Issue #2072
- WEALTHY: How Uncle Sam can help you buy real estate (Reggie Brooks)
- HEALTHY: A 30-second breakfast feast (Jon Herring)
- WISE: George Bernard Shaw on money
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Get your boss to love your "less e-mail" policy (Timothy Ferriss)
- A best-selling book that makes one fundamental mistake (Michael Masterson)
- It’s Fun to Know… about the business of napping
- Add "bereft" to your vocabulary
Imagine Knowing of a Casino Where the Dealer Tipped His Hand Before You Made Your Move and Didn’t Care How Many Times You Beat Him.
When Would You Stop Going There?
This is nothing to do with games of chance, but I hope your answer to that question would be a resounding, “NEVER”!! Assuming you’re sane that is… Well, that is a virtually PERFECT analogy of the power of the insider signal!
It’s often said, “The Stock Market is just a big casino”. And it’s true. But the important omission in that statement (to keep the masses out!) is the dealer in this casino tips his hand to the select few… the insiders.
Such powerful knowledge could make YOU very rich indeed… Click here to learn more…
- Patrick Coffey
"Lack of money is the root of all evil."
George Bernard Shaw
Let the Government Pay You for a Change!
By Reggie Brooks
Politicians know that the best way to keep their jobs is by funneling government money into the communities they represent. That is how the government ends up with hundreds of different programs to distribute billions of dollars to us in the form of grants, low-interest loans, and subsidies. And that’s where you can step up and reclaim some of your hard-earned tax dollars.
The government only gives that money to the people who know how to get it. You have to learn how to ask for it. But if you can follow instructions on an application form, chances are pretty good that you can get a grant for something – especially real estate.
Free Money for Almost Anything
Do you have an idea for a business? Want to invent something? Need help with living expenses? Want to change your career? Want to buy or fix up some real estate?
There is likely government, corporate, or foundation grant money that can help you.
If you’re a beginning real estate investor, Uncle Sam can guarantee you’ll get a decent loan to buy your first house or apartment building. If you’re having trouble coming up with enough money for a down payment, there are programs that will allow you to buy with a three percent down payment (from the Federal Housing Administration) or a zero percent down payment (from the Department of Veterans Affairs).
And because you now own property, you get tax breaks.
You can even help people who have trouble paying their rent by renting to them under the Section 8 Subsidy Program. The government can also help you rehab a property to get it rent-ready in the first place.
Grant Money for Rehabbing
Several years ago, I purchased a four-unit building that had my friends wondering if I had lost my mind. Each unit had one bedroom and one bathroom, and was inhabited by an elderly lady who had been living there for more than 20 years. The problem was that their rents had never been raised. The total income from that building was around $460 per month.
No, I wasn’t crazy. I bought this property because I had done my homework and found a government program called the Rental Rehab Loan Program. The program required me to borrow at least $5,000 to be used for upgrades in the building. The benefits were that I received the money at a very low interest rate and (much more important) that my tenants would qualify for the Section 8 Subsidy Program.
All four of my elderly tenants were existing on meager Social Security income. They lived in the fear that whoever bought the building would raise their rents. They knew comparable apartments were renting for around $625 per month, and they could not afford it. They all thought they’d end up homeless on the streets.
But, thanks to this particular government program, I was able to rehab the property with a low-interest loan. And when the rehabbing was done, I increased the income from the building from $460 per month to around $2,600 per month.
The elderly ladies now had a nicer place to live and, because of the Section 8 subsidy, they actually ended up paying less than they had been paying for rent.
You Don’t Need Good Credit to Qualify
Don’t worry if you have less-than-perfect credit. That doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t qualify for a grant. Grants can be based on many different criteria. It depends on the program you’re applying for.
Some programs are project-based. If your project fits a certain category, the project itself can qualify for the money. It could be the property, the area, or the tenants that qualify, not you personally.
If it’s a program that requires you to personally qualify, then your credit can become a factor. But understand this…
There are programs that are designed for people with bad credit. There are even programs that require you to be turned down by a bank before you can qualify for the money!
Navigating the Process
You must be organized and you must follow up. It may take a lot of phone calls and paperwork to apply for a grant, but the rewards can be substantial.
You may find that a particular program you uncover no longer exists. Don’t despair. Two or three other programs, under different names, have probably replaced it. There are so many grants that if you can’t qualify for one, there could be five, 10, or 50 other programs that you can qualify for.
