drug dealer" because I have a company that sells supplements.
Hmmm...
If I really was a drug dealer, I wouldn't have an "open" email inbox to receive his bullsh** emails to begin with. I'd be running Pfizer instead, making $10 million a year not including annual multi-million-dollar bonuses and stock options. And I wouldn't be dealing with the likes of him on any level. My secretary's assistant's secretary wouldn't even be dealing with him.
Strangely enough, I stopped at the store on my way home from the office yesterday to find that, not one but TWO greasy unsightly loser-types in total shit-box cars that were circling my Lincoln Navigator...probably looking for their crack dealer in the grocery store parking lot. After a few double-takes, I think they quickly realized that I wasn't holding any dope between reading my really lame vanity plate and/or seeing my daughter in her booster seat.
Maybe it's time I move. Seems like the upper-class neighborhoods are getting just as dicey as some seedy areas of Detroit.
Love the irony, don't you? ;-)
Speaking of irony, I have my last event for the year taking place in October...in Detroit. It's an Underground Secret Event and it's all about Aggressive Income Strategies. Day One is about non-real estate related money-making strategies. Day Two is about real estate related strategies.
And this will be my last real estate event for at least one year...if not longer because, well people, I'm freaking sick of talking about real estate AND because there's nothing else after October that I'll be able to talk about. You're either in...or it'll be too late. Very simple.
I hope you survived the long holiday weekend. If not, I suppose you wouldn't be reading this right now.
Yesterday I found myself checking emails, probably out of sheer boredom. There's only so much "having fun" one can do before a Type A-er like myself must feel a little more productive than...relaxing. Or, in other words, doing nothing productive, which I find to be a waste of time.
I know, I know. It's critical to "do nothing" once in awhile but it's very difficult for me to make the correlation between relaxation for the purpose of healing the body/mind when I really feel that relaxation means being an idle, rusting body/mind instead.
So, while I was checking emails, I found a few excuse-makers that -- as you know by now -- is one of my worst pet peeves. But, there's always one that sets me over the edge...
This one was from my Internet Cash Flow Mentorship Group where a student of mine is hell-bent on finding a company to do product fulfillment or drop-shipping for his product so he can basically do "nothing" while letting loads of cash roll effortlessly into his bank account.
And within this same time frame, I answer another email from a different student in this same mentorship group who thought that the group would be about me doing all the work FOR him including setting up his website, finding products and naming them for him, and even operating his business while he, like the other fool, can do nothing while letting all the money pile up in his bank account.
So, by this stage of email-answering, I'm already pissed and my sugar-coated answer to that bunch of gibberish was to tell him: "I already do everything you're claiming including setting up websites, finding and naming products, and even operating the business...except that I'm doing it FOR myself and I'm the one making all the money because Iearnedit. There isn't going to be a single individual on this entire planet who will do all the work for you while you lazily reap the rewards for something you didn't earn and I don't recall anywhere in any of my online promotions for this mentorship that stated I'd do all the work for you while you sit around with your thumb up your ass."
Like I said, that was the candy-coated version.
Part of my plans for 2016 is to shed myself of those who are lazy do-nothings who lack the basic brain capacity for even the lowest threshold of required common sense needed for daily functioning. I can no longer stand dealing with the cross-section of students who how, I often wonder, are able to bumble their way through life by finding food for themselves, making a phone call, or even wiping their own asses when it's pretty clear that their moms didn't just drop them on their heads but rather violently threw them up against a brick wall on a daily basis, from ages 0 through 10.
And I'm done dealing with people like that so I have a very succinct and precise strategy in weeding these people out and it's happening soon.
In the meantime, I'm offering one last "free-for-all," if that's what you want to call it. This is the last time the barrier of entry will be the lowest it'll EVER be again for anyone who wants to discover my most cutting-edge and highly profitable strategies in both non-real estate and real estate Aggressive Income Strategies.
I'm also planning on taking a break from not only doing real estate events for at least a year but I really don't want to be doing Detroit events anymore. Even though statistically I've been able to "pack 'em in" on all my Detroit events, I've fallen out of favoring the city that I only recently thought had hope and promise...and now believe that it doesn't anymore.
