I had lunch today with a great guy. Been “investing” for over ten years. He is in a “good” position but because he is a good saver he is not becoming a good investor.
After ten years of investing he has about 3 million dollars worth of property and he has been paying down mortgages as fast as he can, so today he only has about 1 million dollars worth of debt.

He asked to see me because his ten years of investing haven’t enabled him to retire, and he read on my website that I retired in under a year.

His problem has been that he has been a saver, not an investor. Using tax paid money to write down debt whilst achieveing no leverage is well, frankly… dumb.

After 3 hours with me he realises that now. He kicked himself all the way out to his car. He could have had 20 million dollars worth of property and be properly retired by “leveraging” his equity and building significant wealth.

That somebody so savvy and smart as this guy would penalise himself inadvertanty so much made me think that maybe some of you are doing the same thing.

If your focus is on getting out of debt, you are in the wrong game baby. Understand debt, know what good and bad debt is. Then get as much good debt as you can and then allow the property cycle to deliver the growth to enable you to get out of debt later when you need it. Every tax paid dollar used to write down debt, as oppposed to using it to invest further, is like saying you’d rather get 60 cents for your dollar instead of a dollar fifty, it’s just nuts.

Now it would take more than a blog to explain why this is so important. So if you have no idea what I am on about then go and look at some of my earlier video blogs and get yourself educated about good debt and leverage.

Without understanding this, you will beat your head against a brick wall forever.

Like my new friend, if you were offered a 3 milion dollar portfolio with 1 million dollars debt, many of you would jump at it, and it’s no tlike it’s a bad thing. But as my friend discovered, it isn’t enough to give you real freedom. In ten years you will be worth 6 million but may still have to work. However a ten million dollar portfolio with 6 or even 8 million dollars debt, now that’s smart investing.
In ten years you are worth 20 million and can sell down half your portfolio if you chose, create massive cashflow for the rest of your life and still be worth ten million!!

I know, I know, you’ve heard me say this a million times before, but it just is so cool, so non stressful, to be able to succeed without deceiving people.

Today we drove down the line to look at a property that had been offered to us. It was a “reasonable” deal and we were quite happy till we did a bit of research and some of the numbers weren’t quite as good as I’d hoped. As we drove away from the property Raewyn asked me what I thought. I said: “I don’t know what to do because if the deal was a normal deal I would probably go in hard to get the price down to make the deal good enough. But as the offer came through a personal friend I don’t think I could do that. I would feel like I was taking advantage of them. Would I feel good about scoring a deal out of a friends family member? No!”

SO when I got home I contacted the vendor and TOLD HIM THE TRUTH!!
I said that I would feel like I was taking advantage of them if I bought it at the level I needed to, and they would definitely get more money elsewhere.

Within 5 minutes they came back saying they were happy to sell to me at a lower level. They specifically thanked me for my honesty and openness.

Hello?? Is anybody there??
Being a dodgy prick is not the hallmark of a successful investor.

It has been a fascinating journey for Raewyn and I as we try and figure out exactly what God wants us to do with Massive Action and our lives. As we have become more known around the country we have been able to help more and more people, many of whom happen to be Christians attracted to our stand on integrity and ethics. However we find people everywhere looking for truth, looking for a way forward that can succeed with honesty and openness. We are very honoured that so many of you find that in us and our commitment to genuine win~win remains the core of our success and what we teach.

In the last week I have met 2 lots of people who came for investing advice but actually needed healing in their marriages. It probably sounds weird but that is much more exciting for me than talking about property, if I was being totally honest. To be able to share secrets of our sucess in life and see a relationship saved….. man there ain’t enough money on the planet to compete with that.

So here’s to integrity, honesty and real success: have a great day!!

PS: Just a reminder to please book sooner rather than later for Behind Closed Doors and Nuts & Bolts.
Bookings are going well however we want to make sure we have time to shift venues if we book out our current choice so please please book early.
We’re really excited about these events this year. You will be blown away by the material we’ve put together for you. We’ve learnt so much over the years about investing systems and how to keep your relationship intimate while you deal with the stresses of investing and we’ll share with you everything we know.
And for those of you with afraid or risk averse partners please stress to them that if they will only come, we promise they will be changed by the end of the weekend. And if they aren’t happy for any reason, we’ll give you your full ticket price back, no questions asked at all!! More info HERE

As it was my day off I only went to look at one property today. I tend to only look at stuff with 7 figures now so I have less competition.