The first thing to do is go to your local library and ask the librarian to help you locate government, corporate, and foundation grant sources. Once you’ve made your initial contact with a potential funding source, ask them to send you all the information they have on their program, including applications and guidelines.
To apply for most grants, you’ll need to provide two documents: a Grant Proposal and a Letter of Appeal (a summary of the Grant Proposal). If you’re requesting a grant of $2,500 or less, you can usually accomplish that by using the Letter of Appeal only.
Submit proposals to as many funding sources as you can find. There are not many restrictions on the number of grants you can receive… so why not get five grants instead of one? Why not 10 grants instead of five?
[Ed. Note: Reggie Brooks is a national lecturer on creative real estate investing who specializes in abandoned properties and using grant money to acquire and rehab real estate. He has been an active real estate investor for the last 22 years - and even his two grown children have used their father's techniques to become millionaires. To learn more about Reggie's creative real-estate investment techniques, click here.]
Can you profit from someone else’s “pain-in-the-neck” Property?
Every abandoned property costs the owner money…
- The Mortgage…
- Insurance…
- Taxes…
- Maintenance expenses…
- And even potential code violations…
This all adds up to expenses without rental revenue!
Its’ a property owner’s worst nightmare… and your opportunity for substantial profits. Join us for this free teleseminar and you’ll never look at abandoned properties the same way again. Spaces are limited… sign up now to guarantee your spot.
How to Check E-mail Twice a Day… or Less
By Timothy Ferriss
If you don’t yet use Twitter, don’t start. It’s pointless e-mail on steroids. I had to laugh when I saw a post by the one-and-only uberblogger Robert Scoble titled "Productivity up 200%, Twitter is down" (scobleizer.com).
E-mail (and all of its Crackberry/digital leash cousins) is the largest single interruption in modern life. In a digital world, creating time therefore hinges on minimizing e-mail. The fastest method I’ve found for controlling the e-mail impulse is to set up an autoresponder that indicates you will be checking e-mail twice per day or less.
Think your customers or partners won’t go for it? You’d be surprised. Here is one example from a client. His initial thoughts are followed by his autoresponder, edited for length, then his manager’s (that’s right – his boss’s) response:
"Every single person feels like it just wouldn’t work for them if they did it. (’Oh, but I’m on too many mailing lists,’ or ‘All I do is work in my inbox. I have to.’)"
—
"Hi all,
"In an effort to increase productivity, I am beginning a new personal e-mail policy. I’ve recently realized I spend more time shuffling through my inbox and less time focused on the task at hand. This ultimately creates longer lead times on my ever-growing ‘to do’ list.
"Going forward I will only be responding to e-mail at 11a and 4p on weekdays. If you need an immediate response, please don’t hesitate to call me. Phones are more fun anyways.
"Cheers & here’s to life outside the inbox!"
—
"AWESOME time management approach!!! I would love to see more people adopt that policy." – C.
—
Here is a shorter autoresponder that a top-50 Silicon Valley CEO successfully implemented:
"Thank you for your e-mail! Due to my current workload I am only checking e-mail at 11am and 4pm. If you need anything immediately, please call me on my cell so that I can address this important matter with you. Thank you and have a great day!"
The real hard part, of course, is keeping yourself away from that damn inbox. Get on a strict low-information diet and focus on output instead of input – your bank account and weekends will thank you for it.
[Ed. Note: Serial entrepreneur and ultravagabond Timothy Ferriss has been featured by dozens of media, including The New York Times, Wired, National Geographic, NBC, and CNN. He speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a popular guest lecturer in high-tech entrepreneurship at Princeton University since 2003. The #1 Wall Street Journal and New York Times best-seller The 4-Hour Workweek is his first book on ideal lifestyle design and mobile entrepreneurship.]
How a Simple Kitchen Appliance Can Improve Your Eating Habits
By Jon Herring
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It helps set your metabolism in motion. In fact, numerous studies have shown that people are far more successful at losing excess weight when they start the day with a protein-rich meal rather than skipping breakfast.
If you find yourself skipping breakfast often because you "just don’t have the time," I have a solution for you. Buy a Magic Bullet blender and use it to make protein shakes and smoothies in the morning. This device is compact, extremely easy to clean, and the best part is that you can blend the ingredients right in the container you drink out of. It is extremely convenient.