It's kind of hard to keep showing up to a place that's crumbling at the seams during every moment of every day even though I still have strong personal and business connections with the joint.
This event is called the Underground Secret Event for good reason: I'll be talking about some very cutting-edge Aggressive Income Strategies that you can quickly use to gain massive amounts of prosperity in the shortest amount of time during a now-booming economy with much higher levels of competition than only a few short years ago.
And you can't compete or even hope to make money during a time when it becomes too competitive UNLESS you understand and implement the money-making strategies that even your competitors don't even know about!
I have a killer kick-ass pricing deal that will never be repeated, even for future events. This is the lowest pricing you'll ever see for any of my events ever again and it's ending very soon.
I'm trying to be excited about today, but I'm not. I just got 20 lbs. of potato and macaroni salad so...what's not to be excited about, right?
Except something has been bothering me lately and I can't quite put my finger on it.
My personal life seems to be okay. So, nothing is wrong there.
I think what's bothering me are some of the things that have been going on in our country recently. We're supposed to be the land of the brave, home of the free...yet we have gun-toting psychos blowing people away in schools and churches while there are so many "questionable" police shootings that it's hard to keep up with them day to day.
Is this what our founding fathers intended when they set this joint up for us? Is this what the Constitution was supposed to promote and encourage American people to do?
All of this "stuff" going on in our country is making me sad, especially since it's avoidable. It's making us look like a nation of mentally unstable psychopaths who believe we have no other outlet than causing harm to our fellow man in some way, shape or form.
On top of all that, I was reading in Bloomberg Businessweek about our crumbling infrastructures ranging from our bridges to our waterways crumbling apart by the day...with no money to fix any of it. Yet our defense budget remains a steadfast 55% of the gross revenues (through taxes) that the government bleeds from the American public. Many of these infrastructures are original, dating back 70+ years when everyone knew they'd only last a maximum of a half-century before needing a major overhaul.
I was sitting outside last weekend in the hot tub and noticed this very new, very unusual military plane flying by. It looked like a black boomerang. Never seen anything like it before.
I wonder how much that cost us American taxpayers?
Meanwhile, the state of California is in a major drought, we claim we have no water, and almost monthly we have a water main break that creates an instant loss of millions of gallons of water because, well...we're still using freaking pipes built beneath our cities over 100 years ago. So...what the f*** do they expect? The pipes to last forever??
I wish our government would do better for us as a population but also...
We need to do better as a country and as an American people. And it starts with everyone of us. I know, it doesn't seem like each individual person can do anything. But maybe it's a simple as recycling or cleaning up your yard around your house...or hell, being nice to people when you're out in public. Is it so hard to ask the cashier at Walmart how her day is going? Is it so difficult to NOT want to shoot and kill someone just because you don't like the color of their skin, who they are marrying, or what religion they practice??
We are the laughing stock of the world as a country because of our ridiculous behavior as a people. We are killing each other in the most sordid ways each day. We have political leaders who refuse to believe in global warming and...Donald Trump running for president. Need I say more on why we're being laughed at?
But you...YOU, my dear friend. You have more control and more power than you think. Because if each and every one of us decided to be a better American and a better person for the benefit of making this a better country for ALL of us to be a part of then, you'll have done a lot for America.
Many of you know that I've been working in the Detroit real estate market for the past few years. I even gave up working in Atlanta in favor of the Detroit market. I, like many other investors, got caught up in the hoopla surrounding the possibilities of a once-great city that had since turned to rubble. I was sucked into the idea that we could turn this city back into something great.
Except...there was one big problem that I knew about but refused to acknowledge until just last week.
Without people, you can't possibly have a real estate market no matter which way you slice it.
Could I be the ONLY one out of the many millionaires and billionaires haphazardly throwing money into Detroit real estate to understand this basic concept?
