Outsource and Income
Issue #2114
- WEALTHY: Get the free time and passive income you want in 3 steps (Dave Lindahl)
- HEALTHY: A healthy excuse to get outdoors (Suzanne Richardson)
- WISE: Nancy Pechloff on outsourcing
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Getting to the bottom of a misleading ad (Michael Masterson)
- One reason Amazon didn’t go under during the technology boom
- It’s Fun to Know… about Chinese gold farmers
- Add "rejoinder" to your vocabulary
Imagine if There Were Only 6 Numbers to Choose from When Buying a Lottery Ticket!
Wouldn’t that be great?! Of course, the fewer the choices, the more likely your chance of success, right?
How many choices are there when buying and selling shares? Errmm… a LOT! Hundreds… One of the reasons I enjoy such consistent success from trading is because I only have 6 options to choose from! Except this is even better in a way, because the lottery is pure luck…
… I only have 6 choices AND have a VERY good idea about which choice to make because of the insider signal.Click here to learn more…
"When small and mid-size businesses outsource work, it allows them to focus more on their core competencies. In many cases, this approach to outsourcing is a smart way for businesses to add value to their operations."
Nancy Pechloff
Outsource and Income: Using Specialists to Accelerate Your Real Estate Success
By Dave Lindahl
Real estate investing is much more than finding and buying the property. There’s more to do once the deal is completed - and you may own (and have to take care of) the property for months, and more often for years. Certainly you don’t want another job or obligation in your life. That’s why real estate investing appealed to you to begin with! So to get that free time and passive income you dreamed of when you got into real estate, outsource the jobs you don’t want to do.
In fact, if you work with a realtor or mortgage broker, you may already know some of the people who can help you.
Don’t forget that, as a real estate investor, you’re the CEO of your own company. CEOs don’t do the work - they hire specialists to get it done. Your job is to oversee it all, to manage your real estate investing portfolio… not to fill out landlord forms, chase tenants, mow lawns, and collect rents. And your favorite job will be to take checks to the bank (a task you’ll never want to outsource!).
Here are three steps to successfully outsource the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks that you can’t - or don’t care to - do.
Step 1. Expand your geographic investing area.
The larger the area you can scour for potential deals, the quicker you’ll find those deals. Of course, you’re only one person, and you probably don’t have the resources - time or money - to fly all over the country looking for promising properties. The best way to broaden your reach is to…
Step 2. Find specialists for all aspects and all phases of the work.
Are you an active investor - or doing the research to become one? Don’t be surprised if this idea saves you over 20 hours a week (or more) on activities you’re currently doing yourself. Imagine how much bigger your portfolio could be if you had relationships with:
- a real estate broker/agent with ARM and/or CPM designation
- a birddog
- municipal employees
The real estate broker/agent with ARM (Accredited Residential Manager) and/or CPM (Certified Property Manager) designation is essential to your real estate investing success. Not only does this real estate professional find you properties to invest in, he (or she) is also your property manager.
It takes many hours of continuing education to achieve ARM and CPM designations - five classes and tests for each one. These people know their stuff!
While your broker/agent is busy managing your tenants (so you don’t have to), you can spend your time as you like. And he’s experienced at this work. Let him collect rents, hire maintenance workers, and handle the day-to-day tasks associated with your properties.
Find an ARM or CPM realtor at irem.org. At that site, you’ll find members in cities all over the country, making it easy for you to invest in properties in many different markets. And that kind of diversification is just smart.
If you’re just starting, and working only one market area, hire what’s known as a "birddog." That’s a person who scopes out buildings for you. You pay him a finders fee, and your birddog does all the legwork. Imagine a person (or a group of people) continuously bringing you potential investments. Birddogs work best with single-family properties, but if the deal you have with them is structured properly, you can do very, very well.