Here is what I do. Several mornings each week, I mix about eight ounces of water or milk with a scoop of Jay Robb’s Whey Protein Powder or Mercola’s Whey Healthier. Both of these products taste great, and they don’t contain any sugar or artificial sweeteners. To this, I might add any number of things… frozen organic berries, an egg, a spoonful of peanut butter, super-greens powder (a protein-rich green wholefood that includes spirulina, chlorella, barley grass, and wheat grass), half a banana, or powdered cocoa… depending on what I feel like.
The entire process takes less than five minutes, and I’m out the door with a tasty shake that keeps me satisfied and mentally sharp all morning.
Notes From Michael Masterson’s Blog: "The Long Tail"
The topic for our book club this month was The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. It provoked a pretty interesting conversation.
We talked about the relevance of Anderson’s message that, by training your customers to browse your website, you can stimulate a "long tail" of more sales of secondary products.
Having website traffic is certainly an advantage in terms of casual sales, but I don’t believe it will fundamentally change business, as Anderson suggests. Seventy-five to 80 percent of my clients’ sales and profits will always be generated by customers who are relatively new and still in a "buying frenzy." Those customers are created by going out (via snail mail or the Internet) and making sales. The key to growth and profitability will always be – for my clients and for every business – the ability to make a new sale.
Anderson’s book is brilliant in many ways, but it missed this critical insight about business that only a non-businessperson could miss. He overlooked the importance of the selling experience, because he is an academic. He makes the mistakes others who are outside of business often make – that business is about providing customers with good values and rational choices. What business is really about is selling ideas.
Why do so many people prefer to go to Starbucks rather than the greasy spoon down the block? Because they have been sold on the idea that the coffee at Starbucks is better and, more important, that the experience of drinking a Starbucks coffee will be transcendental. Every business needs to do something like that: Sell the idea that their product or service is better than the rest and thus deserving of more of their customers’ future dollars.
The biggest opportunity the Internet offers us lies in this area, because this is where you persuade your customers of your value. While it’s true that the Internet is having a significant effect on backend sales by reducing the cost of storage and delivery, the big change is how cheap it’s made it to "talk" to your customers.
The reason most of my clients’ businesses are booming right now has nothing to do with the long tail. It is because my clients are talking to their customers hundreds of times a year via the Internet rather than the 20 or 30 times they did when the cost of mailing such communications ran 50 to 60 cents apiece.
If you want your profits to double, just start communicating with your customers much more than you do now.
- Michael Masterson
[Ed. Note: To read more of Michael's unedited, uncensored (and sometimes unexpected) ruminations, check out his blog here.
Learn how to build your own Internet business at ETR's upcoming 5 Days in July Internet Conference. You'll walk in with nothing - no product, no marketing skills, no technical know-how - and you'll walk out with your own online business. If you even think you might be interested in this opportunity, you must sign-up for the 5 Days in July Conference today.]
It’s Fun to Know: About the Business of Napping
Cropping up in major cities and airports worldwide are businesses giving on-the-go city dwellers and travelers the chance to recharge in the middle of the day. High-end sleep salons offer 15- to 40-minute power naps in private rooms for about $14 per session, with reduced rates for monthly memberships. Features include purified air, luxurious linens, aromatherapy, ambient music, personalized lighting, and recliners that elevate the legs above the heart for increased relaxation.
(Source: SpringWise and Business 2.0)
Looking For a Rat-Race “Escape Plan”?
Q: How do you know when gas prices have spiraled totally out of control?
A: When gas station owners start boycotting their own businesses!
With the national “regular” average price topping $3.25 a gallon, A.P. reports some owners are closing down shop in protest to their own suppliers.
Meanwhile, millions of U.S.A. commuters are paying through the nose just to get to work and back. And paying, and paying…
Sick of spending upwards of $40 to fill the tank? Tired of life passing you by from behind the steering wheel?
Maybe it’s time to think about your “Plan B”.
Maybe it’s time to vow you’re getting out of the rat race, and you’re going to do something about it RIGHT NOW.
Interested? Well here’s your personal Rat Race “Express Escape Plan".
- Charlie Byrne
Word to the Wise: Bereft
"Bereft" (bih-REFT) – a past tense and past participle of "bereave" – means deprived, left desolate or alone.
Example (as used by Caroline Weber in a NYT review of The Diana Chronicles by Tina Brown): "Honing her star power became, Brown observes, the bereft little girl’s ‘own way of surviving.’"
[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
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