My biggest complaint and offer of a solution (which I had hoped would have manifested by now) was that there needed to be a giant of a company that would come in and employ at least 200,000 people. This could have been (in my imagination, apparently) a huge Walmart distribution hub, an Amazon shipping distribution center, Boeing, or a combo of two or more of these sizable types of companies.
After all, a CEO of any large company seeking to expand into an area where they could get cheap real estate and endless amounts of willing workers could (or should) clearly see that Detroit is a kick-ass option. They could pick up a warehouse that would take up 4 city blocks for pennies on the dollar. They would be centrally located in the USA for perfect distribution placement.
So...what the f*** happened?? Where are these conglomerate companies and why didn't the set up shop in Detroit?
Well, I'm still hoping but I've since given up on the possibility due to some recent things I've come to understand and discover.
Detroit is a big union town, still remnant of the days of Jimmy Hoffa. And nobody setting up shop wants to deal with union rules and regulations. In fact, there have been a slew of companies who have picked up and left Detroit because they no longer could afford to pay $48 an hour to someone smoking cigarettes on the clock when they could go elsewhere and pay minimum wage for the same job title.
Don't believe me?
In 1950 there were just under 300,000 manufacturing jobs. Right now there is less than 27,000 manufacturing jobs. Between 2000 and 2010, just under 50% of the manufacturing jobs were lost in Michigan. Of course, Asia has taken over manufacturing because it's much more affordable to make things where there isn't the hardcore and stringent rules to have to follow to keep a company running...including paying someone a high hourly wage due to union requirements.
Union or not, Detroit isn't a palatable place to set up a business anyway. Even though in the 1960s Detroit used to have the highest income per capita in the entirenation (yes, that's a fact!), the state of their economy has fallen apart so far and so fast that it would take a huge insurmountable effort to get it back on track.
Crime is out of control and it's never going to get better considering that about half of Detroit's residents are functionally illiterate (and doesn't make for a good work force). (You kind of have to know how to read and write to be able to work somewhere.) This forces people into "extracurricular" activities to pay the rent and feed themselves (i.e. crime). Between this and the police force being cut by 40%, it's impossible to get a grip on the crime without the right amount of Detroit's finest being in place.
And I don't know about you but hanging out in a city that has 11 times the murder rate -- over that of New York City -- doesn't hold high on my list of places to go anymore.
Then they went bankrupt. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse.
But can all these millionaires and billionaires be wrong? After all, billionaire Sir Richard Branson is now investing in Detroit after recently pulling in Virgin Airlines at DTW (Detroit Wayne Metro International Airport).
Yes, I think they're all wrong now. And here's why...
I was in Michigan last week looking in on some deals (new and old) and it just hit me between the eyes (metaphorically). The disintegrating destruction that was once reasonably contained within the city of Detroit and in its immediate circumference of the city is now seeping into the suburbs.
Slowly but surely yet steady as an ox.
Last week, I noticed boarded up buildings that didn't exist before. Abandoned buildings. Broken windows. Things that didn't exist before in the Detroit suburbs where I'm used to frequenting.
Things that didn't even exist only last year when I was there in the summer.
This is when I knew quite suddenly and with great disappointment...things aren't getting better in the Detroit area as I once wanted to believe. They are getting worse. And faster than I thought.
Now...I should mention one thing: the city of Detroit does look like there are improvements. It's busy during the work week. Buildings are looking rehabbed and improved.
It looks like a replay of the city of Chicago. Chicago, once downtrodden, got a make-over. The criminal element was forced out...to the suburbs. Chicago looks fantastic now. It's reasonably safe and it's been given new life. But the suburbs took a beating for it.
Why can't Detroit be the same as Chicago?
Because there aren't any new people coming in. The population continues to decrease. It's not increasing.
Sorry millionaires and billionaires who are foolishly throwing money away into Detroit but unless you can somehow suck in a huge influx of a new population, you're not going to be able to do anything with all that real estate you own. People have to exist to rent apartments to. People have to exist to start a business to rent office space or a retail storefront.
