The Infrastructure of Life, Part 1
Issue #2038
- WEALTHY: 9 methods for attracting real estate buyers and sellers (Justin Ford)
- HEALTHY: How to find the time for exercise (Michael Masterson)
- WISE: Alphonse Karr on change
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Escape the curse that’s paralyzing the human race (Robert Ringer)
- Free your creative mind by doing… nothing (David Deutsch)
- It’s Fun to Know… about eBay
- Add "supplant" to your vocabulary
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Building Your Brand: The Best Way to Find Motivated Sellers and Qualified Buyers
By Justin Ford
What’s the best way for a real estate wholesaler to find motivated sellers? It’s like the presidential race. There are a lot of candidates.
Bandit signs, car signs, newspaper ads, billboards, door knocking, telemarketing, direct mail, attending investor meetings, building a birddog network, and more. Each of these methods has bullish proponents and disappointed detractors. But the truth, Steve Cook told attendees yesterday at his five-day Flipping Homes Bootcamp in Baltimore, is that any one of these methods can work.
In the course of buying and selling more than 350 homes over the last nine years, Steve has tried all these methods - with the exception of knocking on doors. (Just doesn’t fit his personality, he says.) And he has had success with each. Two keys, he says, are consistency and flexibility.
Don’t just do one-off efforts. Do a campaign: a series of letters, a series of ads. Attend real-estate investor meetings regularly, not just once in a while. And once one of your methods stops working, adapt. Try varying your message. Also vary the medium. If you’ve mostly been doing bandit signs and results lag, try more newspaper ads or direct mail.
But even as you experiment with your message and medium from time to time - as all successful marketers do, not just in real estate - the one thing you should always be doing is building your brand.
Does a real estate wholesaler have a brand? Absolutely. Become known as someone who does what he says he’ll do… who has the knowledge to pull off a tricky deal… who pays his birddogs well and on time… who has the financial wherewithal to close quickly… who is always ready to act on a good deal.
Then, when owners in your area need to sell quickly - and when investors are eager to add to inventory - they’ll think of you first when they’re looking to do a deal.
[Ed. Note: To learn more about Steve Cook's wholesaling techniques and how you can make five-figure profits per deal without ever dealing with tenants or rehabs, click here.]
"Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose."
["The more things change, the more they stay the same."]
Alphonse Karr
The Infrastructure of Life, Part 1
By Robert Ringer
If you’re familiar with my writing, you know that I’m a proponent of embracing change through action. Homeostasis - the tendency to live with existing conditions and avoid change - is a curse that paralyzes a majority of the human race.
While it’s true that we live in a rapidly changing world, it’s important to recognize that the daily changes we witness are changes in form only. The real substance of our universe, and thus of life itself, is comprised of universal principles. These universal principles - also known as axioms, truths, or natural laws - form the infrastructure for the stage of life upon which each of us performs.
When the weather changes dramatically, as it has in the past several years, the universal principles (euphemistically referred to as "science") that cause such radical changes remain firmly in place. Likewise, the economy may change, but, no matter how much mischievous politicians try to manipulate it, the free-market principles that underlie the workings of the economy do not change one iota.
Morally superior political-action groups can create fictions such as "hate crimes" - and even pressure weak-kneed politicians into making such fictions illegal - but human nature is such that people go right on hating anyway. It is axiomatic that a human being’s thoughts cannot be forcibly repressed.
Technology changes on a daily basis before our very eyes. However, our vanity blinds us to the reality that all we are really doing is rearranging atoms. Video games and iPods aside, the laws of molecular structure are the same today as they were in prehistoric times.
This is not just an academic discussion I am engaging in here. On the contrary, it has everything to do with how you live your life on a day-to-day basis. Any civilized religion has built into it - at least through implication - the sanctity of universal principles. (As always, my statement is meant to include the religion of atheism.)
Universal principles are omniscient and omnipotent. Whether they are omnibenevolent is subject to debate and beyond the scope of this article. My focus here is on the importance of living your life in harmony with universal principles as the only possible way to retain your sanity in an increasingly insane world
Everyone is familiar with George Santayana’s famous words: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Even a casual student of history is painfully aware that, notwithstanding how far mankind has advanced technologically, we continue to make the same mistakes today that our ancestors have made throughout history.
Sadly, when idealistic lads and lasses bid farewell to their clueless profs at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale, they have learned very little about the lessons of history. Worse, the pudding heads who were in charge of teaching them likely perverted the lessons of history to ensure that these future leaders of our society will make the same mistakes as their predecessors.
The great Thomas Sowell explained it even better than Santayana when he said, "Everything is new if you are ignorant of history. That is why ideas that have failed repeatedly in centuries past reappear again, under the banner of ‘change,’ to dazzle people and sweep them off their feet."
Which, in turn, is why the words of Will Durant are so painfully accurate: "It may be true… that ‘you can’t fool all the people all the time,’ but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country."