Anyway after meeting the vendor we got talking about Fiji and various other things. Bythe end of the conversation I knew that there were several options with the property and numerous opportunities to do a JV with the vendor, if I so chose.

Had I not taken the time to talk, all I would have had was a viewing of a property for sale.
Now to be fair the vendor was a lovely guy so talking to him was no chore, but I still came away wondering how many other people would have bothered to spend the time.

Let me explain how important the little bits of information can be.
This is a potentially subdivisible property for sale for around a million dollars.
Had you rocked up and looked at it you would have decided that basically asking price was full retail and the subdivision could be a drama so you would look around and leave.

However by the time I left I had the following

1. Copy of survey plan of the site for subdivision
2. Copy of letter from Manukau Water confrming that the site could be subdivided
3. Knowledge that very long term settlement was the preference of the vendor as they were going to have to go and rent elsewhere and didn’t want to leave in a hurry
4. Knowledge that the vendor would love to keep half the site and build again and would entertain any JV ideas I might have.

So items 1 and 2 save me around $1000 in surveyors bills as I already have proof of subdivision at no cost.
Item 3 is a license to print money. Makes the deal no money down with say a year to onsell.
Item 4 gives me the opportunity to own a prime waterview section for around 250K less than it is worth, which I could then sell AND I wouldn’t need a cent of my own money to do it.

I know all this because I spent half an hour taking an interest in another human being.

It is 7:30 PM. I viewed the property at 4:30. I already have it possibly onsold but know that it is a great deal and I can pay full asking because I can structure it to be a deal.
There is going to be at least 100K profit in the property, possibly as much as 250K.
So that was my afternoon off, how has yours been ??

We often need to be reminded of the need to focus on things that are important. My brother recently said that for him family was the most important thing. He lives that in the way he interacts with his wife’s family and I.

For me God is the most important thing and I try to live my life to please Him because for me that is what really matters. Having said that there are no words to describe how much I adore Raewyn. Fortunately she is committed to God first also so I don’t have to choose between her and God. But if I had to I would have to choose God. Same goes for my 5 amazing kids.

Financial freedom and investing is the same in many ways. Unless you decide what is really important to you you will never take the necessary action to achieve the goals you really really want. I find this daily with people who come to see me for advice. I received an email tonight from someone who said they hadn’t managed to find a good deal yet. Now they are just learning about trading but the reality is that if they wanted it badly enough they would find one. In reality any street that has ten houses for sale would offer up a deal just on the law of averages. But you would only find the deal by actually making offers on all ten properties.

I had someone recenty complain that I wasn’t teaching them the advanced strategies they wanted to learn. I replied and said that unless they were doing the bare minimum of ten written offers a week, which they weren’t, then no amount of advanced information would help them succeed.

So what is really importasnt to you?? You need to know this. Most of us never even do the things that are important to us. SO if you don’t even know what they are, how can you ever hope to achieve them.

Sadly most of us simply don’t really want what we say we do. People like me become “stars”, not because we are special or gifted. But simply because I do what it takes to get the results I want. Isn’t it sad that society has trained and conditioned so many of us to be unhappy with our lot, but never unhappy enough to change it.

I had a comment recently from someone that at one of my early courses they heard nothing they hadn’t heard before. Their comment was that this was in some ways of no value. My thought was that they already knew what they needed to succeed but wanted something different or easier so when I presented the same truth they didn’t like it. It’s like saying, “No don’t tell me the truth, because the truth requires effort. Tell me some shortcut, tell me some new instant quick fix method that doesn’t require diligence, hardwork and integrity.

We just don’t really want what we say we want, or even worse, don’t even know what it is.

Not that any of you would be like that. You are all exceeding your goals and living a life of sublime freedom and happiness, aren’t you??

Hello, anybody out there??

Then love the one you’re with”.

