Go From “Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda” to “Did It!”
Issue #2241
- WEALTHY: Tales of a former armchair investor (Justin Ford)
- HEALTHY: Is voodoo causing that killer pain in your knee? (Dr. Bill Stillwell)
- WISE: Thoreau on grabbing onto opportunities
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Your 10th Special Holiday Gift from ETR: Massive, passive income with real estate
- Make any presentation more clear, concise, and useful (Peter Fogel)
- It’s Good to Know… about shopping for free in Tokyo
- Add "phantasmagoria" to your vocabulary
The Early to Rise 2007 End-of-Year Blowout Sale
What are your resolutions for 2008?
To increase your salary by $15,000? To finally start your own profitable online side-business? To become a better and more persuasive communicator?
Whatever your dreams, hopes and aspirations may be… ETR is here to help!
As 2007 comes to a close, we’ve compiled a dozen of our best success programs into a year-end blowout sale with our lowest prices ever… so there’s no better time for you to start making your dreams come true in 2008 than right now.
This offer ends at tonight at 5PM EST, so don’t put it off and risk paying more a few days from now. Act today and you’ll get the best deal we’ve ever offered, guaranteed.
Stop by our ETR 2007 End-of-Year Blowout Sale now.
- MaryEllen Tribby
"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this."
Henry David Thoreau
Kicking Off 2008 With ETR: Resolve to Go From "Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda" to "Did It!"
By Justin Ford
From the mid-80s to early 90s, I’d take the Long Island Railroad into Manhattan five days a week. Just before the train would dive under the East River, we’d pass through the southwestern-most part of Queens. There, you’d see rows of zero-lot-line homes, one against the other in a brown and grey landscape.
And I’d think to myself, "Those homes are closer to midtown Manhattan than the Manhattan neighborhoods of Riverside and Soho. They are going to soar in value."
Time would prove me right. Western Queens skyrocketed. Major corporations built skyscrapers by the river, facing Manhattan, and home prices rose five-fold over the next 15 years. With a little leverage, it was an opportunity to make 50 times your money. With a system to reinvest your growing equity, you could make hundreds of times your money.
And what did I make from the boom I had correctly predicted?
Zero Dollars and Zero Cents.
I got the big picture right, but failed to profit because I failed to act. And that wasn’t the only time.
I wanted to invest in South Florida real estate as far back as 1993, when I first moved here. But it wasn’t until 2001 that I actually got started.
What held me back? The same two things that kept me from investing in Queens. Namely…
1. I had no knowledge.
2. I had no money.
I’ve met a lot of people who’ve been in the same boat - people who’ve missed tremendous opportunities because they didn’t know how to get the knowledge and resources needed to do the deals they wanted to do.
So I’d like to suggest a simple way to steadily increase your investment knowledge and access to money in the New Year - so you’ll be ready to act when your next opportunity presents itself.
Carpe Deal-em
If you have ambitions in real estate that are beyond your grasp at the moment, the best way to close the gap is to come up with a simple plan of action. Then carry it out every day. Once I started to do that, I stopped watching opportunities pass me by.
I began by talking to investors, attending real-estate-related events, reading books, and listening to tapes about real estate. This soon gave me enough knowledge to establish my key criteria: I would buy only cash-flow properties below market value in up-and-coming neighborhoods, and I would fix my interest rates.
I scoured a few neighborhoods in my rapidly growing hometown. I became knowledgeable about local values, cultivated relationships with potential partners and investors, and ended up buying a few properties at good prices.
Then, when my town got too hot to find cash-flow deals, I bought in a town 10 miles to the north and 10 years behind my town in terms of appreciation. When that market got too hot, I adapted again. I researched and traveled to value markets in other parts of the state and in other states. I made new contacts and found new deals.
This persistent action steadily increased my knowledge, experience, and wealth. And it helped me continue to make good returns the last few years, even while prices in South Florida peaked and began to fall.