In Part 2 of this article, I will discuss how I believe all this relates to you and your ability to lead a full and meaningful life, to provide for your family, and to achieve your most cherished goals.
Until then… think about it.
[Ed. Note: Take a gigantic step toward achieving all your personal and professional goals - faster than you ever imagined - with Robert Ringer's best-selling personal-development program. And sign up for his Voice of Sanity e-letter here.]
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Reader Feedback: "I have a variation of the ‘waiting to act’ syndrome."
"Thank you for the article ‘How to Become What You Want to Be."
"I have a variation of the ‘waiting to act’ syndrome. I do write, but only short things. I write poems, I write articles for my local Mac user group newsletter, and I recently started writing blogs. What I really want to write is books, but a large project is daunting. I know that if I write a little every day, in time I will have a book. But that is not as easy as it sounds. I am a morning person, and evenings are not usually productive. When I get up early or have a morning free, it takes time to delve into the material, orient myself, pick up where I had left off - and then writing time is short. Work has been very sporadic.
"I have started two non-fiction books. One is a popular science book, and the other is in the self-help/inspiration genre. But they have been started for years! (’I am a great one to motivate others,’ said she with a wry smile.)
"However - Hope springs eternal, and Spring is here, literally. I have brought out the science reference books, organized my material, and done a bit of new writing. This really boils down to: How much do I want it? Do I want the book enough to do what it takes to write it? To commit to the writing and follow through? I know desire does not take the place of action, but a burning desire sure helps fuel the action. I am heating up the desire with visualization techniques. I want to see the book cover, see it in bookstores, taste the satisfaction of being published. And today I will write, and tomorrow, and the next day.
"Meanwhile, thank you again for all the inspirational articles in Early to Rise.
"Here’s a quote you may like, attributed to William Blake. I found it in If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland: ‘Better to strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.’"
- Karen Howland
Rochester, NY
Sleep and Grow Rich
By David Deutsch
To generate money-making ideas, you have to slow down your beta (thinking) brainwaves and activate your alpha (daydreaming) brainwaves. When you do that, you’re tapping into your subconscious - that vast, limitless reservoir of your experience and wisdom.
Relax a little more, and you’ll get into a theta state of deep reverie - the wellspring of creativity and inspiration.
How do you access this precious state? Try doing nothing. Sit quietly. Relax. Meditate. Or somehow occupy your conscious mind in order to free your subconscious. Mozart sometimes did it by rolling balls around a billiard table and occupying his conscious mind with watching them bounce off the sides.
Our best ideas often just "pop into our heads" when we least expect it - in the shower or while shaving - when our conscious minds are occupied with something else and we’re not focused on trying to come up with something. So why not take advantage of the many hours you’re fully in your subconscious mind: while you sleep. When you go to bed, simply tell yourself that you want an idea for A-B-C or a solution to problem X-Y-Z. Your subconscious will deliver.
And be sure there’s a pen and paper next to your bed when you wake up!
[Ed Note: David Deutsch is the creator of The Million-Dollar Ideas System, a revolutionary new way for you - or anyone you work with - to come up with all the money-making ideas you'll ever need.]
Dear Michael Masterson: "How do you have time for exercise?"
"I love the exercise routine you laid out in "The Best Exercise Routine Ever." As busy as you are with multiple companies, enterprises, and writing projects, how do you have time for it?
"Thanks for Early to Rise! I never miss an issue!"
- John Long
Bellaire, OH
Dear John,
Work always seems more important than exercise…. and more urgent…. but it’s not. Forcing yourself to take the time - and it’s only 30 or 40 minutes - is the answer.
Some people have the discipline to stop what they are doing and get to their program on schedule. Most people - including me - don’t.
So here’s my recommendation: Hire a trainer and pay him a full-hour fee for the 30- to 40-minute routine in return for coming to your office.
This is how it works for me. At about noon every day, someone - either my fitness trainer or one of my Jiu Jitsu instructors - appears in my office. They walk in and stand there behind me as I type away, saying, "Just one more minute. Just one more minute." After about five minutes of this, I feel guilty and I begin to imagine how much pain they will subject me to if I make them wait any longer. So I get up, change quickly, and do my workout.
If you can’t afford a trainer, you can try getting a colleague or friend to come to your office and do the prodding.
I hope that helps.
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: Have a question for Michael Masterson? Write to him at AskMichael@ETRfeedback.com.]
It’s Fun to Know: About eBay
EBay started out as a Web consulting group named Echo Bay Technology Group. Echo Bay Mines Limited, a gold mining company, had already taken the domain name EchoBay.com, so founder Pierre Omidyar registered his second choice: eBay.com.
(Source: Wikipedia)
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Word to the Wise: Supplant
To "supplant" (suh-PLANT) - from the Latin for "to trip up/overthrow" - is to take the place of a rival, especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics.
Example (as used by Dennis J. Hutchinson in The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White): "Economic opportunities for a saddler and harness maker were beginning to decline… as railroads supplanted the stagecoach trade."
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Michael Masterson
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2007