You kind of have to have people in an area to keep all levels of the localized economy going. Without this one element that everyone seems to be overlooking, there is no freaking way in hell that Detroit (or any other city) can work. Period.
Now I may be dead wrong or that Hail Mary may come through at the last minute. Maybe these movers and shakers really do have something up their sleeves. Maybe they do have those super large conglomerate companies lined up to move into Detroit to employ hundreds of thousands of people to save the Detroit economy.
But somehow I doubt it otherwise these companies would have moved in already!
Sometimes you roll the dice and you lose. That's just a fact in life.
The good news is that I haven't lost anything because everything I've done was calculated in such a way that I'm smarter in the way I position myself these days. But now that I've decided to get out of the greater Detroit area, it's time to find greener pastures elsewhere. (And I've already decided where I'm going next!)
So...a rule of thumb that will now become a "Monica Main Blanket Real Estate Rule That Will ALWAYS Apply At All Times" and that is...if the population size is shrinking, don't invest there because you need people to make real estate investing work. No people = nobody to rent units to.
I did mention that you'd be bird-dogging for my investor partners who are actively looking for new deals as we speak, right? Oh wait! Maybe I forgot to mention that part.
I know I mentioned that I have a secret strategy that I use to make a lot more money off bird-dog deals that merely getting a 3% to 5% referral fee of the total purchase price of the property.
And that was from exactly 64 days worth of "work," if that's what you want to call it.
By the way, the entire deal was financed 100% including the rehab so...no money out of pocket.
Nice deal, don't you think?
Imagine doing only 1 per year? How about 2 or 3 per year?
How much would that change your current financial circumstances? I'll be it would change it a lot!
That's the good news. The bad news is that you'd be on the hook for paying a lot of taxes because we both know how greedy Uncle Sam is with their ridiculously high tax bracket for anyone making over $413,200. That puts you in the 39.6% tax bracket if you're single.
But, what if I told you that if you use a special "loophole," you wouldn't have to pay any taxes on it at all? And yes, it's completely 100% legal!!
If you haven't listened to this audio seminar, it's time to check it out. Today is the last day to act on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, especially if you're a dad. Dad's get an extra deal. Here's the link: http://www.monicamain.com/bird_dog_bonanza
Questions? Call my office between 9am and 5pm Pacific Time at 661-295-5050.
See you at the top!
Your mentor,
Monica Main
P.S. My super rare Monica Bucks offer is still going on between now and July 1st. Here's the link to claim yours: http://www.monicamain.com/monica_bucks
Okay, so I don't mean all dads, obviously. I just mean some...or a lot.
Some dad's aren't what they're all cracked up to be. However, some are kick-ass awesome!!
Many of you know that I don't have the best relationship with my own dad. I barely ever see the guy. In fact, the last time I saw him was a year ago. I see him about once a year. Perhaps part of it is my fault being that I'm a single parent while running 2 wildly successful businesses. I don't exactly have the time to drop everything to drive 2 hours south of me for a 1 hour luncheon with my pops.
I think many of us can name 1,000 things we swear should have been different in our childhoods that would make us a better person today. But recently I've been learning and practicing a concept called "one dharma." "Dharma" is basically cosmic order and it's been explained to me by many wise people that we are exactly where we're supposed to be in our lives and have experienced exactly what we were supposed to from Day One through right now. There are no mistakes in the universe.
Of course, this isn't always an easy pill to swallow when dealing with so many trials and tribulations as we move through our own pathways through life.
This has made me think of why I would have had to go through a relatively disconnected or non-existent life with family (or rather the lack thereof) only to realize that this was necessary in order for me to understand and come to know full self-reliance. And, since I have learned this hard and seemingly empty lesson, maybe it's time I got some peeps in my life that I can call friends and family? :-)
One most valuable lesson I learned from my dad (and he will always get full credit for this one) is my desire to be an entrepreneur and business owner for as long as I can remember. Unlike most parents who may immediately start brainwashing their children by making them believe that they'll be on the dire employment track for life (starting with school then going to college then getting that corporate job), I was never brainwashed in this way at all. My dad always instilled within me the importance of being your own boss because it affords one endless freedom, not only physically and mentally but financially as well.