Whether you’re a new investor looking to do your first deal or an experienced investor looking to move up (from single-family homes to apartment complexes, for instance), you can use this same incremental approach to get where you want to go.
- Write down a specific goal. (E.g., I will acquire at least $500,000 of under-market-value, cash-flow residential real estate in a value-and-growth market in 2008.)
- Identify the market you want to invest in. (E.g., if you live in a bubble market, you may want to pursue only short sales or bank foreclosures in your area. Or you may decide to buy in a value-and-growth market in another city or state.)
- Develop relationships with investors experienced in the type of real estate - and the market - you’re interested in.
- Get recommendations from these investors on worthwhile educational materials for your type of real estate - from courses to books, seminars, and mentorship programs.
- Join local clubs involved in your chosen type of real estate. If no local club exists, consider starting one. In the meantime, you can make contacts through online networks. (www.MainstreetMillionaire.net is the real estate network we’ve established at Early to Rise.)
- Let family, friends, and associates know what you’re doing, and find out which of them may be interested in lending on your deals or investing in them as equity partners.
- Identify one or two improving neighborhoods that you’ll want to focus on. Using public records, or with the help of a real estate agent, start to accumulate data on recent sales of your property type in those areas.
- Get to know the average dollar-per-square foot sales prices and gross-rent-multipliers in your target market. (If a property produces gross rents of $24,000 a year and it sells for $240,000, that means it sold for a gross-rent-multiplier, or "GRM," of 10.) If you’re dealing in commercial property, get to know the average cap rates too. (The cap rate is the net operating income of a property divided by its sale price.)
- Spend at least 15 minutes every day educating yourself about your property type.
- Spend at least 15 minutes every day looking at new for-sale offerings via websites. (Check the online version of your local classifieds and realtor.com for residential, and Loopnet.com and Propertyline.com for commercial.)
There’s no need to feel overwhelmed. You can put these simple steps to work every day in 2008. Once you do, your knowledge and confidence - as well as the network of people who can help you do deals - will steadily grow. Then, when a solid opportunity presents itself, you’ll be ready for it.
[Ed. Note: Justin Ford is an active real estate investor and the author of Main Street Millionaire - a deep-value residential real estate education program. He is also the chief editor of Secret Value & Growth Cities, a guide to the best-priced real estate growth markets in the U.S. today. To learn more about buying undervalued properties in undervalued markets, click here.]
Join Wall Street at the 10-Q Profit Party… And Pocket a Stream of Triple-Digit Winners
There is nothing like an earnings report to send a stock soaring or crashing. And during each quarterly earnings season, hundreds of companies reveal their results to the public.
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Now, it’s YOUR turn to profit!
Your 10th Special Holiday Gift From ETR: Massive Passive Income With Real Estate
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3 Techniques for Delivering a Powerful Business Speech
By Peter "The Humorator" Fogel
Whether you are delivering a speech to 3,000 people in a banquet room or giving a presentation to five clients in a conference room, what you say needs to be clear, concise, and useful. If it isn’t, you’ll lose your audience’s attention. Here are three techniques that will make every presentation you give powerful and snappy.
1. Don’t brain-dump your audience with lots of facts.
When putting together your talks, don’t keep collecting more and more data. You can include some facts, figures, and graphs with your PowerPoint presentation - but too much of that kind of thing will bore or confuse your audience. Remember: You’re an expert who knows - or should know - more than your listeners. And it’s your job to transform dull facts and figures into captivating stories that illustrate the points you’re trying to make.
2. Stick to three main points.
Less is more. And this holds true in an hour-long speech or a five-minute briefing with your staff. Your presentation should consist of three main points. Introduce each point. Then flesh it out with stories or actionable ideas. This will help your audience properly anchor it in their minds.
