Real Estate Investing

Finally. Something that has my full undivided attention.

I always thought real estate investing was something only people with money could afford to do.

For the passed 12 months I've been hearing radio spots about the 5 ways real estate investors make money. I mean its right there in the commercial.

• Cash Flow
• Equity Capture
• Market Appreciation
• Principle Pay Down
• Tax Advantage

I must have heard this a 1000 times on the radio.

But there is one thing stated in that commercial that stuck with me. They asks, "What would happen if you didn't go into work tomorrow, a week, a month, a year...How long would it take for you to lose everything that you worked so hard for in a fraction of the time it took you to get it?"

I was in my garage one weekend working on some yard signs for Halloween last year. I have a small radio always on in the garage to keep the cat company at night. Well, a real estate investor radio show came on and I was passively listening. They went through some numbers with a person who called in and my eyes were opened.

I couldn't get it out of my head.

I heard about the website and I decided to go sign up for their information packet by email.

I went through the material and videos as they came into my inbox over a 7 day period.

The next step was to get to a workshop. Well the holidays happened and I got busy as we all do. However, I subscribed to the podcast.

Anyways, I had made a note on my computer to get to one of the weekly workshops sometime in the month of January 2018.

I missed that goal by one day. I went to my first Real Estate Investor's Workshop on February 1st, 2018 (yesterday).

No Regret - Stop Looking Back

They say hind sight is 20/20. In my case it isn't paying jack squat. Except........real estate. Yes, my friends. No idiot salesman jumping around all over the place needs to convince me. I have only watched my very own property soar in the passed 2 years.

Let's look at the options discussed around the water cooler these days.

• 401K/IRAs/Mutual Funds/Stock Market - I'm late on all of them and their yields do not impress me
• Social Security - A huge joke
• Dave Ramsey's Debt Snowball - Paying down debt and living a meager existence will not lead me to the lifestyle that I want at retirement. I like you Dave and I enjoyed the seminar but its simply not enough

Your Dreams vs Corporate America's Dreams

I will not pretend to be an expert on this at all. There are plenty of better qualified people to cover this subject. However, I do have a couple of thoughts of my own about the matter.

Did you know that you will work harder, longer and more often for Corporate America's dreams than your own unless you start making your lifestyle a priority?

I once heard, "Find your destination in life, or someone will find one for you." That is happening with so many of us already.

Take your life back. You are worth probably 400% more than you think you are or else Corporate America wouldn't be getting rich.

Invest back into your future.
Invest back into your goals and dreams.
Invest back into your principles and values.

More Hope Than Soap - My Experience with MLMs

When you have a personality like mine, you tend to attract a certain type of person. The recruiter type. All for good reason too. After all, I'm a cheerleader, a moral booster and optimist.

Shortly after high school I was approached by a complete stranger who wanted me to sell ad space for those little papers they used to stick to the top of pizza boxes. He convinced me that I was going to be raking in the dough from town to town in no time. My parents were fuming but I was a hard headed know it all at 18. About a dozen or so retail office door to door visits shortly after sobered me up to the realities real quick and I never got a dime.

A few months later, my parents still on my case to get a job, I found myself in a hotel conference room before a sales pitch about the newest water filtration phenomenon that was about to 'revolutionize the marketplace'. You can bet your rear end they wanted me to sign up that night and that night only for this ground floor opportunity. I had no money for their stupid starter kit. The over zealous presenter who was jumping all over the place like he was completely coked up was the biggest turn off. There were people all around me like blood sucking vampires telling me how great this thing was. I'm sure they were planted there.

A few years later I was introduced to the world of Amway. No, I'm not pitching Amway anymore. I was in this business for about 5 years. I did little with it in regards to sales. I just got fed up with being a punching bag for society. There was a generation before me that had made a bad name for the company. I just wasn't mature enough to deal with that at 21 years old. Meanwhile, all of my friends were out living it up or going to college.

If my bubbly personality wasn't already enough to attract people, as soon as people knew I was an Amway distributor most either disowned me or wanted to pitch another MLM to me. It was always the same thing, "Just like Amway only better." They never were better, usually illegal and gone within a year. I heard it all, gold coins, wholesale memberships, discount vouchers, vitamins, and just flat out cash changing hands.

Later Amway started calling themselves Quixstar and IBO's which just made it feel like they were compromising to improve their public face. This only gave people more ammunition to throw at me. After all of that I just washed my hands of all MLMs. Amway is a great vehicle but I was not effective in it.

It is very important for me to stress how much wealth of information I got out of the Continuing Education portion of that business ran by Dexter Yager (I met him one on one my final year in the business. A story for another time.). The entire 5 years that I was in this business I devoured hundreds of hours of audio and video of success stories from millionaires and the top world motivational teachers. I read all of the book-of-the-months I could get my hands on. I attended scores and scores of weekend events, rallies, seminars and functions from Texas, Missouri, Florida, Oklahoma, you name it.

I have used just about every skill I learned in the Amway business and I continue to pass that hope on to others.

Action - Where the Rubber Meets the Road

If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail...
Just be sure to WORK YOUR PLAN and CHART YOUR SUCCESS.

For a majority of my adult life I had gotten so caught up in the details. The processes, the analytics, the number crunching... I did this so much that I failed to act. This is better known as Paralysis by Analysis.

Don't wait until all of the traffic lights are green before you leave the house for your next vacation.

Don't misunderstand me. It is important to do research, prepare, take notes, listen, and develop a strategy to win. However, it's all for nothing if you DO nothing.

You can't steer a parked car. Tomorrow is NOW.

Short Attention Span or Instant Gratification? It's Neither.

Something I've had to come to terms with as an adult is how quickly I become bored with things that don't produce desirable results quickly. Perhaps that comes from being nomadic for a great deal of my life.

The important thing here is that I recognize it and know how to turn it into something useful.

I already know that I can't stand to micro-manage projects. My follow through can't keep up with my ideas.

However, I am resourceful, organized, and I know how to delegate. I'm interested in the big picture and the milestones of success.

Success Driven By Positives and Negatives

Positive and negative can achieve similar success results despite each having different motivation factors.

We all have a bit of positive and negative hiding in our fabric proportional to our own life experience. It's important to keep them in balance.

If we are too idealistic we may blow through every resource at hand and get nowhere. On the other hand, if we are too conservative we may become stagnant in our life.

An engineer will be more receptive and motivated by someone who talks details, statistics and numbers. However, a more idealistic person may be bored with this type of information and that is a big negative for them but not in a motivational way.

Other ways that positive and negative motivate are more emotional. Some work from an opportunistic point of view where others work from a fear of losing everything point of view.