Long, long before everyone (recently) discovered the Big Lie (as I call it) whereas you go to college, get a job, and retire with a pension and gold watch, my dad indicated on not so many levels that this type of structure could never last within our economy. I think he had a way of studying and fully comprehending the woes of economic cycles, particularly those of other countries that had much longer economic histories. Somehow he knew that this Big Lie wouldn't hold up forever as he constantly pressed the necessity of writing your own checks in life by having your own business.
And then, holy sh**, the Big Lie had been revealed and only the strongest of entrepreneurs and investors were left standing after the gigantic economic destruction quickly swept through not only the United States but the entire world. Nobody saw it coming but I was left standing.
My dad liked to give me these little tests for as long as I can remember. One such test was to read this:
OPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE
I, like most others, read "opportunity is nowhere" but he explained that you could (and should) read it as "opportunity is now here."
And that's how I read life from that point forward. Not only is opportunity now here but opportunity is ALWAYS here in many shapes and forms but ONLY if you know where and how to look for it.
So, I get to thank my most awesome dad for giving me the most important gift anyone could have ever given their kid: an endless mind to see and realize endless possibilities. From the moment I started reading, he would always say, "If you know how to read, there isn't anything you can't learn." And now that my daughter has started reading this past year, I now tell her the same thing.
I recently had a very lengthy conversation with one of my investor partners and we were talking about W. Clement Stone and how my investor partner became massively successful based on the teachings of the book The Success System That Never Fails. (If you didn't read this book, you should. It's less than $7 on Amazon right now!)
Two things that W. Clement Stone teaches that are life-changing:
1) Use OPM or other people's money to make yourself wealthy in business and investments.
2) Use successful people's knowledge by learning it and, most importantly, using it to get wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.
And the easiest way to learn successful people's knowledge is by reading and studying about what they do. So, Dad was right. There isn't anything you can't learn by simply knowing how to read.
For any of you who want to be wealthy, choose something that interests you (business, investing, etc.) then learn everything you can about it. Then, most importantly, actually fire some action into what you learn and keep at it until you get the results you're looking for.
Happy Father's Day to my own dad and to all you awesome dads out there! You are changing the future...one child at a time.
See you at the top!
Your mentor,
Monica Main
P.S. I have a Father's Day Blow Out where Dads get an extra discount on the new 2015 Bird Dogging Opportunity Cash Flow System. Click here now: http://www.monicamain.com/bird_dog_bonanza
A few weeks ago I had a student from the Vegas seminar make a 3% bird-dog fee off a $966,000 deal that closed with my investor partner. To be clear, I should mention that he was working on this deal for awhile, attended the Detroit event, and had this deal in the pipeline before he attended Vegas.
But that isn't the most exciting part (for me) in all this.
This $28,980 referral fee he made from bird-dogging the deal was the third deal he's done in the past 9 months. The first 2 deals had nothing to do with my investor partner since he simply found his own investors to bird-dog for.
Even more exciting (for me) is that this $28,980 fee was the lowest fee he'd earned from his 3 bird-dog deals he's done in the past 9 months. The first deal closed before the Detroit event this past November, making him a $56,000 fee. And the second deal closed right after the first of the year, earning him another $31,500 fee.
Yes, that's right. He made $116,480 in less than a year working -- I don't know -- probably a total of 50 hours on all 3 deals. (That's a guess. I'm certain that it's actually a lot less than that.) By the way, this is someone who claims he's "disabled" even though you'd never assume he is just by looking at him.
So...I'm fairly convinced that anyone can bird-dog and make money by simply finding properties and "selling" the opportunity to investors.
The biggest question people tend to ask is: "Why wouldn't these investors just go out and find these deals themselves?"
Answer: They do. But, it would take a full-time staff of at least 10 people for them to find and analyze every listed commercial MLS deal out there. This isn't including the deals that aren'tlisted in the MLS.