3. Make sure you can capture the main point of your speech in 30 seconds.
Like a great book or sales promotion, every presentation should have one overarching "Big Idea." And you should be able to sum up that idea in 30 seconds. Do it at the end of your speech to remind your listeners of your primary message.
[Ed. Note: Peter "The Humorator" Fogel is a copywriter, speaker, and author. For information on his FREE 7 Days to Effective Public Speaking e-course, click here.]
How Your Knee Can Be "Cursed" by the Occult
When you hear the word "occult," it may summon visions of a voodoo priestess muttering incantations and sticking a doll with pins. And if you sometimes get a mysterious, sudden, stabbing pain in your knee, you may wonder if there’s a connection… if you’re the victim of some sort of curse.
Well, your knee may be "cursed" by an occult injury. But it has nothing to do with the supernatural. "Occult" is from the Latin for "hidden." And, medically speaking, an occult injury is one without an apparent cause. When it comes to the knee, this most often means a torn meniscus, which can occur without a specific injury.
Most often, meniscal injury is suggested by swelling and effusion (water on the knee)… joint pain (though some are painless)… snapping or popping of the knee … instability of the knee (buckling or giving way)… and, occasionally, locking of the joint in flexion. But these symptoms may be lacking.
The meniscus is a crescent-shaped cartilage structure that lies between the top of the shin bone (tibia) and the curved end of the thigh bone (femur) inside the knee. ("Meniscus" means "moon" in Greek.) There are two menisci, one on each side of the joint. They act to disperse weight-bearing forces, to cushion shocks, and to guide the knee, especially when you’re changing direction, pivoting, or twisting.
A sudden, exaggerated movement can tear the meniscus, and that’s usually the way it happens. But some people develop a tear without any preceding trauma - simply as a result of the degeneration of the cartilage that occurs with aging. The center of the tissue breaks down and becomes soft and jelly-like. Eventually, the jelly breaks through the outer surface, the disruption extends, and a tear is born.
Menisci have a really bad blood supply. Once they’re torn, they don’t readily heal. And for that reason, most of these injuries require arthroscopic surgery, either to repair the tear or remove it. So if you suspect this is the source of your discomfort, see an orthopaedist. Ignored, it will continue to cause problems. And it can eventually lead to arthritis.
[Ed. Note: Dr. Bill is William Thomas Stillwell, MD, Chairman Emeritus, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center. He is CEO of Dr. Bill’s Clinic Inc., and author of Dr. Bill’s Little Green Book for Eliminating Knee Pain]
It’s Good to Know: Shopping for Free in Tokyo
The sample salon - which caters to young people - is the latest trend in Tokyo. For a minimal registration and membership fee, members are entitled to pick up a number of free items (hand cream, make up, coffee, knick-knacks, etc.) each time they visit a store. "Shoppers" who fill out surveys in the store are entitled to even more free stuff.
So why are these retailers so generous? It’s because the companies that provide the merchandise are gathering valuable data on new products and marketing strategies. They also hope that consumers like the free samples enough to purchase the items in the future and recommend them to others.
(Source: Wired)
Are You Ready for a Thrilling, Positive Change In Your Life?
This may be the life-changing opportunity you’ve been waiting for. If you continue doing everything the same way, you’re going to get the same results. You must make a change TODAY to see a change in 2008.
I’d like to show you how to dramatically increase the chances of making all your dreams - whatever they may be - come true in 2008.
-Charlie Byrne
Word to the Wise: Phantasmagoria
"Phantasmagoria" (fan-taz-muh-GOR-ee-uh) is a constantly shifting sequence of real or imagined images, as in a dream or fever. The word is from the Greek for "to make visible."
Example (as used by Edmund Wilson in The Dead Sea Scrolls: 1947-1969): "The new writings more and more take the form of apocalypses - that is, of supernatural visions which reveal past, present, and future under the guise of a phantasmagoria of symbolic persons and animals, divine and diabolical beings, celestial and infernal phenomena."
[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, 2008