Another great song. I was thinking of it tonight because I had been out training some people instead of being home with my exquisite wife Raewyn.

And I do love helping others succeed. I am still coming to terms with the fact that I must be a natural educator because people seem to get so much out of what I say.

It’s very cool to see people get great results and know you have had a hand in it. Very big on the “feel good” meter.

I think as investors it is important that we find things that make us feel good, things that emotionally fill us up. I find the aggressive investing I do really sucks the life out of me if I don’t have something to fill me up again. Talking to a group of people wanting to learn and passionate about property is cool for me. It gives me the motivation to go and do more deals so I have more good stories to tell.

But what about you?? What fills you up??
I know I’ve blogged about this before but it is really important. Serious investing is ^%&#&*%_$@ hard work. You need rewards, you need things to make you feel good or you will give up. Pursuing money is a sad shallow life. We are created for so much more.

In talking to these people tonight the coolest thing was the numerous comments about how great it was to be able to help people and make money using strategies like lease options. There are not many strategies that have such high feel good and such amazing returns. So for me knowing that I am helping grow a community of altruistic genuine win~win investors is fantastic.

Man I love my life and the people I meet!!

We spent the afternoon at one of the country’s best beaches a while back, Tawharanui out from Warkworth, with our adopted Samoan family. Surf and water was amazing.

As we left we were stopped by flashing lights as we approached an accident that had obviously happened a few minutes earlier. The car was upside down, seriously munted. The ambulance, cops and bystanders were trying to get a body that had been flung from the car, up and into the ambulance. He looked dead, not certain. What was certain was that he had been thrown out of the car, no seatbelt, and given the seriousness of the accident and where it occurred, he was probably drunk or stoned.

So in an instant this young mans life was probably over.

Reminds me of my brother. 19 years old, went to Waiouru to do military training. 3 days later, dead. You just never know, do you? My brother was a Christian and knew he would go straight to Heaven, so he had no need to fear death. But what about you? Maybe you kind of believe. When you are with me you act like a Christian because that helps you fit in. But what if you died, in the next 30 seconds. Do you know where you would wake up? Do you know whather your life had really been lived with integrity and passion? Not the integrity where you say one thing but actually your life is a mess. Where you say you believe in win ~win but treat others like crap. Where you say honesty is important but you cheat on your tax returns.
No I mean deep down inside your spirit, is your life how you want it to be?

How many dreams have you not fulfilled?
How many regrets would you have if your life ended tonight?
How much sadness would you have to wake up in heaven or hell and know that it was too late to do anything about it?

You will only have one shot at life. A failed brake line, a drunk driver, a weak walled vein could end any of us in the next 15 minutes.

So how important is it to live every moment to the full, to pursue your dreams, your creator and to love your life.

It’s up to you. Sadly 99% of us wil read this and think wow I must do something about my life,and change nothing.
So the 1% or the 99, which will you be tonight, tomorrow??

We’re a funny lot us humans. On one hand we are fragile, our lives can be over in an instant. On the other hand we are hardy, creative, planet conquerors.
One of the things that interests me as an educator but also profoundly affects my own life is what I call “headspace”. Sometimes we feel on top of things, our head is in a “good” space. Other times just breathing is a challenge.

I find that I have to listen to my headspace as I can’t make good decisions when I am not in a good place.

I have found as I have challenged myself to look at more expensive property deals that the level of stress also increases. This means that I can find myself in a bad headspace more easily and that affects my ability to function.

Sometimes we aren’t even really aware that we are only firing on 3 cylinders.

I found myself today, after returning from a day of being immersed in great Christian teaching and music, saying to myself, “I’m back!”

I was coming up with some great solutions to some property stuff and I suddenly realised that I was in a good headspace. What I would call my “normal” headspace. But I hadn’t been there for a few hours/days/weeks??

Busyness is a great way to not know where you are at and not hear the signals to help you look after yourself. And I had been too busy.

So this week as you go to work or school or whatever remember to take the time to listen to yourself. How are you thining, how are you feeling, where is your head at??

PS: Stil trying ot get my video upload sorted, hopefully tonight I will be back online!!