A third group of specialists who can help you are municipal employees. You won’t actually hire these folks, but they’ll be partners in your quest for wealth. Here’s how: Rather than going to the courthouses of all the towns and counties you’re interested in, develop relationships with these under-appreciated people. Always remember that a little goodwill goes a long way. Treat these folks with respect. One way they can help you is by providing you with lists of out-of-town property owners so you can start a letter-writing campaign to find potential deals. (Out-of-town owners can be very motivated sellers.)
Now, here’s where the outsourcing idea gets really good…
Step 3. Use real estate investor courses to learn fast and learn right.
By learning from the experiences of others, you can learn in a fraction of the time it took for your teachers to develop the knowledge they have. That’s like outsourcing your learning!
To sum up: The more you can outsource in your real estate investing career, the faster you can win in the game of wealth. You can enter the market at any time, but don’t waste time doing what someone else can do for you cheaper and faster. Outsourcing will allow you to skyrocket your success.
[Ed. Note: Dave Lindahl started investing in small multi-unit properties while a self-employed landscaper with just $850 in savings 10 years ago. Today, he is known as "the Apartment House King," with over 3,100 apartment units across the country. Dave will be giving a one-day training seminar November 16th at a 5-star resort in Coral Gables, Miami, where he will teach his personal techniques for building massive passive income and a multimillion-dollar net worth through apartment house investing. The next 25 people to respond to this exclusive Early to Rise special offer will have a chance to attend Dave’s life-changing event free of charge. Click here to learn how.]
How to Attain “Real” Financial Freedom with Passive Income
People like Donald Trump and the Kennedy family have it all figured out. Their real estate investments produce huge cash flows, also called "passive income" every single month of the year. That is ‘real’ financial freedom. There’s no need to get up and go to work every day, and once you’ve started down a road like this with real estate, the possibilities to boost your passive income are endless.
Here’s the shocker: you don’t need to be rich like Donald Trump to use his method to attain ‘real’ financial freedom through real estate… click here to learn exactly how you can do it too.
Going, Going, Gone!
"Free coins are being handed out for the next 72 hours to all who cover the $98 vault release fee for never-before-seen mammoth ‘Ballistic Rolls’ of new U.S. Government dollar coins," is the headline of a full-page ad in USA Today.
On top of the page is a photo of armed guards porting boxes into a building. The caption reads: "These are the only known photos capturing the early morning secured delivery of the U.S. Government’s new Presidential Dealer Coins for the public unveiling in New York."
Another photo shows the "rarely seen" coin close up - a big, beautiful coin with $1 stamped on it. "The coin edge markings are superb," the caption reads. Two more photos show the coins in what appear to be rolls of 50.
And all of the photos in the ad are dominated by the color gold - the photos of the single coin, the photo of a roll of coins, a photo of a group of the golden brick-shaped boxes that hold the coins, and another photo of a vault room filled with those "heavy" golden bricks "that everyone is trying to get for themselves and to give as gifts."
"What an amazing deal," you think, "50 gold coins for free! How can they do it?" The trick, you assume, is that the "$98 vault release fee" is a deception - that this fee includes the cost of the coins.
But then, you think, "How could that be? A gold coin must be worth much more than two dollars. What’s going on here?"
Step back and look at those photos again. All that gold and yet, when you look at the copy, nowhere does it say "gold" coins. It says "golden." It feels like it is saying that the coins are gold, but it doesn’t.
Hmm. There is one curious sentence that reads: "They [the brick-shaped boxes] are so heavy they feel like solid bars of .999 pure gold," and a caption that says "425 net grams."
So… what are they?
My guess is thinly plated silver dollars. I asked Jason Holland, my research assistant, to call the company and figure out what they are actually selling. After a short conversation with a helpful customer service rep, he learned that for $98 you get 50 coins with no gold in them at all, not even gold plating. They are made of manganese, nickel, copper, and zinc.
No wonder serious collectors scoff at offers like these.
Jason contacted a member of a Florida-based numismatic organization. ("Numismatist" is a fancy name for "coin collector.") He recommended that people stay away from these coins and others advertised in newspapers or on TV. He said the coins are almost always vastly overpriced - in this particular case, double their face value - and are not likely to appreciate in value over the years, despite the company’s claims. He suggested that anyone serious about coin collecting should visit reputable shops and attend coin shows.