The key to true success as a property scout or bird-dog isn't looking at deals on Loopnet.com and throwing together a business plan, although it has been known to be that easy. To be ragingly successful as a property scout means that you have to see and sell an opportunity that isn't quite there yet. This could be focusing on under-performing properties and showing a prospective investor how easy it is to use a simple plan for basic cosmetic renovations coupled with quickly curing the vacancies.
But...
I don't actually do it that way myself. I never have!
I use a very special method for bird-dogging deals that is unique, effective, and much more profitable than getting a paltry 3% of the deal in the form of a referral fee.
And this will blow your freaking mind.
I can't explain it in all in this email so I suggest you click on this link for a short audio seminar and a detailed explanation on how you can make $100,000 to $500,000 on each deal instead! Go to this web page now: http://www.monicamain.com/bird_dog_bonanza
I've had some students end up completely changing their careers and their focus on the type of real estate investing they thought they initially wanted to do in favor for making these obscene amounts of money bird-dogging that I'm talking about.
About a month ago I had a friend of mine ask me, "What would you do if you had to start over?"
I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "Like if you lost everything. What would you do to start over?"
Without hesitation, I told him, "I'd start a home-based Internet business from scratch. The way I know how to do it, it would cost me $0 in start-up cost. I'd be up around $50,000 a month within 3 months."
Then I started to think about it. It really is that easy because I've done it and, many of you don't know, but I still make a fortune on the Internet. Most of you know me as a "real estate guru" (I hate that title, by the way). But I know probably more about other money-making strategies (including the Internet and direct mail marketing) than what I know about real estate investing.
Shocking admission?
I don't think so. I've been doing a variety of different entrepreneurial pursuits for 20 years and I've found that it takes more "mastery" to understand the success mechanics of mail order and Internet marketing than it does with real estate investing. Real estate is cut and dry. Find a property, buy it, manage it, and get a cash flow. And that's basically it.
However, other means of making money...well, that's an art form. And I'm really good at it.
The good news is that you can be good at it too because it's not hard AT ALL to get a low-cost, low-overhead, high profit business off the ground and profiting within a super short period of time.
In fact, many of you know that I've been thinking of making some changes with my business because of some of the stresses that I've taken on when getting an office/warehouse and a staff to go along with it. Many days I can deal with it. Some days, I feel like locking the front doors with a chain and lock, leaving a Post-It Note on the front door for my staff saying, "It's Over! Find Another Gig Elsewhere!!"
But I stick with it because I feel a level of commitment to both my students and my staff so I keep trucking.
But...
I keep my options open. I refuse to buy a commercial building for this business because that means I'm committing...forever. And I won't do that. I refuse to sign another lease on my office/warehouse unit. I just bargained with my landlord last week for him to accept a 6-month cash payment to just "add" 6 more months onto my lease because -- between you and me -- I'd love to shut this bitch down and I'm keeping that open as a possible option come January 31st, 2016 (when my "extended" lease expires).
Why don't I just do it already?
I explained a couple of reasons already. Personally, I think I'd go bonkers being at home all day without going "somewhere" each day. My fear of going mentally insane is probably the key factor in why I don't just give it up and take this home.
But if I did, I'd make so much more money cutting out all this overhead.
This is something YOU can do from the ground up. Keep it home based, keep it low cost, keep employees (on paper) out of the equation...and profit like a MAD DOG from the get-go!
And why do you need all this money?
Well, first, I'm assuming that you're not independently wealthy to the point where you don't need a job or business to pay your bills. So, you want to start bringing in this cash to quit whatever soul-sucking job is driving the very life out of you.
But even more importantly, you want this cash to start injecting it into long-term passive income real estate assets so that you can reach the goal of financial freedom in 3 years or less.
For you to do all this, I have an amazing offer for you. But first, I want you to listen to this audio seminar I've created for you by clicking on this link: http://www.monicamain.com/icf_deal
In the meantime, like me, maybe now is the time you can start evaluating what is and isn't working in your life. Now that you have a kick-ass and viable option presented to you to finally do something about it...my question to you would be: WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??