If you must have these golden $1 coins, check at your local bank. If they are available there, you can walk in with $50 and get 50 coins. You’ll have to decide if the box shaped like a gold brick is worth the extra $48.
[Ed. Note: This fall, Michael Masterson and a group of the world’s leading Internet marketing experts will be revealing proven techniques for shooting your online sales through the roof, creating over a dozen sources of new revenue, and tripling or quadrupling your profits within the next 9 to 12 months. Sign up now for ETR’s fast-approaching 2007 Info-Marketing Bootcamp, Making a Fast Fortune on the "Other Side" of the Internet.]
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ETR Insider Report: A 10-Minute Exercise Routine You Can Do Anywhere
On a recent visit to ETR headquarters in Delray Beach, FL, I got a chance to see just how dedicated ETR staffers are to getting fit. And it was easy to see that the exercise routines Coach Yari has been teaching them are easy to do almost anywhere.
Having forgotten my sneakers, I had to sit on the sidelines as six of the ETR staffers who are participating in the company’s fitness and weight-loss challenge gathered in the palm-tree lined back lot of the ETR building. With them was Coach Yari, who called out the exercises they were to do that day. After about 30 seconds, everyone was red-faced and panting, but the results of these fat-burning, muscle-building workouts is clear. Jessica Haynes has lost 25 percent of her body fat in the six weeks since she started exercising with Coach Yari, and Charles Delvalle has lost 37 pounds of fat and gained 22 pounds of muscle.
You can duplicate the workout I watched everyone else do - in your yard, on the beach, or even in the parking lot behind your office. Here’s how:
- Do 50 squats (and do them quickly!).
- Mark off a point about 100 feet in front of you. Run to it and back, lifting your knees high at each step.
- Return to the 100-feet mark, this time kicking your rear end with your heels as you run. Come back doing the same.
- Return to the 100-feet mark, this time getting into squat position and jumping forward as far as you can, landing in squat position. Come back doing the same.
- Do 10 push-ups.
This workout gets your heart pumping while helping to strengthen the long muscles in your legs. Try it!
[Ed. Note: If you live in the Florida area, or just want to learn more about Coach Yari’s "Get Fit In 6" program, check out her website here.]
Worth Quoting: Jeff Bezos on Staying Customer-Focused
"I think technology advanced faster than anticipated. In that whirlwind, a lot of companies didn’t survive. The reason we [Amazon.com] have done well is because, even in that whirlwind, we kept heads-down focused on the customers. All the metrics that we can track about customers have improved every year."
(Source: USA Today)
It’s Fun to Know: Chinese Gold Farmers
Some entrepreneurs are taking advantage of two economic facts: (1) There is money to be made in Internet gaming, and (2) China is a reliable and cheap source of labor. They’re making millions by selling "virtual" goods used in popular online role-playing games for real-world cash.
Employees at Chinese "gold farms" put in 12-hour shifts collecting in-game currency, weapons, magical items, and more, which are then sold to Western gamers who want to advance in a game quickly without doing the work themselves. The software companies that run the virtual worlds are taking steps to crack down on this estimated $1.8 billion industry, which many serious gamers regard as cheating.
(Source: The New York Times)
Do You Need To Start Out Small?
If you don’t have an Internet business yet, or if your company is smaller than $1 million then you need something different… something that lets you start off small.
One man I know turned $10 into over $500,000. How’s that for starting small!
Let me show you how to get a similar Internet income stream running for almost nothing.
- Patrick Coffey
Word to the Wise: Rejoinder
A "rejoinder" (rih-JOIN-dur) - from the Latin for "to join" - is an answer or reply.
Example (as used by Richard Elman in Namedropping: Mostly Literary Memoirs): "I kept looking for exceptions to his pronouncements, flaws in his reasoning, my constant rejoinders to his critical remarks being ‘Yes, but …’"
[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